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Over the weekend fighters riding on camels rounded up a few hundred people near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir and drove them to a reservoir, shouting racist abuse before opening fire, according to a man who said he was one of them.
One of his captors recognized him from his school days and let him escape, the man, Alkheer Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist in Tawila, a nearby town in the country’s West Darfur region.
“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,'” Ismail said. “Even when they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”
he said he was bringing Eat Relatives were still in the city when he was captured by Rapid Support Forces on Sunday – and, like other detainees, he was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.
Ismail was one of four witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said that people fleeing al-Fashir were gathered in nearby villages and the men were separated from the women. In an earlier article, a witness said then shots were fired,
worker and analysts There have long been warnings of revenge killings based on ethnicity by paramilitary forces rapid aid force (RSF) If they captured al-Fashir, the last stronghold of the Sudanese army in Darfur.
The UN human rights office on Friday shared what it estimated were hundreds more accounts civilian and unarmed combatants may have been executedSuch killings are considered war crimes.
RSF, whose victory in Al-Fashir is a milestone SudanThroughout the two-and-a-half year civil war, he has denied such abuses – saying the accounts were created by his enemies and counter-accusing them.
It comes as it has been confirmed Britain will send £5million in aid to Sudan following the fall of a major city amid “horrific” atrocities, the Foreign Secretary has said.
Speaking at a conference in Bahrain on Saturday, Yvette Cooper condemned “torture, mass executions, starvation and the devastating use of rape as a weapon of war” in Darfur, and described reports from the region as “truly appalling”.
Announcing additional humanitarian assistance, he also warned that women and children “are bearing the brunt of the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century”.
The £5 million announced by Ms Cooper on Saturday will pay for aid such as emergency food supplies and medical care.
Almost £2 million will be focused on supporting survivors of sexual violence.
RSF says people have been removed for questioning
Reuters has verified at least three videos posted on social media showing men in RSF uniforms shooting unarmed detainees and more than a dozen videos showing groups of bodies after apparent gunfire.
A high-level RSF commander described these accounts as “exaggerated by the media to hide their defeat and the loss of al-Fashir” by the army and its allied fighters.
The RSF leadership had ordered an investigation into any violations by RSF individuals and several people had been arrested, he said, adding that RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organizations to assist those who remained.
He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians have been taken in for questioning. “There was no killing, as claimed,” the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.
Multiple witnesses told the global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) that a group of 500 civilians and soldiers from the Sudanese armed forces and allied groups tried to flee on 26 October, but most were killed or captured by RSF and its allies.
“Survivors have reported that individuals are being separated based on gender, age or perceived ethnic identity, and many are being held for ransom, with amounts ranging from 5 million to 30 million Sudanese pounds ($8,000 to $50,000),” MSF said in a statement on Friday.
RSF captures Al-Fashir reinforces geographic divisions South Sudan’s independence in 2011 after decades of civil war had already left a country shrunk to size.
In a speech on Wednesday night, RSF chief Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations would be prosecuted. He appeared to accept the detention reports by ordering the release of the prisoners.
Most of the fighters blocking the RSF advance into al-Fashir came from the Zaghawa ethnic group, whose enmity with largely Arab RSF fighters dates back to the early 2000s, when, as a Janjaweed militia, they were accused of atrocities in Darfur.
Genocide expert and Darfur expert Alex de Waal said RSF’s report in al-Fashir “looks very similar to what they did in Genena and elsewhere”, referring to another Darfur town that RSF captured during the early stages of the latest war as well as during the early 2000s conflict.
The US said the RSF had committed genocide in Jenina and the attack is being investigated by the International Criminal Court. The Sudanese military and others accused the UAE of supporting the RSF, a charge the Gulf state denied.
‘We cannot say that they are alive’
Mary Brace, a security adviser for Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO working in Tawila, said the people arriving “are generally women, children and older men,” adding that RSF-organized trucks have taken some people from Garni to Tawila, while others have been taken elsewhere.
RSF posted a video on Thursday that it said showed the provision of food and medical aid to displaced people in Garni. Aid workers said the force is also trying to keep people in cities under its control to attract foreign aid.
About 260,000 people were still in al-Fashir at the time of the attack, but only 62,000 have been counted elsewhere, and only several thousand of those were in Tawila, which is controlled by a neutral force.
In another testimony obtained and verified by Reuters, former hospital cleaner Tahani Hassan said she fled to Tawila on Sunday morning after her brother-in-law and uncle were killed by stray bullets.
On the way, he said, he and his family were caught by three men in RSF uniform, who searched them, beat them and insulted them.
“They beat us a lot. They threw our clothes on the ground. Even I, being a woman, was searched,” she said. He told that their food and water were also scattered on the ground.
Eventually they reached Garni where fighters separated the women and children from the men, most of whom he never saw again, including his brother and another brother-in-law.
“Because of the way they treated us, we can’t say they are alive,” Hassan said. “If they don’t kill you, hunger will kill you, thirst will kill you.”