No one could stop it: Sudanese describe mass rapes while fleeing El-Fasher
No one could stop it: Sudanese describe mass rapes while fleeing El-Fasher/node/2621491/middle-east
No one could stop it: Sudanese describe mass rapes while fleeing El-Fasher
A displaced Sudanese who fled El-Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), rest on a mat in the camp of Um Yanqur, located on the southwestern edge of Tawila, in western Darfur region. (AFP)
No one could stop it: Sudanese describe mass rapes while fleeing El-Fasher
Reports have emerged of mass killings, sexual violence, attacks on aid workers, looting and abductions in a city where communications have largely been cut off
Updated 05 November 2025
AFP
TAWILA: Sudanese mother Amira wakes up every day trembling, haunted by scenes of mass rapes she saw 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 paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been at war with the military since April 2023.
Reports have since emerged of mass killings, sexual violence, attacks on aid workers, looting and abductions in a city where communications have largely been cut off.
“The rapes were gang rapes. Mass rape in public, rape in front of everyone and no one could stop it,” Amira said from a makeshift shelter in Tawila, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of El-Fasher.
The mother of four spoke during a webinar organized by campaign group Avaaz with several survivors of the recent violence.
Avaaz gave the survivors who participated in the webinar pseudonyms for their safety.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said more than 300 survivors of sexual violence had sought care from its teams in Tawila after a previous RSF assault on the nearby Zamzam camp, which displaced more than 380,000 people last spring.
“The RSF have carried out widespread sexual violence across towns and villages in Sudan to humiliate, assert control and to forcefully displace families and communities from their homes,” Amnesty International warned in April.
The rights group has documented conflict-related sexual violence by both the army and RSF — particularly in the capital Khartoum and Darfur — and denounced “over two decades of impunity for such crimes, particularly by the RSF.”
Nighttime assaults
In Korma, a village about 40 kilometers 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.
“You’d be asleep and they’d come and rape you,” she said.
“I saw with my own eyes people who couldn’t afford to pay and the fighters took their daughters instead.
“They said, ‘Since you can’t pay, we’ll take the girls.’ If you had daughters of a young age, they would take them immediately.”
Sudan’s state minister for social welfare, Sulimah Ishaq, told AFP that 300 women were killed on the day El-Fasher fell, “some after being sexually assaulted.”
The General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees in Darfur, an independent humanitarian group, had documented 150 cases of sexual violence since the fall of El-Fasher until November 1.
“Some incidents occurred in El-Fasher and others during the journey to Tawila,” Adam Rojal, the organization’s spokesman, told AFP.
Raped at gunpoint
Last week, the UN confirmed alarming reports that at least 25 women were gang-raped when RSF forces entered a shelter for displaced people near El-Fasher University in the city’s west.
“Witnesses confirmed that RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint,” Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office, said in Geneva.
Mohamed, another survivor who joined the Avaaz webinar from Tawila, 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.
In Garni, before reaching Korma, Amira said that RSF leaders would “greet people,” but as soon as they left, the fighters who stayed behind began torturing them.
“They start categorising you: ‘You were married to a soldier.’ ‘You were affiliated with the army,’” she said.
She also described seeing men slaughtered with knives by RSF fighters. “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 more than 5,000 who are now sheltering in Tawila, which was already hosting more than 650,000 displaced people, according to the UN.
In Tawila, hundreds of people have huddled together in makeshift tents in a vast desert expanse, scrounging together what they can to prepare food for their families, AFP video shows.
Rojal of the General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees in Darfur warned that the situation “needs immediate intervention.”
“People need food, water, medicine, shelter and psychological support,” he said.
How Sudan’s volunteer medics are helping war survivors cope with mental trauma
Millions displaced by Sudan’s war face acute psychological distress, often without access to professional mental health support
Fighting has devastated hospitals and clinics, leaving only volunteer networks and community initiatives to fill critical healthcare gaps
Updated 2 min 11 sec ago
Sherouk Zakaria
DUBAI: After being displaced from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, several times before finally reaching safety in Kassala to the east, Dr. Tayseer Ibrahim understood better than most the lasting scars Sudan’s war would leave on generations to come.
