The terrifying escape from el-Fasher in Darfur

Abdulqadir Abdullah Ali suffered serious nerve damage to his leg during the long siege of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher because he could not get medicine for his diabetes.

The 62-year-old walks with a heavy limp, but he was so panicked when fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally captured the city in the western Darfur region, he felt no pain as he ran.

“The morning the RSF came there were bullets, many bullets, and explosives going off,” he says.

“People were out of control [with fear], they ran out of their houses, and everyone ran in different directions, the father, the son, the daughter – running.”

The fall of el-Fasher after an 18-month siege is a particularly brutal chapter in Sudan’s civil war.

The BBC has travelled to a tent camp in northern Sudan set up in army-controlled territory to hear first-hand the stories of those who escaped. The team was monitored by the authorities throughout the visit.

The RSF has been fighting the regular army since April 2023 when a power struggle between them erupted into war.

Taking over el-Fasher was a major victory for the paramilitary group, pushing the army out of its last foothold in Darfur.

But evidence of mass atrocities has drawn international condemnation and focused greater American attention on trying to end the conflict.

Warning: This report contains details that some readers may find distressing.

We found Mr Ali wandering around the camp, located in the desert about 770km (480 miles) north-east of el-Fasher, near the town of al-Dabbah.

He was trying to register his family for a tent.

“They [RSF fighters] were shooting at the people – the elderly, the civilians, with live ammunition, they would empty their guns on them,” he told us.

“Some of the RSF came with their cars. If they saw someone was still breathing, they drove over them.”

Mr Ali said he ran when he could, crawling along the ground or hiding when the threat got too close. He managed to get to the village of Gurni, a few kilometres from el-Fasher.

Gurni was the first stop for many who fled the city, including Mohammed Abbaker Adam, a local official in the nearby Zamzam camp for displaced people.

Mr Adam retreated to el-Fasher when Zamzam was overrun by the RSF in April, and left the day before they captured the city in October.

He grew a white beard to make himself look older, hoping that it would lead to more lenient treatment.

“The road here was full of death,” he said.

“They shot some people directly in front of us and then carried them and threw them far away. And on the road, we saw dead bodies out in the open, unburied. Some had lain there for two or three days.”

“So many people are scattered around,” he added. “We don’t know where they are.”

Some of those who did not take the long trek to al-Dabbah made it to a humanitarian hub in Tawila, some 70km from el-Fasher.

Others crossed into Chad. But the UN says less than half of the 260,000 people estimated to have been in the city before it fell have not been accounted for.

Aid agencies believe many people did not get very far – unable to escape because of danger, or detention, or the cost of buying their way out.

Mr Adam said the fighters also raped women, corroborating widespread accounts of sexual violence.

“They would take a woman behind a tree, or take her far from us, out of sight, so you wouldn’t see with your own eyes,” he said.

“But you would hear her shout: ‘Help me, help me.’ And she would come and say, ‘They raped me.'”

There are mostly women in the camp, and many do not want to be identified to protect those left behind.

One 19-year-old woman told us that RSF fighters at a checkpoint took a girl from the group she was travelling with, and they had to leave her behind.

“I was scared,” she said. “When they took her out of the car at the checkpoint, I was afraid that at every checkpoint they would take a girl. But they just took her, and that was it until we got here.”

She had travelled here with her younger sister and brother. Her father, a soldier, had been killed in battle. Her mother was not in el-Fasher when it fell.

So the three siblings escaped the city on foot with their grandmother, but she died before they reached Gurni, leaving them to carry on alone.

“We hadn’t taken enough water because we didn’t know the distance was so far,” said the young woman.

“We walked and walked and my grandmother passed out. I thought it might be lack of food or water.

“I checked her pulse, but she didn’t wake up, so I found a doctor in a nearby village. He came and said, ‘Your grandmother has given you her soul.’ I was trying to keep myself together because of my sister and brother, but I didn’t know how I would tell my mother.”

They were all particularly worried about their 15-year-old brother because the RSF suspected that fleeing men had fought with the army.

The boy described his ordeal at one checkpoint when all the young men were taken out of the vehicles.

“The RSF interrogated us for hours in the sun,” he explained. “They said we were soldiers – some of the older ones probably were.

“The RSF fighters stood over us and circled around us, whipping us and threatening us with their guns. I lost hope and told them, ‘Whatever you want to do to me, do it.'”

In the end they let him go – after his 13-year-old sister told them her father was dead, and he was her only brother. They were reunited with their mother in the camp at al-Dabbah.

Many people describe the RSF separating the old men and women from the fighting-age men.

That happened to Abdullah Adam Mohamed in Gurni, tearing him away from his three little girls – aged two, four and six. The perfume seller had been looking after them since his wife was killed in shelling four months ago.

“I gave my daughters to the women [travelling with us],” he told the BBC. “Then the RSF brought big vehicles, and we [the men] were scared they were going to forcibly recruit us. So some of us ran and escaped into the neighbourhood.

“All night, I was thinking, how am I going to find my children again? I’ve lost so many people already – I was afraid I’d lose them too.”

Mr Mohamed escaped, but others did not. Mr Ali said he saw from a distance the RSF open fire on a group of men.

“They killed the men, they didn’t kill the women, but the men were all shot,” he told the BBC. “There were a lot dead and we ran away.”

Mr Ali and Mr Adam left Gurni on donkeys, travelling by night to the next village, Tur’rah.

Mr Mohamed also made it to Tur’rah, where he was reunited with his girls. From there they took vehicles for the long drive to al-Dabbah.

Many arrived at the camp empty handed. They had left the city carrying almost nothing and had to pay to get through checkpoints.

“The RSF fighters stripped us of everything we had: money, phones, even our nice clothes,” Mr Adam said. “At each stop they would make you call your relatives to transfer money to your mobile phone account before they let you move on to the next checkpoint.”

The RSF told the BBC it rejected accusations of systematic abuses against civilians.

“The specific allegations raised – looting, killings, sexual violence, or mistreatment of civilians – do not reflect our directives,” said Dr Ibrahim Mukhayer, an adviser to the leader of RSF, Gen Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

“Any RSF member proven responsible for wrongdoing will be held fully accountable.”

He said the group believed the allegations of widespread atrocities were part of a politically motivated media campaign against them by what he called Islamist elements within Sudan’s military-led administration.

The RSF has published videos to try and reshape the narrative, showing its officers greeting people fleeing el-Fasher, trucks bringing in humanitarian aid, and medical centres being re-opened.

Mr Mohamed told the BBC that RSF foot soldiers were more brutal when their officers were not present, while Mr Adam dismissed what he described as attempts by the paramilitary group to improve its image.

“They have this strategy,” he said. “They will gather 10 or 15 people, give us water and film us like they’re treating us nicely.

“Once the cameras are gone, they will start beating us, treating us very badly and take everything we have.”

Earlier this year the US determined that the RSF had committed genocide in Darfur.

But the Sudanese armed forces and its allied militias have also been accused of atrocities, including targeting civilians suspected of supporting the RSF, and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

This particularly brutal chapter in Sudan’s devastating war has drawn US President Donald Trump’s attention. He has promised to get more directly involved in ongoing US efforts to broker a ceasefire.

For those who escaped el-Fasher, that seems a distant prospect. They have been broken again and again by this conflict and have no idea what will come next.

But they are resilient. Mr Ali had not heard about Trump’s sudden interest, he had been chasing officials to get permission to stay in the camp in a tent where, he says, “we can live and rest”.