RSF chief promises investigation as anger mounts over el-Fasher killings

The commander of the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces announced the opening of an investigation into what he described as violations committed by his soldiers during control of the city of El Fasher.

The announcement by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, came after reports of civilian deaths escalated after the Rapid Support Forces took control of the city in the Darfur region on Sunday.

The commander of the Rapid Support Forces spoke after international outrage over reports of mass killings in El Fasher, which his paramilitary fighters appeared to have documented in videos on social media.

A spokesman for the paramilitary group has since denied further accusations by medics that the RSF killed more than 400 people in a hospital in the city on Tuesday.

Verified by BBC He analyzed the footage Confirming that it shows Rapid Support soldiers executing a number of unarmed people in the city.

The UN Security Council is expected to hold a meeting on Sudan, which is entering its third year of civil war between the army and paramilitary fighters.

British Foreign Secretary Stephen Doty said the United Kingdom described the meeting as “the scale of suffering is unbelievable, often based on race, women and girls facing sexual and gender-based violence, and there is growing evidence of the execution and torture of defenseless civilians.”

He was responding to an urgent question posed to Parliament by Labor MP and former Development Minister Anneliese Dodds, who said that the attack on the hospital “must certainly be a turning point in this war and the international community’s focus on it.”

The RSF also denied widespread allegations that the killings in El Fasher were ethnically motivated and followed a pattern of Arab paramilitaries targeting non-Arab residents.

Hemedti expressed his regret for the disaster that befell the people of El Fasher, and admitted that there were violations by his forces, and they will be investigated by a committee that has now arrived in the city.

However, observers noted that similar promises had been made in the past – in response to accusations of a massacre in… El Geneina city in Darfur in 2023The alleged atrocities committed by the group during the group’s control of Central Gezira State – did not materialize.

The United Nations World Health Organization said it was horrified and deeply shocked After reports emerged that more than 460 civilians, including patients and their companions, were shot dead in the last partially functioning hospital in El Fasher.

Analysts from the Yale Human Research Laboratory say satellite images showing clusters of bodies on hospital grounds confirm these accounts.

But a spokesman for the Rapid Support Forces insisted that civilians had fled and hospitals were not functioning when the paramilitary group took over the city last weekend.

Mohamed Faisal, spokesman for the UK-based Sudan Doctors Network, said their teams on the ground confirmed the attack on the Saudi hospital in El Fasher as seen in social media footage.

“What we’ve seen is actually quite horrific,” he told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

“The RSF soldiers went into the wards and killed the hospitalized patients and also went into the outpatient clinics and killed people waiting to be examined in the clinics – a lot of people.”

Dr. Faisal said the three days were terrifying for his colleagues, some of whom managed to escape and made the perilous journey to the town of Tawila, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of El Fasher.

Others remain in El Fasher, where an estimated 250,000 people, many from non-Arab communities, were trapped during the RSF’s 18-month siege of the city.

According to statistics collected by the Sudan Doctors Network, the death toll in the hospital was estimated at 450 people.

“200 inpatients were killed, then there were 250 among outpatients and people who were visiting the hospital,” Dr. Faisal said.

He added that throughout the 550 days of siege, the RSF often targeted the hospital, which was mainly dealing with acute malnutrition cases.

He added that “drone air strikes and artillery shelling” on the facility have increased in the past two months.

About 5,000 people have arrived in Tawila from El Fasher in recent days, most of them traumatized and in extremely vulnerable condition, often suffering abuse, violence and extortion on the way, according to Caroline Bouffard of the international aid group Solidarity.

“We have had many confirmations of rape and gender-based violence,” she told BBC Newsday, adding that they had also confirmed recent accounts of summary executions.

Activists also intensified their demands for international pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which is widely accused of providing military support to the Rapid Support Forces.

The UAE denies this, despite the evidence contained in UN reports.

El Fasher was the last army stronghold in the western Darfur region, and the Rapid Support Forces captured it after a long siege marked by famine and heavy bombing.

The capture of El Fasher reinforces the country’s geographic division, with the RSF now controlling western Sudan and much of neighboring Kordofan to the south, and the army controlling the capital, Khartoum, and the central and eastern regions along the Red Sea.

The warring rivals were allies, coming to power together in a 2021 coup, but have fallen out over an internationally-backed plan to move toward civilian rule.

The African Union Peace and Security Council called for the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow life-saving aid to be delivered to those in El Fasher, and for an immediate investigation to hold those responsible for the atrocities accountable.

Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Chairman of the African Union Commission on Sudan, told the BBC that “investigations in and of themselves will not provide assistance to those living in terrible conditions in Sudan, which by the way is the worst humanitarian situation in the world.”

He added that the people of El Fasher and its environs lived for more than 500 days in “hell on earth.”

“We have repeatedly said that there can be no military solution to the Sudanese crisis, which is why we have engaged in working with civil and political groups to convene an inclusive dialogue for all Sudanese.

“We now need to work with Sudanese to address the root causes of their problem, which they themselves acknowledge has to do with exclusion,” Chambas said. “The failure to manage diversity in Sudan has been at the heart of the recurring crisis the country has witnessed since its independence in 1956.”