UN, Red Cross decry atrocities in Sudan's El-Fasher

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - The UN and Red Cross voiced alarm Friday at alarming details of executions, gang rapes and abductions as Sudan's western city of El-Fasher fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

At war with the regular army since April 2023, the RSF seized El-Fasher on Sunday, dislodging the army's last stronghold in Darfur after an 18-month siege marked by bombardment and starvation.

El-Fasher has been cut off from all communications since its fall, but the UN rights office said it had heard of atrocities from "terrified" people who reached the nearby town of Tawila.

"We have received horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement," said spokesman Seif Magango.

The rights office had also received "shocking" videos and other images "depicting serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross violations of human rights law", he told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Nairobi.

The RSF has said that several fighters accused ofabuses during the capture of El-Fasher had been arrested. One detained fighter, known as Abu Lulu, had appeared in multiple social media videos committing summary executions.

"We estimate the death toll of civilians and those placed hors de combat during the RSF attack on the city and its exit routes, as well as in the days after the takeover, could amount to hundreds," Magango said.

'HORRIFIC ATTACKS'

The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, said it had verified that at least 460 patients and others were killed on Tuesday in attacks on the Saudi Maternity Hospital -- the last partially functioning hospital in El-Fasher.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told journalists said there were "several waves" of attacks on the hospital.

In the first, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist were abducted and "some killings took place", he said.

"Some groups came back, and came back a third time, and then basically... finished off what was still standing, including other people sheltering in hospital,"he said.

Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, decried that facilities "once dedicated to saving lives have become scenes of death and destruction".

"No patient should be killed in a hospital, and no civilian shot while trying to flee their home," she said in a statement, calling the "appalling abuses" in Sudan "indefensible".

WHO head of humanitarian operations Teresa Zakaria told reporters that "following the capture of El-Fasher, there was no longer any humanitarian health presence in the city".

GANG RAPES, SUMMARY EXECUTIONS

Magango also decried "alarming reports of sexual violence" in El-Fasher, saying "at least 25 women were gang-raped when RSF forces entered a shelter for displaced people".

"Witnesses confirm RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint," he said.

Reports were also emerging of "serious violations"in the context of RSF's capture of Bara in North Kordofan, he said, pointing to the alleged summary execution of five Red Crescent volunteers this week.

Magango called for "independent, prompt, transparent and thorough investigations" into all alleged breaches of international law and for perpetrators to be held accountable.

Spoljaric stressed the international responsibility to halt the "unthinkable horror" in Sudan.

"Lives in Sudan now depend on strong and decisive action to stop these atrocities. The world cannot stand by as civilians are stripped of safety and dignity."