‘Bombs, Blood, And Bodies Everywhere’: El-Fasher Turns Into Largest Killing Zone In Sudan’s Civil War, Civilians Flee After RSF Takeover

Sudan conflict news: As Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the besieged city of El-Fasher in late October, thousands of civilians fled through bombed-out streets and makeshift trenches filled with bodies. What they witnessed on the way out continues to haunt them.

For 16-year-old Mounir Abderahmane, the journey to safety took 11 days across arid plains before he reached Chad’s Tine transit camp. He had been at El-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital, tending to his wounded father, a Sudanese army soldier. “They summoned seven nurses into a room. Then gunshots. Blood was seeping from under the door,” Abderahmane said to AFP, his voice trembling. His father died on the way out of the city.

The RSF seized El-Fasher, the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in Darfur, after an 18-month siege that starved the population and trapped more than a million displaced civilians inside.

Witnesses Speak of Streets Filled With Bodies

Survivors arriving in eastern Chad describe days of drone strikes, shelling, and door-to-door killings. Fifty-three-year-old Hamid Souleymane Chogar said to AFP that people hid in cramped shelters, surviving on “peanut shells” as drones circled overhead. Each time he stepped out for air, he said, new bodies lay on the roadside.

Mahamat Ahmat Abdelkerim, who lost one of his children just days earlier in a drone strike, ducked into an abandoned house when RSF headlights swept past. Inside, he found around ten civilian corpses. “The blood was still oozing from them,” he said.

Extortion, Rape And Killings At RSF Roadblocks

Refugees say RSF fighters set up checkpoints on the two main exit routes. At each stop, armed men demanded the equivalent of USD 800–USD 1,600 per family. Multiple witnesses reported armed robbery and sexual assault at these roadblocks.

ALSO READ: ‘You Know Shah Rukh Khan?’: RSF Fighters Mock Indian Man Abducted In Conflict-Hit Sudan; Shocking Video Goes Viral

The United Nations estimates that nearly 90,000 people have fled El-Fasher in the past two weeks alone. Many spent days without food or water. Humanitarian groups warn that Sudan is now facing the world’s largest hunger crisis, with nearly 12 million displaced and tens of thousands killed since April 2023.

ALSO READ: Indian Worker From Odisha Held Hostage By RSF Militia In Sudan’s Conflict Zone, Envoy Says Talks On For Safe Return

Between 2003 and 2008, the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF, carried out ethnic cleansing in Darfur that left around 300,000 dead. Survivors say the violence now unfolding in El-Fasher resembles the darkest days of that genocide. With El-Fasher under RSF control, aid groups fear fresh waves of killings against non-Arab communities.