Sudan: Desperate conditions and accounts of mass violence in North Darfur
One month after the Rapid Support Forces seized the city of El Fasher, survivors describe mass killings, torture, and kidnappings for ransom while many people remain missing or unable to flee.
After witnessing the deaths of his wife and daughter in the middle of bombings in El Fasher, AM* set out on a grueling journey toward Tawila, 60 kilometres away, on Oct. 27. He and his remaining family members spent four agonizing days walking on foot, in which they endured torture, beatings and robbery. Along the way, in the village of Garni, he had to bury his niece, a young girl who had died of exhaustion and hunger.
“She couldn’t bear walking such long distances,” says AM “The journey has been very tough and we are in great distress.”
Yet he kept moving forward to Tawila – taking his surviving children, his brother and even orphans he met along the way. When they finally reached the town, they found nothing but despair: there was not enough water, food, shelter or latrines.
“We started receiving an influx of people from El Fasher a week before the city was taken over. At first, there were mostly women and children who were exhausted, malnourished, dehydrated and brought by trucks.”
Mouna Hanebali, medical team leader at Tawila hospital
Tragically, AM is not alone in his experience. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) patients in Tawila describe mass killings, torture and kidnappings for ransom in El Fasher and along escape routes. Their stories confirm fears for people still missing.
Almost one month after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of El Fasher on Oct. 26, the last Darfur city held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Joint Forces, the situation in North Darfur remains critical. Based on Norwegian Refugee Council registration, around 10,000 people who survived mass atrocities like AM have fled to Tawila, where they are facing dire conditions in overcrowded camps. This figure remains relatively low compared to the estimated 260,000 people who, according to the UN, were still in El Fasher as of late August.
“We started receiving an influx of people from El Fasher a week before the city was taken over,” says Mouna Hanebali, MSF physician and medical team leader at Tawila Hospital. “At first, there were mostly women and children who were exhausted, malnourished, dehydrated and brought by trucks. After the fall of El Fasher, we also received men, most of whom had traumatic injuries, gunshot wounds and infected wounds, who came on foot.”
“Now, fewer and fewer people are coming via this road,” says Hanebali. “Some are coming from Korma instead, but the numbers remain small.”
While neither MSF nor any other international humanitarian organization has been able to reach El Fasher, our teams continue to try to identify survivors in need of medical assistance in various locations.
In North Darfur, we visited Um Jalbak, Shangil Tobay, Dar el Salam and Korma: we did not observe any mass arrivals, with only a few hundred people having left El Fasher in the last three weeks. We referred several people in critical condition to the hospital in Tawila. We are also conducting medical activities in Umbaru, Mazbet, Karnoy and Tina, localities on the route to Chad: no major influx there either. The situation is similar in Belliseraf, in South Darfur and Golo and Fanga, in Central Darfur, where our teams are assessing the needs and getting ready to distribute kits to the recent arrivals.
Although the International Organization for Migration estimated that more than 100,000 individuals had been displaced from El Fasher by Nov. 17, its reports also indicated that the vast majority remained within the El Fasher locality, primarily in rural villages to the west and north of the city.
Our observations, survivor testimonies and external information, such as satellite analysis conducted by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, point to a catastrophic scenario in which a large part of the civilians who were still alive in El Fasher before Oct. 26 were killed or died, or are detained, trapped and unable to receive vital assistance and move to a safer place.
Inadequate conditions in the camps across Tawila
Survivors who reach Tawila arrive at camps where existing services have already been overwhelmed by more than 650,000 internally displaced people from El Fasher in the last two years. This includes almost 380,000 new arrivals since April 2025 when the RSF attacked Zamzam camp.
“The living conditions in the camps across Tawila are extremely precarious,” says Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator in Darfur. “Devastated people are arriving at a place where there are not enough resources to meet their basic needs: they sleep under makeshift tents made of wood and sheets and food assistance provides only one meal per day for prioritized people.”
During an MSF assessment in Daba Naira and Tawila Umda camps, we found that there is an average of only 1.5 litres of water per person per day, which is far below the humanitarian standard threshold of 15 litres minimum.
“Everything we owned was stolen. The only thing I have left is this garment, which my children and I spread out on the ground to sleep on. I need clothes for my children, as they only have one pair of shoes, which is passed around for whoever needs to go to the bathroom. We are still missing many basic items.”
