Sudan’s Horror Unveiled: Videos Expose Executions and Mass Casualties in El Fasher

Amidst a scene of utter devastation – charred vehicles and countless bodies strewn across the ground – a lone survivor pleaded for his life.

However, his desperate pleas fell on deaf ears as Abu Lulu, a Sudanese paramilitary commander, dismissed them with chilling indifference.

Casually, Abu Lulu rose, disregarded the man’s final words, and executed him on the spot before continuing his walk.

This brutal execution, captured in a verified online video, is just one of many horrifying acts of violence reported from El Fasher since the city fell to paramilitary forces last weekend.

Eyewitness accounts and newly surfaced videos reveal mass graves, with trenches overflowing with bodies, and members of the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.) relentlessly pursuing fleeing civilians.

These disturbing images, alongside other reported atrocities, have sparked international condemnation and ignited grave concerns that Darfur is once again descending into the genocidal violence that plagued the region two decades prior.

Both the United Nations and Western governments swiftly condemned the R.S.F., the paramilitary group engaged in a devastating civil war with Sudan’s military for over two years, and which recently established its own rival government.

Calls intensified for punitive action against the United Arab Emirates, widely seen as the R.S.F.’s primary foreign supporter.

In Washington, congressional leaders urged a halt to arms sales to the Emirates until their support for the paramilitary ceases. Meanwhile, the British government faced scrutiny over reports of U.K.-manufactured military equipment being used by the R.S.F.

During an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting, Tom Fletcher, a senior humanitarian official, criticized member states for allowing the crisis to escalate so severely.

“I have found the limits of my ability and the U.N.’s authority,” he declared, imploring member states to ‘stop arming’ the R.S.F., implicitly referring to the Emirates, which has consistently denied involvement.

Facing increasing global outrage, R.S.F. leader Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan acknowledged some abuses by his troops in a social media speech, promising accountability for ‘any soldier or officer who committed a crime.’

The R.S.F. later announced the arrest of Abu Lulu, the commander filmed in the aforementioned execution.

However, the paramilitary vehemently denied a World Health Organization report stating that 460 people were killed at an El Fasher hospital on Tuesday.

While the W.H.O. did not attribute blame, these deaths occurred shortly after the R.S.F.’s capture of El Fasher, a city previously under an 18-month siege that had forced its desperate residents to consume animal feed.

The R.S.F. issued a statement ‘categorically denying’ the allegations, dismissing them as an ‘intensive propaganda campaign’ with ‘no connection to reality.’ On Thursday, they released a video supposedly showing the hospital, claiming it refuted the attack, though the footage showed few patients in the disheveled facility.

Mr. Fletcher’s comments underscore the dire reality of Sudan’s civil war, widely recognized as the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis, which has displaced 12 million people, caused widespread famine, and, by some estimates, claimed up to 400,000 lives over the last 18 months.

The crisis in El Fasher has dramatically worsened recently, with communications largely severed. However, a flood of videos, captured by R.S.F. fighters themselves and authenticated by The Times and the Centre for Information Resilience (a war crimes documentation nonprofit), offers a grim glimpse into the ongoing slaughter.

Another chilling video shows R.S.F. fighters navigating through a university room littered with bodies. A survivor, weakly raising an arm for help, is brutally shot dead by a fighter.

When R.S.F. forces seized the main army base on Sunday, approximately 260,000 civilians were trapped. While thousands have attempted to flee, aid organizations reported Thursday that only a small fraction have reached safety, with many survivors recounting journeys past roads strewn with dead or murdered bodies.

Mathilde Vu of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a relief provider in Tawila, confirmed that only 5,000 people had arrived in the town, located 40 miles west of El Fasher. Arrivals described encountering numerous bodies on their route and facing multiple stops. ‘Men are being separated and detained,’ she added.

The journey itself, the council reported, is fraught with dangers including ‘extortion, arbitrary arrests, detention, looting, sexual violence, and harassment.’

Survivors arriving at already overcrowded camps, housing hundreds of thousands, face new threats of disease outbreaks and severe shortages of food, water, and shelter.

“While safe from direct shelling and attacks, they are far from safe from the suffering,” Ms. Vu emphasized.