The leader of Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has announced an investigation into what he says are abuses committed by his soldiers during the capture of El Fasher.
The statement by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, came after growing reports of killings of civilians following the RSF capture of a town in the Darfur region on Sunday.
The RSF leader spoke following international outrage over reports of massacres in El Fasher, which were apparently documented by his paramilitary fighters in videos on social media.
A spokesman for the paramilitary group has since denied further medical accusations that the RSF killed more than 400 people at the city hospital on Tuesday.
BBC check analyzed the footage confirm that they show RSF soldiers executing several unarmed people in the city.
The UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting on Sudan, which is in its third year of civil war between the army and paramilitary forces.
British Foreign Secretary Stephen Doughty said Britain called the meeting because “the scale of suffering is unconscionable, often based on ethnicity, women and girls face sexual and gender-based violence, and there is evidence that defenseless civilians are being executed and tortured.”
He was responding to an urgent question asked in Parliament by Labor MP and former development secretary Anneliese Dodds, who said the hospital attack “certainly should be a turning point in this war and a focus of international attention.”
RSF also rejected widespread accusations that the killings in El Fasher were ethnically motivated and follow the example of Arab paramilitaries attacking non-Arab populations.
Hemedti said he regretted the disaster that befell the residents of El Fasher and admitted that there had been irregularities on the part of his forces, which would be investigated by a committee now in the city.
However, observers note that similar promises have been made in the past – in response to accusations of a massacre in Darfurian city of El Geneina in 2023and alleged atrocities during the group's control of the central Gezira state – were not carried out.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) said it was shocked and deeply shocked. reports that more than 460 civilians, including patients and their companions, were shot dead at the last partially functioning hospital in El Fasher.
Analysts at the Yale Humanities Research Laboratory say satellite images showing clusters of bodies on the hospital grounds support those reports.
But an RSF spokesman insisted that civilians had fled and no hospital was operational when the paramilitary group took over the town over the weekend.
Mohamad Faisal, a spokesman for the UK-based Sudan Doctors Network, says their teams on the ground have confirmed an attack on the Saudi hospital in El Fasher, as seen in footage on social media.
“What we've seen is absolutely horrific,” he told the BBC Newsday programme.
“RSF soldiers went into wards, killing inpatients, and also visiting outpatient departments and killing people waiting in clinics – a lot of people.”
Dr Faisal said it had been a terrible three days for his colleagues, some of whom managed to escape after making the dangerous journey to the town of Tawila, about 60 km (37 miles) west of El Fasher.
Others were still in El Fasher, where an estimated 250,000 people, many from non-Arab communities, were trapped during the RSF's 18-month siege of the city.
He put the death toll at the hospital at 450, according to statistics compiled by the Sudan Doctors Network.
“200 inpatients were killed, and then 250 between outpatients and people visiting the hospital,” Dr Faisal said.
During the 550-day siege, the RSF frequently attacked the hospital, which mainly dealt with cases of severe malnutrition, he said.
According to him, “drone strikes and artillery attacks” on the site have become more frequent over the past couple of months.
According to Caroline Bouvard of the aid group Solidarités International, some 5,000 people have arrived in Tawila from El Fasher in recent days, the most traumatized and in very weak condition, often subject to abuse, violence and racketeering along the way.
“We've had a lot of confirmation of rape and gender-based violence,” she told BBC Newsday, adding that they had also confirmed recent reports of summary executions.
Activists have also increased demands for international pressure on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is widely accused of providing military support to the RSF.
The UAE denies this, despite evidence presented in UN reports.
El Fasher was the army's last stronghold in the western Darfur region and was captured by the RSF after a long siege involving famine and heavy bombing.
The capture of El Fasher deepens the country's geographic divide, with the RSF now controlling western Sudan and much of neighboring Kordofan to the south, while the army holds the capital Khartoum and the central and eastern regions along the Red Sea.
[BBC]
The two rivals were allies and came to power together in a coup in 2021 but split over an internationally backed plan to transition to civilian rule.
The African Union Peace and Security Council called for humanitarian corridors to be opened to provide life-saving assistance to those in El Fasher and for an immediate investigation to bring those responsible for the atrocities to justice.
“The investigation alone now will not bring relief to those living in appalling conditions in Sudan, which by the way is the worst humanitarian situation in the world,” Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, chairman of the African Union Commission on Sudan, told the BBC.
According to him, for more than 500 days, residents of El Fasher and its environs “experienced hell on Earth.”
“We have repeatedly stated that the Sudanese crisis cannot be resolved militarily, which is why we are working with civil and political groups to convene a pan-Sudanese inclusive dialogue.
“We now need to work with the Sudanese to address the root causes of their problem, which they themselves admit is isolation. The failure to manage diversity in Sudan lies at the heart of the recurring crisis the country has experienced since independence in 1956,” Chambas said.
Other BBC stories on the siege of El Fasher:
People outside the UK can watch the documentary on YouTube.
[Getty Images/BBC]
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