Survivors describe attack on Sudan camp

Sitting in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) 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 - one of six survivors who said of arson and executions in the raid.

Najlaa Ahmed managed to get her children to safety in Tawila - a town 60 km from Zamzam controlled by a neutral rebel group - the third time, she said, she had been forced to flee the RSF in a matter of months.

She said she watched seven people die of hunger and thirst, and others succumb to their injuries on her latest journey.

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 15 km north of Zamzam, 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. After this people fled, running in different directions. There were fires. They had soldiers burning buildings to create more terror.”

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 verified by Reuters showed soldiers yelling at a group of older men and young men outside a mosque, interrogating them about a supposed military base.

Other videos verified by Reuters 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.

Ahmed Mohamed, who arrived in Tawila this week, said he was robbed of all his possessions by soldiers on the road, and was now sleeping on the bare ground.

Reuters