Fighters riding camels rounded up hundreds of men near the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir at the weekend and took them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.
One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist in the nearby town of Tawila in the country’s western Darfur region.
“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,’” Ismail said. “Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”
He said he had been taking food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday – and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.
Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing Al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.
Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized Al-Fashir – the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.
The UN human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.
The RSF, whose victory in Al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.
It comes as it was confirmed that the UK will send £5m of aid to Sudan after the fall of a major city brought scenes of “horrifying” atrocities, the foreign secretary has said.
Speaking at a conference in Bahrain on Saturday, Yvette Cooper condemned “atrocities, mass executions, starvation and the devastating use of rape as a weapon of war” in Darfur, describing reports from the region as “truly horrifying”.
Announcing extra humanitarian support, she also warned that women and children were “bearing the brunt of the largest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century”.
The £5m announced by Ms Cooper on Saturday will pay for support such as emergency food supplies and medical care.
Some £2m will be focused on supporting survivors of sexual violence.
Reuters has verified at least three videos posted on social media showing men in RSF uniforms shooting unarmed captives and a dozen more showing clusters of bodies after apparent shootings.
