People displaced following the RSF attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp in the town of Tawila, North Darfur. — Reuters
SITTING in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces men poured into Darfur’s Zamzam displacement camp, looting and burning homes as shells rained down and drones flew overhead.
She lost track of most of her family as she fled.
“I don’t know what’s become of them, my mother, father, siblings, my grandmother, I came here with strangers,” she said.
Najlaa was one of six survivors who told Reuters of arson and executions in the raid.
Two years into its conflict with Sudan’s army, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group seized the massive camp in North Darfur last month in an attack that the United Nations says left at least 300 people dead and forced 400,000 to flee.
The RSF did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied accusations of atrocities.
It said the camp was being used as a base by forces loyal to the army.
Humanitarian groups have denounced the raid as a targeted attack on civilians already facing famine.
Najlaa managed to get her children to safety in Tawila, a town 60km from Zamzam controlled by a neutral rebel group. She said it was the third time she had been forced to flee the RSF in a matter of months.
Najlaa said she watched seven people die of hunger and thirst, and others succumb to their injuries on her latest journey.
The RSF has posted videos of its second-in-command, Abdelrahim Dagalo, promising to provide displaced people with food and shelter in the camp where famine was determined in August.
More than 280,000 people have sought refuge in Tawila, according to the General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees advocacy group, on top of the half a million that have arrived since the war broke out in April 2023.
Speaking from al-Fashir – the capital of North Darfur 15km north of Zamzam which the RSF is trying to take from the army – one man who asked not to be named said he had found the bodies of 24 people killed in an attack on a religious school, some of them lined up.
“They started entering people’s houses, looting... They killed some people. Others fled, running in different directions. There were fires. They had soldiers burning buildings.”
Another man, an elder in the camp, said the RSF had killed 14 people at close range in a mosque near his home.
“People who are scared always go to the mosque to seek refuge, but they went into every mosque and shot them,” he said.
One video showed soldiers yelling at a group of men – old and young – outside a mosque, interrogating them about a supposed military base.
Other videos showed RSF soldiers shooting an unarmed man as others lay on the ground. One showed armed men celebrating as they stood around a group of dead bodies.
The RSF has said such videos are fake.
The capture of Zamzam comes as the RSF tries to consolidate its control of the Darfur region.
Victory in al-Fashir would boost the RSF’s efforts to set up a parallel government to the one controlled by the army which has been on the upswing lately, retaking control of the capital Khartoum.
The war between the Sudanese army – which has also been accused of atrocities, charges it denies – and the RSF broke out in April 2023 over plans to integrate the two forces.
The RSF’s roots lie in Darfur’s Janjaweed militias, whose attacks in the early 2000s led to the creation of Zamzam and other displacement camps across Darfur.
Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health said in a report that more than 1.7sq km of the camp, including the main market, had been burned.
The researchers also saw checkpoints around the camp, and witnesses said some people were being prevented from leaving.
In Tawila, medical aid agency MSF received 154 injured people, the youngest of them seven months old, almost all with gunshot wounds, said emergency field coordinator Marion Ramstein.
Supplies of food, water and shelter were already low before the new arrivals.
“The lucky ones are the ones who find a tree to sit under,” Ramstein said.
Ahmed Mohamed said he was robbed of all his possessions by soldiers on the road before he arrived in Tawila. He now sleeps on the bare ground.
“We are in need of everything a human being would need,” he said. — Reuters
