As the elderly man sat on the floor, dozens of bodies lying around him, Sudanese rebel fighters approached and shot him dead.
The apparent killing, recorded in a 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 control of the city on Sunday.
CNN identified the location of the massacre as El Fasher University’s Faculty of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, across the street from the Saudi hospital, which also said more than 460 people were killed, according to a report cited by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday.
The Sudanese Doctors Network, a professional organization, said RSF “murdered in cold blood everyone they found inside the Saudi hospital, including patients, their companions, and others in the wards.”
Satellite images of a hospital in Saudi Arabia show evidence of the massacre, with apparent masses of corpses and bloodstains on the ground clearly visible.
Within hours of Sudanese troops withdrawing from El Fasher earlier this week, reports began to emerge that RSF fighters had committed large-scale massacres.
These accounts are supported by extensive evidence, including videos and photos from the ground, survivor testimonies, and satellite imagery.
RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedi, acknowledged on Wednesday that “violations” had taken place in El Fasher and said he would form a commission of inquiry to investigate and “hold accountable the soldiers and officers who committed the crimes.”
In a separate statement, RSF denied the claims, calling the hospital murders a “fabricated story with no connection to reality”, despite mounting evidence of atrocities.
The tragic events in El Fasher occurred two and a half years after a brutal civil war that claimed more than 150,000 lives.
On one side is Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s military ruler and head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The other is Hemedi, head of the RSF and former al-Burhan deputy. The two men staged a coup together in 2021, and in 2023 their power struggle erupted into full-scale war.
Both the United Nations and the United States have said the RSF and SAF have committed war crimes and face Western sanctions.
The United Nations told CNN it believes about 120,000 people, half of them children, are trapped in El Fasher, Sudan’s last stronghold in Darfur and under siege by the RSF for 18 months.
Earlier this year, U.S. 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 killed “men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis” and “deliberately targeted women and girls from specific ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”
There have been few eyewitness accounts since El Fasher fell to the RSF. But humanitarian workers who have spoken to survivors who have fled the city have heard stories of summary executions, rapes, streets littered 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 fighters in some videos with the insignia used by the RSF.
Most of the videos appear to have been shot and shared by the rebels themselves.
One video shows an unarmed man in civilian clothes begging for his life in front of a man on the ground known as his commander.
Fighters were seen shooting him multiple times. Dozens more bodies are clearly visible in the video.
Another video shows at least eight men in civilian clothes sitting side by side on the ground before being killed in quick succession.
Several videos show the executions and RSF fighters celebrating next to the bodies next to the berm, a raised earthen embankment built around El Fasher to keep people inside the city during the siege.
Other videos show armed RSF fighters driving across vast expanses of land, apparently hunting down civilians attempting to flee. In one video, rebels can be heard saying, “Get the girls!”
Conflict-related sexual violence has been reported by human rights groups as a major problem in Sudan, and humanitarian workers told CNN that women and girls who fled El Fasher in recent days were victims of sexual violence and rape.
CNN has located several videos showing RSF troops celebrating inside El Fasher. Satellite images analyzed by the Humanitarian Lab at the Yale School of Public Health and reviewed by CNN show clear evidence of atrocities at El Fasher.
Satellite images of areas where RSF killings have been reported in recent days appear to show bodies.
Yale researchers also said they saw reddish spots consistent with blood on the ground in several locations, including outside a Saudi hospital and near Inuhashiri around the city.
The bodies and the reddish stain can only be seen in satellite images taken on Monday and Tuesday after the RSF takeover.
“Rapid support forces are surrounding the city with a nine-foot-high earthen wall called the berm,” said Nathaniel Raymond, the institute’s executive director.
“So the context here is that these people are in what we call the kill box. They’re being walled off to be systematically killed, and the rapid support forces are doing that right now,” he said.
Survivors fleeing the violence told aid groups of summary executions and mass killings.
Adam Rohal, a spokesman for the General Coordination Authority for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, told CNN that he left the besieged city two weeks ago. He said civilians are currently not allowed to leave the country and the situation is “horrifying”.
