Satellite images have revealed the tragic aftermath of a 48-hour massacre in Sudan which saw over 2,000 civilians executed by paramilitary rebels.
The sand around the western city of El Fasher is now stained red with pools of blood so thick they can be seen from space.
The satellite images also captured piles of bodies, of mainly women and children, who were tragically targeted during the two-day ethnic purge after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Following more than 18 months of brutal siege warfare, the group gained control over every state capital in the cast Darfur region.
Allies of the army, the Joint Forces, said on Tuesday that the RSF ‘committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly’.
The total death toll could not immediately be confirmed, but the shocking satellite images taken after the fall of El Fasher showed evidence of the mass killings.
Body-sized objects were seen in the satellite images clustered around vehicles and nearby an RSF sand berm built around the city. There have been reports of civilians being gunned down as they attempted to break out and flee the bloodshed.
Analysis by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which has been tracking the siege using open source images and satellite imagery, found clusters of objects ‘consistent with the size of human bodies’ and ‘reddish ground discolouration’ thought to be either blood or disturbed soil.
Satellite images have revealed the tragic aftermath of a 48-hour massacre in Sudan which saw over 2,000 civilians executed by paramilitary rebels
Bodies and blood: The sand around the western city of El Fasher is now stained red with pools of blood so thick they can be seen from space
Pool of blood: The total death toll could not immediately be confirmed, but the shocking satellite images taken after the fall of El Fasher showed evidence of the mass killing
Bodies and blood: The satellite images captured piles of bodies, of mainly women and children, who were tragically targeted during the two-day ethnic purge after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces
A video released by local activists and authenticated by AFP on Tuesday showed a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range.
Another video purportedly showed a child soldier murdering a grown man in cold blood, while one other clip showed RSF fighters executing civilians just moments after pretending to release them.
A report published on Monday said the actions of the RSF ‘may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide’.
Local groups and international NGOs had warned that El-Fasher’s fall could trigger mass atrocities, fears that Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab said were coming true.
The monitor, which relies on open source intelligence and satellite imagery, said the city ‘appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution’.
This included what appeared to be ‘door-to-door clearance operations’ in the city.
Tens of thousands of people have now fled El Fasher since it fell, with many of them now heading westwards to Tawila.
A video clip seemingly showing the panicked flight captures scores running from the city, clutching on to the little belongings they have left as RSF fighters hurl racial insults at them and beat them.
In another scene, a number of militants dressed in RSF’s recognised uniform and turban are seen crammed into a truck, chasing unarmed civilian as they run for their lives.
Gunfire can be heard ringing out out as one fighter shouts ‘kill the Nuba’, a reference to Sudan’s black African tribes.
On Monday, UN rights chief Volker Turk spoke of a growing risk of ‘ethnically motivated violations and atrocities’ in El Fasher.
His office said it was ‘receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions’.
Bodies and blood: Body-sized objects were seen in the satellite images clustered around vehicles and nearby an RSF sand berm built around the city
Pool of blood: There have been reports of civilians being gunned down as they attempted to break out and flee the bloodshed
Vehicle roadblock: A report published on Monday said the actions of the RSF ‘may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide’
Pro-democracy activists, meanwhile, said El-Fasher residents had endured ‘the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing’ since the RSF claimed control.
The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina.
The northeast African nation was plunged into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions about the future of the country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the head of the paramilitary rebel group erupted.
Fighting exploded in the capital Khartoum but rapidly spread, where it is now estimated that at least 150,000 people have been killed, including many civilians.
The civil war has forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine swept parts of the country.
An investigation by Amnesty International suggests that RSF rebels have waged a calculated campaign of sexual violence against defenceless civilians, using rape, murder and torture to terrorise, demoralise and subjugate the population living in areas they seized.
The army, which has been fighting the RSF for two-and-a-half years, has also been accused of war crimes.
More than a year and a half of siege warfare made El-Fasher one of the grimmest places in a war that the UN has labelled among the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Displacement camps outside the city were officially declared to be in famine, while inside it, people turned to animal fodder for food.
The UN warned before the city’s fall that 260,000 people remained trapped there without aid, half of them children.
The African Union’s chairman Mahmoud Ali Youssouf on Tuesday expressed ‘deep concern over the escalating violence and reported atrocities’, and condemned ‘alleged war crimes and ethnically targeted killings of civilians’.
The Sudanese army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said on Monday that his forces had withdrawn from El-Fasher ‘to a safer location’, acknowledging the loss of the strategic city.
More than 2,000 civilians were reportedly executed in 48 hours in Sudan after the city of El-Fasher was captured by paramilitaries
The paramilitaries have a track record of atrocities, having killed as many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina
Screen grab shows a gunman pointing his weapon at unarmed civilians
Screen grab shows unarmed civilians running away as they are chased by paramilitaries
RSF fighters holding weapons and celebrating in the streets of El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur
He pledged to fight ‘until this land is purified’, but analysts said that Sudan was now effectively partitioned along an east-west axis, with the RSF having already set up a parallel government.
Alan Boswell, project director for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group, told AFP: ‘The longer this war drags on, this division will likely only grow more concrete and harder to unwind.’
Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, called the city’s capture a ‘turning point’ that showed ‘the political path is the only option to end the civil war’.
The UAE has been accused by the UN of supplying the RSF with weapons, a charge it denies. It is also a member of the so-called Quad – alongside the United States, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – which is working for a negotiated peace.
The group has proposed a ceasefire and a transitional civilian government that excludes both the army and the RSF from power.
Talks last week in Washington involving the Quad made no progress.
The army has its own foreign backers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, observers have reported. They too have denied the claims.
In March, the army retook full control of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, but with both sides now having achieved significant gains neither appears willing to compromise in negotiations.