When Sudanese nurse Asmaa returned to the Darfur city of El-Fasher, she found only bodies where her neighbours once lived and no sign of the family she had come to save.
The Rapid Support Forces, battling Sudan’s military since April 2023, seized the army’s last stronghold in Darfur on October 26 in a bloody offensive marked by executions, atrocities, pillaging and rape.
Since then, an RSF-imposed communications blackout has sealed El-Fasher off from the outside world. Little has been known since RSF fighters posted images eight weeks ago showing mass killings that shocked the world.
AFP managed to speak to two residents inside the city via satellite internet, collected accounts from two aid groups that gained rare access, and analysed satellite imagery to piece together an image of El-Fasher under the RSF.
More than 106,000 people have fled El-Fasher since the takeover, while between 70,000 and 100,000 remain trapped, according to the World Food Programme.
Asmaa fled the city on the Sunday it fell to the RSF, but was detained with 11 others near the South Darfur capital Nyala and released only after paying a $3,000 ransom.
Instead of escaping for good, she went back to El-Fasher, and has spent five weeks searching for her brothers, brother-in-law and several cousins, amid reports of thousands still detained in the city.
“I do not know if they are detained or dead. I just keep looking in shelters, schools, everywhere,” she told AFP.
What she has found instead is a city “terrifying and full of bodies”.
Her own home has been “completely destroyed”.
Asked by a neighbour to check on his family, she entered their house and found “two bodies inside”. She recognised them as his cousins, and ran in terror.
“They were still fresh,” she said.
Near her home, she saw deep burial pits she says were used to “erase evidence of killings”.
Satellite imagery analysed by AFP corroborates her account, revealing an increasing number of what look like graves in a 3,600-square-metre area near UNICEF headquarters.
Grave-shaped earth disturbances in the area controlled by the RSF since early October, have continued to increase from September.
– ‘Completely empty’ –
What little is known about conditions in El-Fasher is “beyond horrific”, the WFP said, citing accounts of burned bodies, abandoned markets and roads littered with mines.
A Red Crescent volunteer, speaking to AFP anonymously from the city, said his team entered El-Fasher on December 4 and buried “bodies scattered” across streets and buildings, with new corpses reported daily.
Satellite analysis from late November by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) revealed “piles of objects consistent with human bodies”, being moved around, buried and burned, with RSF forces present, its director Nathaniel Raymond told AFP.
In areas once bustling with activity, streets are now empty.
An analysis of recent satellite images by AFP shows no visible activity at four main markets across the city in mid-December, areas that were busy before the war began.
Ismail, who returned to El-Fasher from the nearby town of Garni five weeks after the takeover, described a deserted neighbourhood, his home partially damaged and stripped bare.
“The area is completely empty. When I go out to get something, I fear for my family,” Ismail told AFP, using a pseudonym for his safety.
For 18 months under siege, civilians in El-Fasher eked out a meagre existence on animal feed and cowhide. The UN confirmed famine last month, and the city has received virtually no aid.
One of the few groups granted access, Malam Darfur Peace and Development Organisation, told AFP it delivered food and blankets on December 2 but found a severe shortage of water, food and medicine.
– Trapped inside –
Doctors without Borders (MSF) teams in the refugee town of Tawila, 70 kilometres west, say they have received numerous fresh reports of kidnappings inside El-Fasher and along escape routes.
“The RSF wants to keep people inside,” MSF emergency coordinator Myriam Laaroussi told AFP, adding that many attempting to leave recently were forced back.
Those who make it recount families paying ransoms, men tortured or shot, parents killed and children left unaccompanied, she said.
The RSF has dismissed accusations as “fabricated narratives”, claimed it was investigating and sought to broadcast a different image of El-Fasher under their rule.
In videos, they boast “reconstruction” campaigns, a new police station and inspections of the city’s water plant, while urging residents to resume “normal” life.
The conflict in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions more and unleashed a new litany of horrors on the people of Darfur, long-scarred by the atrocities committed in the early 2000s by the RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed.
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© Agence France-Presse
