The killings in Sudan have killed hundreds of people, including hospital patients in Darfur, residents say

Cairo (AP) – Sudan’s armed forces killed dozens of people, including hospital patients, after taking over the town of El-Fasher in the West Darfur region this weekend, officials said, describing harsh details of the atrocities.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said in a statement that 460 patients and friends of patients were reportedly killed at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province. He said he was “revealed and deeply shocked” by the reports.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group monitoring the war, said fighters and emergency support forces on Tuesday “killed the Saudi hospital in cold blood, including patients, and anyone else in the wards.”

Sudanese Sudanese workers and AID workers revealed details of the atrocities committed by the RSF, which has been fighting since 2023 to occupy the third largest nation in Africa, after taking over the last military base in Darfur after 500 days of siege.

“Janjeede showed mercy to anyone,” said Mm Amena, a mother of four children who fled the village on Monday after two days, using the Sudanese name through RSF.

“It was like a killing spree”

Amena was among three dozen people, mostly women and children, who were detained for a day by the RSF in an abandoned house near the Saudi hospital in El-Fasher.

The decorator spoke to Amena and four others who managed to escape from El-Fasher and arrived on Tuesday in the nearby town of Tawila, about 67 kilometers) west of El-Fasher, which already holds more than 650,000.

The UN migration agency said about 35,000 people have fled El-Fasher, mostly in the surrounding countryside, since Sunday.

The official UN Refugee Agency Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said that the new arrivals tell stories of ethnic and political killings, including reports of disabled people being killed because they failed as they tried to escape.

Witnesses told AP that RSF fighters – on foot, on camels, or in vehicles – went from house to house, beating and shooting people, including women and children. Many were killed by gunshot wounds in the streets, others trying to escape to safety, said Witnesses.

Tajal-Rahman, a man in the field, said Tajal-Rahman, a man in his late 50s, said: “It was a man in the field and it came to its end. “Bodies everywhere and people walking around and no one helping us.”

Both Amena and Tajil-Rahman said the RSF fighters tortured and beat the detainees and shot at least four people on Monday after they later died of their wounds. They sexually assaulted women and girls, they said.

Giulia ChipIORIS, doctors at a hospital run by doctors outside the Border Medical Group in Tawila, said they have been receiving more patients since Oct. 18, Suffering from injuries related to the explosion of bombs or guns.

He said the hospital also received a high number of malnourished children – many of them unprotected or orphaned – who were overweight during the road trip from El-Fasher.

“They came here really tired,” he told the AP. “We are seeing a lot of trauma cases related to the last bombing and a large number of orphans.”

He remembered finding his three siblings – 40 days old and 4 years old – on Monday night, in their family killed in the city. They were brought to the hospital by strangers, he said.

Satellite images show mass killings

In a report late Tuesday, the Yale School of Health’s Helour Health Research Lab (HRL) said that RSF fighters have continued to kill more people since they took over El-Fasher.

The report, which relied on satellite images from Airbus, said it confirmed the killings and killings of people near the Saudi hospital in the eastern part of the city.

There were also “systematic killings” taking place near the eastern wall, which the RSF built outside the city earlier this year.

HRL also reported what was said to have targeted attacks by the RSF on health facilities, health workers, patients and humanitarian workers, which had a military toll.

“Horrible horror,” Simon Mane, the national director of the World Vision Aid Group, said. “The children are not just dead; they have been brutally robbed of their existence, their hopes and filled with cruelty.”

He warned of a crisis as increasing reports of atrocities “now constitute the darkest chapters of this crisis.”

Aid groups say hundreds have been killed and hundreds covered since the RSF passed through the city, but it was difficult to determine the number of deaths that received the next offer.

HRL said that the satellite image cannot show the true extent of the mass killings, and that “any estimates of the total number of people killed by the RSF are highly unlikely.”

Before the latest violence, about 1,850 civilians were killed in North Darfur, including 1,350 in El-Fasher, between Jan. 1 and Oct. 20 This year, according to UN Spokesman Farhan Aziz Haq.

Global outrage

The attack caused a wave of outrage around the world. France, Germany, the UK and the European Union all condemned the dispute.

Mohamed Osman, a Sudanese researcher and human rights activist, said that the foot from El-Fasher “reveals a terrible truth: The power of immediate support feels free to do difficult things with little fear.”

“The world needs to do something to protect citizens from serious crimes,” he said.

Sen. Jim Risch, the chairman of the International Committee of the International Internation, on Tuesday blamed the attack on the RSF in the city, and called for it to be designated as a terrorist organization.

“RSF has gone astray and committed unspeakable abominations, genocide among themselves, against the Sudanese people,” he wrote in X.