Earlier, a militia slaughtered the 460 people in a maternity hospital after seizing the city of el-Fasher at the edge of the Sahara Desert. The city “was captured by the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege marked by starvation and heavy bombardment.” The United Nations says it is “appalled and deeply shocked” by the RSF’s killing of hundreds of patients and their companions at the hospital.
Later, the RSF militia agreed to a ceasefire in its war with Sudan’s military. But the military hasn’t agreed to the ceasefire, and the fighting — and killing of civilians — have continued. So many thousand civilians were killed in the city of el-Fasher that pools of blood were visible from outer space.
“Malnourished and dehydrated people are crawling through the desert on their elbows and knees in constant terror of being caught by fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF),” reports NBC:
The journey from the RSF-controlled city of el-Fasher to the town of Tawila is just 30 miles, but nonetheless perilous as gunmen rove around, robbing people, taking them hostage and in some cases slaughtering them by the dozen, the organizations say.
Under international pressure, the RSF said Thursday that it was willing to engage in a U.S.-brokered humanitarian ceasefire. But the Sudanese military, which it has been fighting since April 2023, has yet to agree to a truce, and the State Department has said it is still working to get both parties to agree to a pause in the fighting amid warnings from the humanitarian organizations that the northeast African nation is returning to its genocidal past.
While talks are ongoing, eyewitness accounts, videos shared to social media and an analysis of satellite imagery that has shown pools of blood visible from space have revealed the scale of the killing in the region and the increasing use of drone strikes by both sides as they seek to gain an advantage on the battlefield.
Hanaa Abdullah Musa said RSF fighters detained her brother at one of several checkpoints she came across as she made her way to Tawila, which is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
“They drove him to some place,” she told NBC News in a voice note on Thursday. “Later in the evening, they told us they would bring him back, but they never did.”
Earlier, the RSF militia deliberately shelled a hospital and maternity ward, killing many there.
Last month, “Dozens of people were killed in the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher” when the RSF “fired a missile into a mosque during morning prayers,” reported the New York Times.
Thousands of people died of starvation in el-Fasher after it was besieged by the RSF.
In January, the U.S. State Department formally declared that the Rapid Support Forces are committing genocide in Sudan, more than a year after the genocide began. “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” the State Department said. As noted earlier, the RSF killed thousands of Masalit people and “looted and burned the palace of the sultan of the Masalit tribe.” “The Masalit are a local African tribe.” Moreover, the “RSF has targeted Masalit refugee camps, killed people attempting to escape to neighboring Chad, kidnapped and raped women and systematically killed influential figures in the community, such as tribal leaders.”
The RSF occupied most of Sudan’s capital Khartoum for over a year, and stole most of Khartoum’s copper wiring and destroyed its energy infrastructure. Because utilities can’t provide power, many residents are using solar panels to power their light bulbs and TVs.
