Sudanese survivors recount mass rapes, torture and killings by RSF forces during flight from El-Fasher, with hundreds of sexual violence cases documented.
TAWILA: Sudanese mother Amira wakes daily trembling from haunting memories of mass rapes witnessed while fleeing El-Fasher after paramilitary forces overran the city.
The western Darfur city fell to the Rapid Support Forces on October 26 following an 18-month siege marked by starvation and bombardment.
Reports have since emerged of mass killings, sexual violence, attacks on aid workers, looting and abductions in the largely disconnected city.
“The rapes were gang rapes,” Amira said from a makeshift shelter in Tawila, 70 kilometres west of El-Fasher.
“Mass rape in public, rape in front of everyone and no one could stop it.”
She spoke during a webinar organised by campaign group Avaaz with several survivors given pseudonyms for safety.
Doctors Without Borders said more than 300 sexual violence survivors sought care in Tawila after a previous RSF assault on nearby Zamzam camp.
Amnesty International warned in April that RSF forces carried out widespread sexual violence to humiliate, control and forcibly displace communities.
The rights group documented conflict-related sexual violence by both army and RSF forces, particularly in Khartoum and Darfur.
In Korma village northwest of El-Fasher, Amira said she was detained for two days for inability to pay RSF fighters for safe passage.
Those unable to pay were denied food, water and freedom, with mass assaults occurring at night.
“You’d be asleep and they’d come and rape you,” she said.
“I saw with my own eyes people who couldn’t afford to pay and the fighters took their daughters instead.”
Sudan’s state minister for social welfare confirmed 300 women were killed when El-Fasher fell, some after sexual assault.
An independent humanitarian group documented 150 sexual violence cases between El-Fasher’s fall and November 1.
The UN confirmed at least 25 women were gang-raped when RSF forces entered a shelter near El-Fasher University.
“Witnesses confirmed that RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint,” said UN human rights office spokesperson Seif Magango.
Another survivor described women and girls being searched and humiliated in Garni town between El-Fasher and Tawila.
“If they found nothing on you, they beat you,” Mohamed said.
“They searched the girls, even tearing apart their pads.”
Amira described RSF leaders greeting people before fighters remaining behind began torturing them.
“They start categorising you: ‘You were married to a soldier.’ ‘You were affiliated with the army,'” she said.
She witnessed men slaughtered with knives by RSF fighters, leaving her 12-year-old son traumatised.
“We wake up shivering from fear, images of slaughter haunt us.”
More than 65,000 people have fled El-Fasher since its fall, with over 5,000 now sheltering in already overcrowded Tawila.
Hundreds huddle in makeshift tents in vast desert expanses, scrambling to prepare food for their families.
The situation requires immediate intervention with people needing food, water, medicine, shelter and psychological support. – AFP