“(Those who fled) have told horrifying stories of the suffering and abuse they suffered. People’s property was confiscated, there were floggings and assaults. I have seen videos of the executions,” he said.
Satellite images show possible mass murder in Sudan
A report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Institute shows satellite images revealing growing evidence of possible war crimes in Sudan as the RSF takes control of El Fasher in the Darfur region. Reported by CNN’s Nada Bashir.
Manal bint Abi Suleiman, who fled El Fasher after the RSF takeover, said attacks on the area where she had taken refuge began on Saturday. “Emergency forces moved in and destroyed everything in front of them,” she said in a video testimony filmed by refugee volunteers.
“On the way, they harassed people and beat some people. They separated the youths from the women and we don’t know where they took them. God only knows where they are now,” she said.
In videos shared online, several other survivors also mention the killing of men and women and bodies lying in the streets.
Francesco Lanino, Save the Children’s deputy director for Sudan, told CNN about the extreme dangers survivors faced while fleeing to the Tawila refugee camp in southern Darfur.
“All the areas around El Fasher are controlled by different militias, or different armed groups, that are associated with the RSF or are in some way part of the RSF,” Lanino said.
“The RSF is not the only one that is looking for people to (rob), abuse and kill civilians,” he added.
RSF is supported not only by the Russian militia Wagner, but also by Arab groups and militias across the Sahel region.
The Sudanese government also accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying weapons to the group. The UAE has repeatedly denied the accusations, even though a panel of experts appointed by the UN Security Council found them “credible” in a January 2024 report.
The UN humanitarian team in Sudan said on Tuesday it had received “credible reports of a wide range of violations, including summary executions, attacks on civilians along evacuation routes, house raids, and obstacles preventing civilians from reaching safety,” adding that “sexual violence, particularly against women and girls, continues to be reported.”
Arjan Hechenkamp, Darfur crisis director for the International Rescue Committee, told CNN that many of the people evacuated from El Fasher were in “dire conditions.”
“Many of them are sick or injured…Many are women and many are elderly, but there is a big difference between young people and adult men,” he said.
Hechenkamp spent several weeks in Tawila helping evacuees.
“The big concern we have now is where is the rest of El Fasher’s population? So far we haven’t seen numbers as big as we had hoped. So that’s very worrying,” he added.
Lanino told CNN that about 5,000 people have been able to contact his team in Tawira in recent days.
“The majority of people coming from El Fasher are women and children, and their stories are that the men were kidnapped or killed on their way to Taouira for ethnic reasons and because they are men, but for some reason they were stopped and targeted,” he said.
Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, told CNN that violence had spiked in the days following the RSF takeover.
He said he spoke to women who had fled El Fasher and told them that all of their male relatives had been killed or captured by the RSF.
Speaking to CNN from the eastern city of Port Sudan after returning from areas near Darfur, where people have sought safety, Yett said the stories shared by survivors were “blood-curdling.” Some groups of women reportedly arrived alone, complaining that their male relatives had been killed or detained.
“All the stories are the most horrifying, of (militants) going door to door, raiding, dragging people out. People are being held for ransom. They’re basically being told to pay or die, to call their relatives and collect the money,” he said.
The Sudanese Doctors Network announced that six medical staff, including four doctors, a pharmacist and a nurse, have been kidnapped by RSF fighters and are now demanding 100 million Sudanese pounds (approximately $166,000) each.
The group appealed to international organizations, including the WHO, to intervene and “put maximum pressure on the RSF to release” the abductees.
Multiple international organizations, world leaders and human rights groups have called for an immediate ceasefire and a swift independent investigation into the killings, as reports of alleged atrocities continue to emerge.
Mr Yett said the fact that fighters were filming themselves killing civilians and posting them online showed a “lack of responsibility”.
“We need to ensure clear accountability here. That means all violations of international law need to be investigated. We need to hold people accountable,” he said.
