Sudan’s army chief has announced the withdrawal of his soldiers from their last stronghold in Darfur, as the United Nations issued a stark warning over reports of “atrocities” by the paramilitary group now in control of the city of el-Fasher.
The announcement by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan came late on Monday, a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the main Sudanese army base in el-Fasher and declared victory there.
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The army’s withdrawal from el-Fasher leaves more than a quarter-million people – half of them children – under the control of the RSF. Aid groups reported chaotic scenes there, including killings, arrests and attacks on hospitals.
In his statement, al-Burhan said that his soldiers decided to withdraw from the city entirely in the hopes of sparing the civilian population from further violence.
The army retreated because of “the systemic destruction, and the systemic killing of civilians” by the RSF, he said, adding that the army hoped to “spare the citizens and the rest of the city from destruction”.
“We are determined to avenge what happened to our people in el-Fasher,” he said. “We, as the Sudanese people, will hold these criminals accountable.”
The fall of el-Fasher to the RSF could herald another split of Sudan, more than a decade after South Sudan’s creation. The latest war started in April 2023, when tension between the military and RSF exploded into fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The ensuing conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million.
Footage posted on social media since Sunday showed RSF fighters celebrating in and around the former army base in el-Fasher. Other footage shows RSF fighters shooting and beating people as they attempt to flee. Many were shown detained.
Atrocities in el-Fasher
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday that the developments represent a “terrible escalation in the conflict” and that “the level of suffering that we are witnessing in Sudan is unbearable”.
The UN Human Rights Office said that RSF fighters reportedly carried out atrocities in el-Fasher, including “summary executions” of civilians trying to flee their attacks, “with indications of ethnic motivations for killings”.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the “risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in el-Fasher is mounting by the day”.
The Sudan Doctor Network, a medical group tracking the war, described the RSF’s attack on el-Fasher as a “heinous massacre” and said that dozens of people were killed. RSF fighters rampaged through parts of el-Fasher, looting hospitals and other medical facilities and “destroying what remained of essential life-supporting and health care infrastructure”, the network said in a statement.
The Darfur Network for Human Rights said the RSF detained more than 1,000 civilians, describing it as “systematic targeting of civilians, arbitrary detentions and potential acts amounting to war crimes”.
Among the detained was a local journalist, one of the few left in the city, according to the Sudanese Journalists’ Union. The group warned about potential “mass violations” in el-Fasher, similar to what happened in another Darfur city, Geneina, in 2023, when RSF fighters killed hundreds.
The Sudan Doctors Union, the professional umbrella of Sudanese physicians, said that the RSF had turned el-Fasher into a “brutal killing field,” calling its practices in Sudan a “barbaric policy that aims at terrorizing and annihilating civilians”. The group urged the international community to classify the RSF as a “terrorist” organisation.
Mathilde Vu, the Sudan Advocacy Manager at the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera that information coming out of el- Fasher was sparse and that civilians in the area are in grave danger.
“We’ve been trying to reach our partners in el-Fasher for the past 24 hours, with no success,” she said.
“So it’s very difficult right now to understand the level of gravity… but more and more we are seeing reports of mass atrocities, of executions, of kidnappings and of unbearable suffering,” she said.
“I have to say that no one is safe right now in el-Fasher.”
Alleged war crimes
Before Sunday’s attack, there were 260,000 civilians, half of them children, trapped in el-Fasher, according to the UN children’s agency.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration said that more than 26,000 people had fled their homes as of Monday, retreating to rural areas and the overwhelmed nearby town of Tawila.
Elsewhere, RSF fighters ran riot in the town of Bara in the central Kordofan region over the weekend, killing at least 47 people, including nine women, the Sudan Doctors Network said.
The RSF grew out of the notorious government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed, which brutalised the Sudanese during the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.
The latest war has killed more than 40,000 people and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with part of the country, including the el-Fasher area, plunged into famine.
The conflict has been marked by gross atrocities, including ethnically motivated killings and rape, according to the UN and rights groups.
The International Criminal Court has said it is investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.