Khaberni - After 34-year-old Khalil miraculously escaped from the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, and reached the town of Tawila, which is about 68 kilometers away on foot, he made sure to recount his testimony to Amnesty International, revealing the atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces, which he insists will never be erased from his memory.
Khalil recounts that he had to pretend to be dead when militia members opened fire on 20 men with him after they were forced out of their cars, resulting in the death of at least 17 of them, and said: "They killed people as if they were flies."
But the violations committed by the Rapid Support elements are not limited to just killing unarmed civilians; they also include kidnapping and rape, according to a report by Amnesty International.
The report included testimonies from 28 survivors, who confirmed that the Rapid Support Forces committed crimes of murder, kidnapping, and rape in El Fasher, and the agency described these testimonies as war crimes, demanding accountability for their perpetrators.
Rapid Support Crimes
Other testimonies pointed to the kidnapping of hostages for ransom, where Badr - 26 years old - said that the Rapid Support Forces took him and five others to a village near El Fasher, while they were moving with the elderly in a small truck outside the city.
He added: "They stopped the truck and executed with machine guns all the elderly who were with us, then demanded a ransom of $8,000 from my family, and shot in the head a person whose family could not pay the ransom in front of the camera while his family watched him being executed."
As for the women in El Fasher, they suffered the most in this war. Kulthum - 29 years old - spoke about attacking women and girls in Zamzam camp after separating them from the men, saying: "I was raped several times, they separated the younger women after leading us to the camp and chose about 11 women, and everyone they chose for the check faced the same ordeal."
In turn, Agnes Callamard, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, spoke about the need to investigate everything that has occurred and is occurring in El Fasher, and to stop the brutal attack on civilians and all violations and transgressions.
For weeks now, the three states of Kordofan (North, West, and South) have witnessed violent clashes between the army and the Rapid Support, as part of a war that erupted in April 2023, causing the deaths of tens of thousands and displacing about 13 million people.
