Malnourished and dehydrated people are crawling through the desert on their elbows and knees in constant terror of being caught by fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), humanitarian organizations have warned.
The journey from the RSF-controlled city of el-Fasher to the town of Tawila is just 30 miles, but nonetheless perilous as gunmen rove around, robbing people, taking them hostage and in some cases slaughtering them by the dozen, the organizations say.
Under international pressure, the RSF said Thursday that it was willing to engage in a U.S.-brokered humanitarian ceasefire. But the Sudanese military, which it has been fighting since April 2023, has yet to agree to a truce, and the State Department has said it is still working to get both parties to agree to a pause in the fighting amid warnings from the humanitarian organizations that the northeast African nation is returning to its genocidal past.
While talks are ongoing, eyewitness accounts, videos shared to social media and an analysis of satellite imagery that has shown pools of blood visible from space have revealed the scale of the killing in the region and the increasing use of drone strikes by both sides as they seek to gain an advantage on the battlefield.
Hanaa Abdullah Musa said RSF fighters detained her brother at one of several checkpoints she came across as she made her way to Tawila, which is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
“They drove him to some place,” she told NBC News in a voice note on Thursday. “Later in the evening, they told us they would bring him back, but they never did.”
NBC News has asked the RSF for comment on Musa’s testimony.
Musa, 20, said she had no choice but to keep moving toward Tawila after fighters took her phone and money at a previous checkpoint.
She was one of only about 6,000 people to make it to the town from el-Fasher since the RSF takeover, according to humanitarian organizations working there, all of whom have expressed growing alarm about the paramilitary group’s activity in Sudan’s North Darfur.
“Every single person who has arrived in Tawila has one or multiple members of their family that they cannot account for,” according to Shashwat Saraf, the country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian organization that provides aid to displaced people.
“Many of them are telling us that they have had to hide for days in the desert, crawl on their elbows so that they are not spotted, they are not targeted and they are not kidnapped,” Saraf said Thursday at a briefing from the town.
With el-Fasher under a communications blackout, it has been left to eyewitness accounts like Musa’s, videos shared to social media and an analysis of satellite imagery to reveal the scale of what is unfolding in the key regional capital, which was home to around 250,000 people before the Sudanese military left.
Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said that after studying high-resolution satellite images, he concluded there were “too many” bodies to count.
But he estimated that tens of thousands of people had been killed after RSF fighters took the city around two weeks ago following the Sudanese military’s withdrawal.
“Body disposal operations have picked up pace,” he said, adding that his team had found evidence of mass graves and bodies being burned in el-Fasher.
NBC News has asked the RSF for comment on the latest satellite analysis. An RSF leader told Reuters on Friday that investigations were underway and anyone proved to have committed abuses would be held accountable, but that reports of violations in el-Fasher had been exaggerated by the army and its allies.
Widespread abuses
Led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo — a former camel dealer widely known as Hemedti — the RSF has been fighting the Sudanese military for more than two years after he fell out with the country’s top commander and de facto ruler, Gen. Abdel-Fattah al Burhan.
Prior to that, both men were part of the military establishment that helped oust longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Two years later, they agreed to rule together after a coup that brought down the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
However, their alliance spectacularly broke down over how to manage the transition to a civilian government, and with neither seemingly willing to cede power, fighting broke out.
Since then, both sides have been accused of widespread abuses. In one of its last acts, the Biden administration declared that the RSF and its allies were committing genocide in a war that has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with part of the country, including the el-Fasher area, plunged into famine. Over 14 million people have fled their homes.
With so many displaced and reliable data unavailable, estimates vary widely on the number of dead, but as of May the United Nations said 40,000 people had been killed. Aid groups say the true death toll could be many times higher. Over 24 million people are also facing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme.
The RSF said Thursday said it would agree to the truce “in order to address the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the war and to enhance the protection of civilians.” The ceasefire would “ensure the urgent delivery of humanitarian assistance to all Sudanese people,” the group added about the proposal put forward by a mediator group known as the Quad and made up of the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
A Sudanese military official said the army welcomed the Quad’s proposal but would only agree to a truce when the RSF completely withdrew from civilian areas and gave up weapons. A State Department spokesperson also indicated that no deal had been struck and said the U.S. was urging both sides to move forward.
Drone warfare
While there is little sign of an end to the fighting on the ground, both sides have accused each other of targeting civilians with drone strikes.
Use of unmanned aerial vehicles has increased during the conflict, and last month, Radhouane Nouicer, the United Nations’ designated expert on the human rights situation in Sudan, expressed alarm about the sharp escalation in drone strikes, which he said were “putting civilian lives at additional risk, deepening the humanitarian crisis and further destabilizing the country.”
In el-Fasher, the Yale team said, the RSF had likely carried out a drone strike on the city’s Al-Safiya mosque during Friday prayers. At least 78 people were killed, including 11 children.
The team confirmed that the RSF had access to the technology and had launched previous attacks from an airport “well within range of targets in el-Fasher,” it said in a report shortly after the attacks.
“A group that 20 years ago had rusty Enfield rifles, AK-47s, camels and horses now has an air force that can strike anywhere in Sudan within about three hours,” said Raymond, the executive director.
And in el-Fasher, he said, his team found the RSF had closed a critical exit point in the berm, a sand barrier surrounding the city that was built by its fighters as they laid siege to the city for 18 months.
“We see continued killing activity near the berm,” he said. “That’s consistent with reports that people trying to flee are being killed or being gathered together and shot in trenches.”
He added that his analysts had also spotted an RSF reconnaissance unit about 12 miles from Tawila, where there are currently about 600,000 displaced people.
“When we see that type of RSF activity move closer into the safe haven, that’s when alarm bells start to go off,” he said. “We’ve seen this movie before.”
