Sudanese mother Amira wakes up every day trembling, haunted by the scenes of mass r@pes she witnessed while fleeing the western city of El-Fasher after it was overrun by paramilitaries. Following an 18-month siege marked by starvation and bombardment, El-Fasher, the last army stronghold in the western Darfur region, fell on October 26 to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023. Reports have since emerged of mass killings, s3xual violence, attacks on aid workers, looting, and abductions in a city where communications have been largely cut off. The r@pes were gang r@pes. Mass r@pe in public, r@pe in front of everyone and no one could stop it, Amira said from a makeshift shelter in Tawila, some 70 kilometres west of El-Fasher. The mother of four spoke during a webinar organised by campaign group Avaaz, which featured several survivors of the recent violence. For their safety, Avaaz gave the participants pseudonyms. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said more than 300 survivors of s3xual violence had sought care from its teams in Tawila after a previous RSF assault on the nearby Zamzam camp, which displaced over 380,000 people last spring. Amnesty International warned in April that the RSF had carried out widespread s3xual violence across towns and villages to humiliate, assert control, and forcibly displace families and communities. The organisation also documented conflict-related s3xual violence by both the army and the RSF, particularly in Khartoum and Darfur, and denounced over two decades of impunity for such crimes, particularly by the RSF. In Korma, a village about 40 kilometres northwest of El-Fasher, Amira said she was detained for two days because she could not pay RSF fighters for safe passage. Those unable to pay, she said, were denied food, water, and the ability to leave, and mass assaults took place at night. Youd be asleep and theyd come and r@pe you, she said. I saw with my own eyes people who couldnt afford to pay and the fighters took their daughters instead. They said, Since you cant pay, well take the girls. If you had daughters of a young age, they would take them immediately. Sudans state minister for social welfare, Sulimah Ishaq, told AFP that 300 women were killed on the day El-Fasher fell, some after being s3xually assaulted. The General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees in Darfur, an independent humanitarian group, documented 150 cases of s3xual violence between the fall of El-Fasher and November 1. Some incidents occurred in El-Fasher and others during the journey to Tawila, said spokesman Adam Rojal. Last week, the United Nations confirmed alarming reports that at least 25 women were gang-r@ped when RSF forces entered a shelter for displaced people near El-Fasher University. Witnesses confirmed that RSF personnel selected women and girls and r@ped them at gunpoint, UN human rights spokesperson Seif Magango said in Geneva. Another survivor, Mohamed, described how women and girls of all ages were searched and humiliated in Garni, a town between El-Fasher and Tawila. If they found nothing on you, they beat you. They searched the girls, even tearing apart their sanitary pads, he said. Amira added that RSF commanders would initially greet civilians in a friendly manner before leaving fighters behind to torture them. They start categorising you: You were married to a soldier. You were affiliated with the army, she recalled. She also described seeing men slaughtered with knives. My 12-year-old son saw it himself, and he is now in a bad psychological state, she said. We wake up shivering from fear; images of slaughter haunt us. More than 65,000 people have fled El-Fasher since its fall, including over 5,000 now sheltering in Tawila, which was already hosting more than 650,000 displaced people, according to the UN. Hundreds have set up makeshift tents in the desert, gathering what little they can to feed their families. Rojal warned that the situation needs immediate intervention, adding that people need food, water, medicine, shelter, and psychological support.The post No one could stop it – Sudanese describe mass r@pes while fleeing El-Fasher appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.