New arrivals have told stories of widespread ethnically and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities who were executed because they could not flee and others who were shot as they tried to escape, Ms. Parlevliet said.
Humanitarian agencies on the ground in Tawila, including UNHCR, are responding as best they can, providing protection services, counseling and cash assistance to affected communities.
Call for humanitarian corridors
However, the UNHCR official warned that the destruction of infrastructure across Darfur – markets, hospitals, schools and homes – has left civilians with few resources.
Additionally, reports of “mass killings” have emerged in the town of Barah, located in the central Kordofan region, where the RSF recently took control and carried out similar acts of violence, UNHCR reported.
“We need peace, we need a ceasefire, we need humanitarian corridors,“Ms. Parlevliet said, emphasizing that many civilians left in El Fasher are still unable to flee, many of them are “too weak” and the current situation is “too dangerous” for them to move.
IOM demands protection of civilians
The UN migration agency, IOM, urged all parties to the Sudan conflict to protect civilians in El Fasher and allow “immediate, safe and unhindered” humanitarian access.
“In just two days, more than 26,000 people have been forced to flee the city,” said IOM head Amy Pope, warning that “The scenes emerging from El Fasher are horrible.” Families walk for days “under the scorching sun… without food, without shelter, without medicine.”
The IOM said it is sending tents and emergency shelter kits to Tawila, but warned that “needs are increasing faster than aid can reach people.” The Pope urged the world to “act now to end the suffering.”
‘Trapped, hungry, terrified’
For 18 months, El Fasher has become the “epicenter of suffering”with hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped under an increasingly strict siege by the RSF, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement issued following the announcement of the withdrawal of government forces from the city on Thursday.
News reports citing satellite images suggested that mass atrocities had already been carried out, showing corpses piled up after large-scale executions and house-to-house evictions in El Fasher by RSF fighters.
The UN chief said civilians had been left “trapped, hungry and terrified”, as he renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire between rival military forces. The civil war broke out in April 2023.
Guterres strongly condemned reports of rights violations and abuses, “including indiscriminate attacks and attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as gender-based violence, ethnically motivated attacks and ill-treatment.”
He reiterated his call for an immediate end to the fighting and urged both government military forces and RSF leaders to work with his Personal Envoy to achieve a negotiated solution.