Rebels accused of massacring hundreds of people as videos emerge of atrocities and bodies in Sudanese city

By Ivana Kottasová, Vasco Cotovio, Nada Bashir, Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN

(CNN) — An elderly man sits on the floor, dozens of bodies lying around him, before a Sudanese rebel fighter approaches and shoots him.

The apparent killing – captured on video shared online by the rebels themselves – took place at a university medical school in El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took over the city on Sunday.

CNN has identified the location of the massacre as El Fasher University’s School of Medical Laboratory Science, just across the street from the Saudi Hospital where, according to reports cited by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, more than 460 people were also killed.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a professional organization, said the RSF “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards.”

Satellite images of the Saudi Hospital show signs of a massacre, with apparent clusters of bodies and blood-stained ground clearly visible.

Reports of RSF fighters committing large-scale massacres began to emerge within hours of the Sudanese military’s withdrawal from El Fasher earlier this week.

Those accounts have been corroborated by mounting evidence that includes videos and photos from the ground, survivor testimonies and satellite images.

RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, acknowledged Wednesday that there had been “violations” in El Fasher, and said an investigative committee would be launched to investigate and “hold accountable any soldier or any officer who committed a crime.”

In a separate statement, the RSF denied claims of killings at the hospital, describing them as “fabricated narratives with no connection to reality,” despite mounting evidence of atrocities.

The grisly events in El Fasher come over two and a half years into a brutal civil war that has claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people.

On one side is Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s military ruler and the head of the Sudanese armed forces (SAF); on the other is Hemedti, the RSF chief and onetime al-Burhan deputy. The two men launched a coup together in 2021 before a power struggle between them descended into all-out war in 2023.

The United Nations and the United States have both said the RSF and the SAF have committed war crimes and have faced western sanctions.

The UN told CNN it believes about 120,000 people, half of them children, were trapped in El Fasher, which was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in Darfur and had been under siege by the RSF for 18 months.

Earlier this year, then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during the Biden administration, accused the RSF of committing genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, saying there was evidence the group systematically murdered “men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis” and that it “deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”

Few eyewitness testimonies have emerged from El Fasher since its fall to the RSF. But humanitarian workers who’ve spoken to survivors fleeing the city related stories of summary executions and rapes, streets strewn with bodies and men and boys being prevented from leaving.

Multiple videos shared online over the past three days show RSF fighters rounding up and killing large numbers of unarmed people. CNN was able to match the insignia worn by the fighters in several of the videos to the one used by the RSF.

Most of the videos appear to have been filmed and shared by the rebels themselves.

One video shows an unarmed man in civilian clothes on the ground, pleading for his life before a man addressed as commander.

The fighter is seen shooting him multiple times. Dozens more bodies are clearly visible in the video.

Another video shows at least eight men dressed in civilian clothes sitting on the ground next to each other before being killed in a quick succession.

Several videos show executions and RSF fighters celebrating next to bodies by a berm, a raised bank of earth that was built around El Fasher during the siege to trap people inside the city.

Other videos show armed RSF fighters driving through large swaths of land, apparently hunting civilians who are attempting to flee. In one video, the rebels are heard saying “catch the girls.”

Conflict-related sexual violence has been reported by human rights groups as a major problem in Sudan and multiple humanitarian workers have told CNN that women and girls who have managed to escape El Fasher in recent days were victims of sexual violence and rape.

CNN has geolocated several of the videos showing jubilant RSF forces inside El Fasher. Satellite images analyzed by the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health and verified by CNN show clear evidence of the atrocities in El Fasher.

Groups of bodies appear to be visible in satellite images of areas where RSF killings have been reported in recent days.

The Yale researchers also say they have identified reddish patches on the ground consistent with blood in several locations, including outside the Saudi Hospital and near the berm around the city.

The bodies and the reddish stains are only visible in the satellite images taken on Monday and Tuesday, after the RSF takeover.

“The Rapid Support Forces have surrounded this city in an earth wall called a berm that’s as high as nine feet,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Research Lab.

“So the context here is these people are inside what we call a Kill Box. They have been walled in to be killed systematically, and right now the Rapid Support Forces are doing that,” he said.

