MSF: Hundreds subject to torture and sexual violence following RSF takeover of El-Fasher

International NGO Doctors without Borders, or MSF, says hundreds of people have been victims of torture and sexual violence since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized the city of El-Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur State. 

The reports have come from people who have fled El-Fasher since the RSF take over last month. 

Michel Lacharite is head of Emergency Operations at Doctors Without Borders: "We received more than 500 victims of torture in the past months and only for the month of September, there's an account of more than 200 (cases of) sexual violence. Immediately after the takeover from the city of el-Fasher by the RSF during the weekend of the 26th, 27th of October, we received few peoples who came to Tawila, so few thousands. And today there are less than 10, 000 new people (who) arrived in Tawila.”

Those who managed to escape have reported indiscriminate and ethnically targeted killings, MSF says. An undetermined number of people are also believed to be detained in the village of Qarni, as they were attempting to flee.

"We know that some people are detained," Lacharite said on Friday. "We know that they are asked for money. Several accounts go in this direction. Today, to know exactly how many people are detained and how many hundreds or thousands, it's very difficult to appraise.”

El-Fasher was under siege for more than 500 days as the RSF battled Sudanese armed forces for control of the army’s last stronghold in the region. Immediately following its capture by the RSF, eyewitnesses described a rampage, with fighters carrying out hundreds of ethnically targeted killings. Soon afterwards, the RSF announced that it had arrested fighters suspected of being responsible.

Humanitarian crisis

Nearly 100,000 people are believed to have fled el-Fasher and nearby villages over the past two weeks, the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said on Friday. 

Fighting between the RSF and Sudanese armed forces erupted in 2023 and has created with the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. At least 40,000 people have been killed and some 12 million people displaced.

On Friday, Sudan’s de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, called on the RSF to lay down its weapons, saying there will be no truce until it does.

Last week, the RSF said it had agreed to a humanitarian truce put forward by US-led mediators.