'Hundreds' shot in Sudan as major city is taken by militia

Eyewitnesses report of young men being separated to be shot

- NAFISA ELTAHIR

Fighters riding camels rounded up hundreds of men near the Sudanese city of el-Fasher and took them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.

One of the captors recognised him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist in the nearby town of Tawila in the country's western Darfur region.

“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,” Ismail said. “Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”

He said he had been taking food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) yesterday – and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.

Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing el-Fasher had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.

Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary RSF if they seized el-Fasher – the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.

The UN human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.

The RSF, whose victory in el-Fasher marks a milestone in Sudan's two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.

It comes as it was confirmed that the UK will send £5m of aid to Sudan after the fall of a major city brought scenes of "horrifying" atrocities, the foreign secretary has said.