The UN's human rights organization says it has received "multiple, alarming reports" that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions, in el-Fasher and other regions in Dafur.

OCHR said the unarmed men and civilians trying to flee were among those killed, with "indications of ethnic motivations for the executions," in a statement released on Monday.

Germany is among those calling for an immediate end to the violence in el-Fasher, which was seized by the RSF on Sunday after some 18 months of siege.

"As RSF fighters control large parts of El Fasher, Sudan, we urge those responsible to stop all violence against civilians trapped in the city," the German Foreign Office said late Monday on X.

"Killings, rape & torture must end now."

On Monday, Sudanese government troops also confirmed their withdrawal from el Fasher in southwestern Sudan.

"We have agreed to withdraw the army from el-Fasher to a safer location," Sudan's de facto ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a televised speech after the RSF announced victory on Sunday.

Burhan also vowed to fight "until this land is purified."

 

The capture of el-Fasher, which gives the RSF control over all five state capitals in Darfur, is being seen as a potential turning point in Sudan's civil war, which has been ongoing since April 2023.What do we know about the situation in el-Fasher?

According to UN estimates, some 300,000 people are living in dire conditions in el-Fasher, which has been cut off for more than a year amid an RSF siege.

Guterres says foreign actors must stop fueling conflict

Earlier on Monday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the seizure of el-Fasher "represents a terrible escalation in the conflict."

Speaking at  a press conference in Malaysia, he said that "the level of suffering that we are witnessing in Sudan is unbearable."

Guterres went on to say that the involvement of outside forces had made the conflict worse.

 "It's high time for the international community to tell clearly, to all countries that are interfering in this war, and that are providing weapons to the parties to the war, to stop doing that," he said.

"It is clear that ... it is not only a Sudanese problem, with the army and Rapid Support Forces fighting each other," he added. "We have more and more an external interference, that undermines the possibility to a ceasefire and to a political solution."

Massive humanitarian crisis in Sudan

The UN has described the civil war in Sudan as creating the world's biggest humanitarian crisis, with more than 12 million people displaced and 24.6 million suffering from acute hunger.  

The civil war has its roots in a power dispute between the country's de facto ruler, Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, which erupted into violence in April 2023. 

Both sides have been accused of committing serious human rights violations.

Darfur already suffered a major humanitarian crisis in the early 2000s, when dictator Omar al-Bashir responded to a rebellion by employing the Janjaweed militias to attack non-Arab communities in the region.

Some of the RSF's key leaders were members of the Janjaweed, who were notorious for attacking villages at dawn mounted on camels and massacring their residents.

Edited by: Kieran Burke and John Silk