Geneva (AP) – Gunmen who were reported to have killed at least 460 people in a hospital in Sudan were attacked in several waves, nurses, and people were taken to safety on the spot, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
The attack of the second day in the Darfur region was part of the collapse of the high power of the support, a powerful group, as it captured the high-level city of El-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months. Witnesses reported that they were fighting in the areas where the house was going, killing civilians and sexually assaulting them.
More details of the attack on the hospital and other violence in the city have been slow to emerge, and the total number of deaths remains unknown.
El-Fasher’s fall marks a new phase in the brutal, two-year war between the RSF and the military in the third-largest country.
The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to UN figures, but aid groups say that is an estimate and the real number could be much higher. The war killed more than 14 million people and fueled disease outbreaks believed to have killed thousands. FAMURE was declared in parts of Darfur, a region the size of Spain, and other parts of the country.
Attacks on the hospital occur in waves
Communications are low in El-Fasher, located deep in the region 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum, the capital. Aid groups that used to work there were forced.
Some survivors have entered a refugee camp about 40 kilometers away in the town of Tawila.
More than 62,000 people are believed to have fled El-Fasher between Sunday and Wednesday, the UN migration agency said. But very few have done it in Tawila. The Norwegian refugee council, which manages the camp, put the number at around 5,000 people, raising fears of the fate of tens of thousands.
Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the former spokesman, gave new information about the killing of the hospital in El-Fasher’s hospital, which was the only hospital in the city that provided limited services during the siege.
GUNMEN returned to the facility at least three times, Lindmeier told a press conference in Geneva. Initially, the militia came and captured most of the doctors and nurses, and at least six are still at large. Later they came back and “he started killing,” she said.
They came a third time and “finished off what was standing, including some people taking refuge in the hospital,” Lindmeier said, without specifying who the attackers were.
Details of the rituals are shared online and by witnesses
Many gruesome videos have circulated online showing bodies and one fighter shooting a man. The Associated Press could not confirm details of the attack.
The RSF refused to carry out the killings at the hospital. On Thursday, a video uploaded by the hospital was posted on social media, showing what the patients were saying. The person speaking in the video said that the RSF fighters were taking care of the patients, giving them dressings and food. At least one injured person spoke to a reporter.
It was not immediately clear when the video was filtered, although the timestamp said it was Thursday.
Dr Teresa Zakaria, the Human Services Division’s head, told the forum that the hospital was providing “limited service” now. But he said this arrest of El-Fasher on Sunday, “There is no longer any health person in the city, and access has remained blocked.”
Fatima Abdulrahim, 70, fled El-Fasher with her grandchildren a few days before they were taken to escape the siege. He described the journey out of the city from the city, hiding in the tracks, bullets and guns behind walls and empty walls. He traveled for five days to reach Tawila.
On the way, he said he saw soldiers shoot and kill young men trying to bring food to the city. The road was littered with the bodies of the dead and wounded, unable to walk.
“The dead people on the streets were uncountable,” he said, speaking via AP from Tawila. “I’ve been covering the eyes of the little ones so they can’t see. Some were injured and beaten and couldn’t walk.”
Soldiers are accused of mass killings
El-Fasher was the last Sudanese military stronghold in Darfur, and its fall secures the RSF’s hold over the vast Western region. That raises the fear of a new faction in Sudan, with the military in control of Khartoum and the North and East of the country.
The RSF and the ruling army are accused of mass killings and rapes when they control the carta capital Khartoum, and since they have captured villages in Darfur and continued south for the past two years – the environmental ears of the East.
The RSF is largely made up of the Arab Janab Janjaweed Militia, which is accused of carrying out a government-backed campaign in Darfur in the 2000s in which some 300,000 people were killed.
The Janjaweed were initially recruited by the military to fight the Darfur rebels, who were rebelling against forces centered in the north. The Militia was later reorganized into the RSF as a Force off Force.
The army and the RSF briefly came together in a sudning regime following popular protests that ousted longtime leader Omar Al-Bashir. They would fall in 2023 in a power struggle.
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El Deeb reported in Cairo.