Before she could complete her final semester in medical school, the 27-year-old was forced to pack her belongings and leave when the sound of shelling drew closer and war raged through the streets of Khartoum, a city since recaptured by the army but still in ruins.
Boarding the first bus packed with displaced people bound for Wad Madani, capital of Al-Jazira state to the southeast of Khartoum, Ibrahim’s journey was perilous, marked by sudden clashes at checkpoints and sleepless nights spent under trees in search of safe passage.
People displaced by the ongoing war in Sudan return to Wad Madani in the Jazira state, on February 6, 2025, after the city was retaken by the Sudanese army from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries. (AFP file photo)
After settling temporarily in a camp in the village of Al-Shakaba, she was forced to leave once again when the situation deteriorated. The journey to Kassala took more than a week, mostly on foot, before she finally arrived at the Omar Al-Haj Musa School camp.
“As a survivor, I understood better than anyone what my people truly needed,” Ibrahim told Arab News.
Driven by the pain and loss she endured and the suffering she witnessed, Ibrahim joined a group of displaced female doctors to establish the Youth Voluntary Mental Health Organization in Kassala.
Founded in partnership with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the center seeks to meet the growing need for psychological relief and protection, amid the collapse of Sudan’s healthcare system, for a young generation displaced by war and now facing lasting trauma.
Now in its third year, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, displacing nearly 12 million people and making Sudan home to the world’s largest internally displaced population.
The war also fueled what the UN describes as the world’s most extensive hunger crisis, with famine already declared in at least five locations.
The situation has been exacerbated by a new wave of displacement, with nearly 90,000 people fleeing El-Fasher in the past two weeks, according to the UN, following the RSF’s capture of the North Darfuri capital on Oct. 26 after an 18-month siege.
With the economy on its knees and public services almost nonexistent, aid groups say the war is leaving an entire generation traumatized, out of school, and malnourished.
Sudanese refugees construct a shelter at the Tine transit camp in Chad on November 8, 2025. With the last army stronghold in Sudan's western Darfur region having fallen to paramilitary forces on October 26, the United Nations expects a mass influx of refugees, but it is unclear how many will actually make it to neighboring Chad. (AFP)
Exposure to violence, hunger, disease, and mass displacement, compounded by the collapse of healthcare infrastructure, has led to a surge in cases of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly among children and adolescents.
“Most of the displaced in the camps suffer from trauma and depression; some to the point of suicide,” Ibrahim told Arab News.
“Conditions for those diagnosed before the war worsened alongside the new cases brought on by violence and displacement.”
A 2024 survey by the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, found that 67 percent of Sudanese children in displacement camps showed signs of severe emotional distress, yet only five percent had access to any form of psychological support.
Experts said Sudan’s mental health system, weakened by years of economic turmoil and a 22-year civil war, was already limited and severely underfunded.
The latest conflict has further eroded access to medical care as most psychiatrists and mental health workers have fled or been displaced, while medical supplies remain scarce.
Local psychiatrists also report that social stigma toward mental health disorders remains widespread in Sudanese society.
“Many people are not aware of the importance of psychological treatment and support,” said Ibrahim.
She described the “inhumane conditions” facing displaced families in Kassala, many of whom live in schools turned into emergency shelters or in overcrowded tents with no privacy and limited access to clean water or sanitation — conditions ripe for disease, exacerbated by natural disasters such as floods and droughts.
“The majority of the displaced are women and children who live without income or a family provider,” said Ibrahim. “Many displaced families include members suffering from chronic, infectious, or mental illnesses, yet they have little or no access to medical services.”
Patients suffering from cholera receive treatment at a rural isolation centre in Wad Al-Hilu in Kassala state in eastern Sudan, on August 17, 2024. The UNICEF says the situation in Kassala has now gone from bad to worse as the war in Sudan continues. (AFP file photo)
Such conditions put women at risk of gender-based violence, experts warn.
Ibrahim recalled the case of a 17-year-old girl who attempted suicide in the camp, driven to desperation by a lack of privacy, an uncertain future, and domestic abuse by her mentally unstable father.