IO, an internally displaced person
IO* sits with her two children under one of the makeshift tarpaulin tents. They walked for three days until they reached Daba Naira, currently the biggest displacement camp in Tawila, with around 210,000 people. Her husband was struck by shelling in El Fasher when he went out to search for food. When she finally decided to flee with her two children on Oct. 25, they found his lifeless body on the street.
“Everything we owned was stolen,” says IO. “The only thing I have left is this garment, which my children and I spread out on the ground to sleep on. I need clothes for my children, as they only have one pair of shoes, which is passed around for whoever needs to go to the bathroom. We are still missing many basic items.”
According to the Sudanese American Physicians Association, around 74 per cent of Tawila’s displaced people live in informal gathering sites without adequate infrastructure and less than 10 per cent of households have reliable access to water or latrines. Throughout the Daba Naira camp, it is common to see open-air defecation, which can increase the risk of diseases such as cholera spreading. With the cold season approaching, displaced families are also worried about not having warm clothes and blankets.
“The people who are missing are still behind us and they won’t let them go”
IA* used to work as a watchman at a university in El Fasher. A day before the fall of the city, he was shot in the leg in the middle of a shooting and his tibia shattered in several places.
“The wound was bleeding and my brother made a tourniquet,” says IA. “Then he lifted me onto a donkey cart and brought me here. Can you imagine the pain? It was very hard.”
He spent three days on the trails. Despite their efforts, part of his leg had to be amputated when they finally reached Tawila hospital.
The testimonies of our patients who managed to flee like IA are devastating. All the survivors report fleeing during shelling and shootings, walking on foot for three to five days, often hiding during the day and moving at night to avoid detentions and attacks. They describe extreme violence, including mass killings and ethnically motivated atrocities.
On their journey, they saw many dead bodies and experienced torture, kidnappings for ransom, sexual violence, humiliation and had everything they owned stolen. Patients also mention mass arrests where men, mainly the young, were detained and separated from women and children in places like Garni, northwest of El Fasher.
“The people who survived the extreme violence remain in grave danger in and around El Fasher. Humanitarian access is blocked, people still alive are trapped, while direct information on the current situation inside and around the city is very limited.”
Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator in Darfur
FI* was detained for ten days, beaten and forced to endure unspeakable violence, including a rope tied around his neck. His captors demanded 10 million Sudanese pounds (about $5,600 Canadian) for his release.
“They got drunk and took us to the desert,” says FI. “They made us lie down in bushes, beat us and humiliated us terribly. They said they would kill us and they shot at us with a lot of live ammunition.”
In the end, his captors let him go after he paid 500,000 Sudanese pounds ($280 Canadian) because his wounds were badly infected.
According to patients we treat, many civilians are still detained in Garni and other towns around El Fasher for ransoms or prevented by the RSF and its allies from reaching safer areas like Tawila. “The people who are missing are still behind us, and they won’t let them go,” says FI.
“The people who survived the extreme violence remain in grave danger in and around El Fasher,” says Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator in Darfur. “Humanitarian access is blocked, people still alive are trapped, while direct information on the current situation inside and around the city is very limited.”
MSF’s response
MSF has increased our capacity in Tawila to respond to people’s growing needs. Our teams have built a health post at the entrance to Tawila Umda, one of the main arrival points for displaced people from El Fasher. There, they provide injury dressings and outpatient services, stabilize critical cases and arrange referrals with ambulances to the hospital for patients in the most severe condition. MSF has also identified an urgent need for mental health care, which will be a priority for our teams in the coming weeks.
At Tawila hospital, where we have set up an emergency area for arrivals from El Fasher since mid-August, we have expanded bed capacity for wounded and trauma patients from 24 to over 100 beds.
“We are performing an increasing number of surgeries: around 20 cases per day compared to 7 cases per day last month,” says Hanebali.
Our teams also continue to treat people arriving with alarming levels of malnutrition, evidence of the siege they endured in El Fasher. Recently, our teams began distributing water and installing latrines in Daba Naira camp.
MSF teams are also beginning an intervention to restore and increase healthcare access in Tine and Kornoi, North Darfur, near the border with Chad, as well as in Chad.
MSF calls on the RSF and its allies to urgently provide a safe and free passage for sick and injured people, as well as civilians seeking to reach safer places and to facilitate humanitarian access to Garni, El Fasher, and other places where there are survivors. We also call donors and humanitarian actors to increase their response to the growing health, protection, food, water and sanitation needs in Tawila.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.
