Survivors recount horrific RSF attack on famine-hit Sudan camp

by Ibrahim Abdallah with Bahira Amin in Cairo

Sarah had survived famine, multiple wars and years of displacement in Sudan's Zamzam camp and never considered fleeing, until a paramilitary attack turned the site into a "killing field".

Last week, shelling and gunfire shook the streets as the Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army for nearly two years, stormed the famine-stricken camp in the Darfur region.

"Bombs were falling on houses. There were bodies on the street. There was no way we could stay," the 22-year-old literature student told AFP after arriving in the town of Tawila, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of Zamzam.

In the small, hunger-ridden town, cut off from nearly all humanitarian and media access, an AFP journalist who had exclusive access met some of the hundreds of families seeking safety.

"In the middle of the night, we took the children and our grandmothers and started walking," Sarah said of her family of 10, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution.

It took them three terrifying days to reach Tawila on foot.

"People were robbed and attacked on the road. One young man was killed," she said.

The Zamzam camp, home to between 500,000 and a million people according to aid groups, was the first place famine was declared in Sudan last August under a UN-backed assessment.

Since war began in April 2023 between the army and the RSF, it has received wave after wave of people displaced from across Sudan's vast Darfur region, most of which is under paramilitary control.

Now Zamzam's residents, some of them displaced for months, others for two decades, are again running for their lives.

- 'Killing fields' -

In recent weeks, thousands of families have fled RSF attacks around El-Fasher, the North Darfur state capital just north of Zamzam, which has been besieged since May.

Last Tuesday, the paramilitary began a ground assault on Zamzam, setting fire to the camp's main market, witnesses said.

By Thursday, satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies analyzed by AFP showed heavy damage and entire buildings razed at the eastern entrance to the camp, where the RSF clashed with army-allied militias.

Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab, which uses remote sensing data, said arson attacks and structural damage in Zamzam were "consistent with intentional razing in a ground attack".

"The camp's streets have turned into killing fields full of blood and body parts ... fires have engulfed homes and screams mix with the sound of bullets," said a local advocacy group, the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees.

The attack lasted at least three days, witnesses told AFP.

According to Darfur governor Mini Minawi, whose forces are battling the RSF as part of the pro-army Joint Forces coalition, the attack killed at least 19 people.

The UN says at least two humanitarian workers have also been killed.

A field hospital inside the camp, run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is the only recourse for those wounded in the fighting, but with no surgical capacity, staff can only stabilize patients, not treat them.

"We had to leave some people wounded on the ground," Zamzam resident Adam Issa said after fleeing his burning home.

Running for their lives, families took all they could carry, but by the time they got to Tawila, they had nothing left.

"At five checkpoints, RSF fighters stopped us and searched us, accusing us of siding with the army, that our husbands are soldiers," Maqboula Mohamed told AFP.

"They took our phones and all our money. They left us with nothing. They even took our blankets," she said.

The 37-year-old had already been displaced multiple times before.

In Shagra, another village, she said the RSF fighters who killed several of her relatives warned survivors: "Even if you go to Zamzam or El-Fasher, we'll follow you."

- 'Immediate action' -

On Thursday, the RSF said it had conducted "swift operations to liberate the displaced persons" in Zamzam, which it said had been "turned into a military base" by the Joint Forces.

The paramilitary, which the US determined in January had committed genocide in Darfur, said its forces "have never targeted civilians".

There is no confirmed toll from the Sudan war, but last year former US envoy Tom Perriello said some estimates reached 150,000.

In the town of El-Geneina alone, the RSF and allied militias killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in ethnically motivated attacks in 2023, UN experts determined.

Fear of similar massacres has mounted since the RSF's rampage through North Darfur.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, has warned escalating violence in Zamzam and El-Fasher "is putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk".

In a statement to AFP, Zamzam's civilian administrators said the RSF's goal was to "eradicate" the displaced population entirely.

"What is happening now in Darfur is not just a conflict, but a documented genocide that requires immediate international action," they said.

Amnesty International said Friday the "unconscionable" attack on Zamzam "underscores the urgent need for real international pressure", and called for a countrywide arms embargo.

In Tawila, an armed group named the Sudan Liberation Army has vowed to protect the hundreds of families seeking safety.

But with no food or money, Sarah and other displaced people sleep on the dirt in the open steppe.

"We ran away with just the clothes on our backs. We have nothing, not even a blanket to cover ourselves with when we sleep," she told AFP.

© Agence France-Presse