“Fortunately, intervention came in time. She survived and is now receiving treatment,” said Ibrahim.
With only a handful of psychiatrists and medical professionals left in Sudan, community-based initiatives like Ibrahim’s have become a lifeline.
Despite these efforts, she said the most urgent needs, including food, medicine, shelter, and psychological support, far exceed the humanitarian aid currently available.
Her organization, funded by UNHCR, focuses on mental health and psychosocial support, gender-based violence, child protection, and primary healthcare.
UNICEF infographic on youth mental health.
Ibrahim works alongside a small team comprising a psychologist, a neurologist, and social workers to offer free diagnostic and therapeutic services to displaced persons, along with regular follow-ups for chronic and mental health conditions.
Women and girls affected by gender-based violence receive counseling sessions, supported by a referral network to ensure their protection and safety.
The team provides counseling across several displacement sites, including Sittat Arab Camp in Halfa, Omar Al-Haj Musa School, Al-Saadiya School, Tajoug School, and a camp west of the city’s airport.
Ibrahim said the organization focuses on children and youth in the hope of contributing to Sudan’s long-term recovery.
She was among more than 80 medical students who received UNHCR funding to complete their final semester after the war disrupted their studies.
Hassan Zakaria talks to his fellow Sudanese medical staff who are on duty at a hospital in Aboutengue refugee settlement in eastern Chad. The doctors were among the millions displaced in Sudan when their Teaching Hospital in El-Geneina city in West Darfur was attacked by paramilitaries two years ago. (Photo by Ala Kheir / UNHCR/)
Without that support, she said, she could not have afforded the fees or earned her degree, which later enabled her to establish the organization as a way to pay it forward and help her community rebuild.
Not many students, particularly children, were so fortunate. The conflict has devastated the education system, leaving more than 10,400 schools closed and forcing 19 million children out of formal education, including 4 million who are displaced, according to UNICEF.
The UN agency says Sudan is now facing the world’s largest child displacement crisis.
Aid groups and humanitarian organizations have warned that school closures and economic instability are deepening long-term psychological distress among Sudanese youth, creating a lost generation that could deprive the country of a skilled workforce and prolong its economic instability for years to come.
Malnutrition is another deep and lasting scar of the war. A March 2024 UNICEF report found that nearly 3.8 million children in Sudan are acutely malnourished, including 730,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition, as health experts warn of the long-term impact of hunger on children’s cognitive development, memory, and ability to learn during their formative years.
Mothers wait at a malnutrition center to register for food aid for their children in the Tiamushro camp for internally displaced persons in Kadugli, South Kordofan state, on June 17, 2024. (AFP)
To encourage emotional expression and a sense of security, Ibrahim said her organization has established child-friendly spaces as safe environments equipped with educational games and creative activities.
Besides providing one-on-one counseling, the center organizes recreational events for children and mothers, and sports activities targeting young people and adolescents to promote their mental and physical well-being.
The center aims to expand its outreach by training volunteers and community members to provide immediate support to those suffering from trauma.
It also holds seminars on mental health and developmental workshops designed to build the capacities of women and youth, empowering them to create lasting change in their communities.
Healthcare professionals want to see mental health treated as a core component of global humanitarian efforts, emphasizing that psychological support is as vital as food, shelter, and medical care in helping conflict-affected communities recover and rebuild.
Calls for a ceasefire and global action have surged amid mounting evidence from UN human rights bodies and independent experts of war crimes in El-Fasher.
Sudanese students take part in an organized march in eastern Sudan's Gedaref city on November 6, 2025 in protest against human rights violations committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the people of El- Fasher. (AFP)
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of crimes against humanity. The RSF has also been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that the UN said may amount to genocide.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, has promised to investigate the El-Fasher allegations, but both sides categorically reject accusations of war crimes and genocide.
Mindful of Khartoum’s long road to recovery, Ibrahim said she hopes to return to her hometown and contribute to its reconstruction now that she has established a lifeline for displaced communities in Kassala.
“Communities in Khartoum are in dire need of psychological and medical support, and I feel that my experience as a doctor, a displaced person, and a survivor can make a difference.”
