The China Mail - MSF warns of missing civilians in Sudan's El-Fasher

Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the Sudanese army since 2023, last month seized control of the strategic city in the Darfur region, following an 18-month siege.

Reports have emerged of executions, sexual violence and abductions in an around El-Fasher, with new satellite imagery analysed by Yale researchers suggesting mass graves being dug in the city.

"Our main concern is that though we have seen approximately 5,000 people coming out of El-Fasher towards Tawila, we don't know where the other hundreds of thousands have gone," newly elected MSF president Javid Abdelmoneim said.

"That is worrying given the ethnic nature of targeting of violence towards civilians by the RSF," he told reporters in Johannesburg.

The town of Tawila is about 70 kilometres (40 miles) to the west of El-Fasher and communications remain largely cut off in the region.

Survivors had recounted to MSF "harrowing" stories of "ethnically targeted torture, rape and summary executions," Abdelmoneim, a Sudanese-Iranian national, said.

Six out 10 adults screened had been starved, he said.

"I've never seen anything so shocking in all my 15 years of my work," he added. The UK-born doctor joined MSF in 2009 and has done missions in Iraq, Haiti, Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, and Sierra Leone during the West Africa Ebola epidemic.

The fall of El-Fasher gave paramilitaries control over all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan would effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis.

Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) on Thursday said it found evidence consistent with "body disposal activities".

The report identified "at least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves at a mosque and the former Children's Hospital".

The Sudan war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis, with both sides accused of widespread atrocities.

F.Jackson--ThChM