Survivors fleeing the violence have told aid groups of summary executions and mass killings.

Adam Rojal, the spokesperson for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, told CNN he left the besieged city two weeks ago. He said that civilians are currently not allowed to leave and that the situation is “appalling.”

“(People who fled) tell horrific stories about the suffering and abuses they have subjected to. The property of citizens has been confiscated, there are floggings, and attacks. I have seen the execution videos,” he said.

Manal bint Abi Suleiman, who fled El Fasher after the RSF takeover, said the attack on the area where she was sheltering started on Saturday. “The Rapid Support Forces entered and destroyed everything in front of them,” she said in a video testimony filmed by a volunteer helping refugees.

“On the way, they harassed the people and beat some of them. They separated the young men from the women, and I don’t know where they took the men. God knows where they are now,” she said.

In videos shared online, several other survivors have also referenced killings of both men and women and bodies lying in the streets.

Save the Children’s deputy country director for Sudan, Francesco Lanino, told CNN that survivors who reached a refugee camp in Tawila in southern Darfur described the extreme danger they faced as they fled.

“All the areas surrounding El Fasher are controlled by different militias, or different armed groups that are related to RSF or somehow part of RSF,” Lanino said.

“It’s not only RSF who are looking for civilians, looking for people to (rob), to abuse or kill,” he added.

The RSF has been supported by Arab groups and militias from across the Sahel region as well as the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.

The Sudanese government has also accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the group. The UAE has repeatedly denied the accusation, despite an expert panel appointed by the UN Security Council finding in a January 2024 report that the allegations were “credible.”

Fears for the missing men

The UN’s humanitarian team in Sudan said on Tuesday it has received “credible reports of widespread violations, including summary executions, attacks on civilians along escape routes, house-to-house raids and obstacles preventing civilians from reaching safety,” adding that “sexual violence, particularly against women and girls, continues to be reported.”

Arjan Hehenkamp, the Darfur crisis lead for the International Rescue Committee, told CNN that many of the people fleeing El Fasher are in a “deplorable state.”

“Many of them are sick and wounded… there’s many women, many elderly, but a big gap in terms of young men and adult men,” he said.

Hehenkamp spent several weeks at Tawila, providing help to people fleeing.

“The big concern that we have right now is, where is the rest of the population of El Fasher? We haven’t seen the big numbers that we were expecting so far. So that is very disturbing,” he added.

Lanino told CNN that some 5,000 people managed to reach his team in Tawila in recent days.

“The majority of these people coming from El Fasher are women and children. And according to their stories, the men are kidnapped or were killed on the way coming to Tawila because of their ethnic group, because they were men, and they were somehow stopped and targeted,” he said.

Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s lead in Sudan, told CNN that violence has soared in the days following the RSF’s takeover.

He said he’d spoken to women who fled El Fasher who said their male relatives were all either killed or detained by RSF.

Speaking to CNN from the eastern city of Port Sudan after returning from an area near Darfur where people are seeking safety, Yett said the stories shared by survivors were “blood-curdling.” There were groups of women arriving alone, saying their male relatives have been killed or detained, he added.

“(Fighters are) going house to house, raids, people being dragged out, just the most horrific stories. People are being held (to) ransom. They’re being told, basically, you pay or you die, call your relatives, get the money together,” he said.

The Sudan Doctors Network said that six medical staff, including four doctors, a pharmacist and a nurse, have been kidnapped by RSF fighters who are now demanding 100 million Sudanese pounds ($166,000) for each of them.

The group has appealed to international organizations, including WHO, to intervene and “exert maximum pressure on RSF to release” the abductees.

As more reports of alleged atrocities pour in, multiple international organizations, world leaders and human rights groups have called for an immediate ceasefire and quick independent investigations into the killings.

Yett said that the fact that the fighters are filming themselves killing civilians and posting these videos online shows “a feeling of lack of accountability.”

“We need to ensure there’s clear accountabilities here. I mean all violations of international law need to be investigated. We need to hold people accountable,” he said.

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CNN’s Allegra Goodwin, Avery Schmitz and Eyad Kourdi contributed to this report.