Aid workers fear for those missing from a city in Sudan's Darfur region seized by paramilitary force

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CAIRO (AP) — Aid workers worried Thursday that only a trickle of the people believed to have fled a paramilitary force that seized a city in Sudan’s Darfur region have reached safety, as hundreds reportedly have been killed in the attack and while making their escape.

People have been arriving to a town west of el-Fasher, having fled on foot during the attack by the Rapid Support Forces, which has been fighting troops allied to Sudan's military since 2023 in the East African nation.

Already, the World Health Organization has warned the violence reportedly killed 460 people in a hospital in el-Fasher. Witnesses have told The Associated Press that RSF fighters also went from house to house, beating and shooting people, including women and children. The RSF on Thursday for the first time directly denied carrying out killings at the hospital as international outrage grows.

Disrupted communications around el-Fasher has made assessing the devastation that much more difficult. Experts have said satellite photos also appear to show bodies in the streets of the city after the RSF attack.

The smaller number of people reaching the town of Tawila, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) west of el-Fasher and not under the paramilitary group's control, have aid workers fearing the worst.

“The number of people who made it to Tawila is very small and that should be a concern for all of us,” said Malthide Vu, advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which manages the camp in Tawila for those displaced. “Where are the others? That tells the horror of the journey.”

The International Rescue Committee separately warned “hundreds of thousands of people are in grave danger in and around el-Fasher.” Those arriving in Tawila traveled by foot at night and told its aid workers there had been arbitrary killings by RSF forces along their escape, which had been littered with bodies.

“The fact that we are seeing so few people arriving safely in Tawila should alarm everyone. It raises urgent warnings about what is happening to those trying to flee El Fasher,” said David Miliband, president of the IRC.

"Safe passage for civilians must be guaranteed, aid must be scaled up and funded now, and all parties must respect their obligation to protect civilians. The world cannot turn away from yet another chapter of horror in Darfur.”

In Tawila, the newly displaced were sheltering under trees or using blankets or their own clothes to set up covers from the elements. One person who fled, Aisha Ismael, said she arrived barefoot, with none of her belongings as drone attacks and shelling were constant. People foraged for livestock fodder known as ambaz, which is made from peanut shells and water, because they were so hungry.

“We looked for it in the dirt to eat and they didn’t even let us. If they catch us, they hit us and throw it away,” she said. “We were tired from hunger.”

Some 460 patients and their companions were reportedly killed Tuesday at the Saudi Hospital in el-Fasher, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. The AP has not been able to independently confirm the hospital attack and death toll, given the chaos and the challenges in communicating with those still there.

Mini Minawi, the governor of Darfur, shared a video online that purported to show RSF fighters inside the Saudi Hospital. The minute-long footage shows bodies lying on the floor in pools of blood. A fighter fires a single shot from a Kalashnikov-style rifle into a lone man sitting up, who then slumps to the floor. Other bodies could be seen outside. The AP could not independently verify the date, location or condition under which the video was recorded.

In a report late Tuesday, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said that RSF fighters continued to carry out mass killings since they took over el-Fasher.

The report, which relied on satellite imagery from Airbus, said it corroborated alleged executions and mass killing by the RSF around the Saudi Hospital, and at a detention center at the former Children’s Hospital in the eastern part of the city. The AP accessed and analyzed the same imagery, seeing objects and red stains on the ground at the sites that the lab identified as blood and bodies.

The lab also said that “systematic killings” took place in the vicinity of the eastern wall, which the RSF built outside the city earlier this year.

RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who is sanctioned by the U.S., acknowledged Wednesday what he called “abuses” by his forces and said an investigation was ongoing. On Thursday, the RSF called the reports of killings at the hospital “fabrications for political gain" by their enemies.

Two years of fighting for control of Sudan has killed over 40,000 people — a figure rights groups consider a significant undercount — and has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with over 14 million displaced. The capture of el-Fasher by the powerful Arab-led force raises fears that Africa’s third-largest nation may split again, nearly 15 years after the oil-rich South Sudan gained independence following years of civil war. Sudan's military now fully holds its capital, Khartoum.

That's seen the RSF focus on Darfur, particularly el-Fasher, which its forces had been besieging for more than 500 days. The RSF takes its root in the Janjaweed militia that committed genocide in the early 2000s in Sudan's western Darfur region. Rights groups and the United Nations accuse the RSF and allied Arab militias of again attacking ethnic African groups in this latest war.

Since the war began, both the Sudanese military and the RSF have faced allegations of human rights abuses. Before U.S. President Joe Biden left office, the State Department declared that the RSF committed genocide in this current war.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.