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Fighters riding camels rounded up a couple of hundred men near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir at the weekend and brought them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.
One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist in the nearby town of Tawila in the country's western Darfur region.
"He told them, 'Don't kill him,'" Ismail said. "Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else."
He said he had been bringing food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday - and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.
Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.
Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized al-Fashir - the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.
The U.N. human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.
The RSF, whose victory in al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan's two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses - saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.
A high-level RSF commander called the accounts "media exaggeration" by the army and its allied fighters "to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir."
The RSF's leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said, adding that the RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organisations to assist those who remained.
He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians had been taken away for interrogation. "There were no killings as has been claimed," the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.
Several eyewitnesses told global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) that a group of 500 civilians and soldiers from the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied groups tried to flee on October 26, but most were killed or captured by the RSF and its allies.
https://www.reuters.com/world/afric...udanese-city-falls-paramilitaries-2025-10-31/
One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist in the nearby town of Tawila in the country's western Darfur region.
"He told them, 'Don't kill him,'" Ismail said. "Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else."
He said he had been bringing food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday - and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.
Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.
Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized al-Fashir - the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.
The U.N. human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.
The RSF, whose victory in al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan's two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses - saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.
A high-level RSF commander called the accounts "media exaggeration" by the army and its allied fighters "to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir."
The RSF's leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said, adding that the RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organisations to assist those who remained.
He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians had been taken away for interrogation. "There were no killings as has been claimed," the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.
Several eyewitnesses told global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) that a group of 500 civilians and soldiers from the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied groups tried to flee on October 26, but most were killed or captured by the RSF and its allies.
https://www.reuters.com/world/afric...udanese-city-falls-paramilitaries-2025-10-31/
