A Sudanese doctor recounts his harrowing escape from a Darfur city under rebel bombardment

CAIRO — Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim dashed from building to building, desperate for places to hide. He ran through streets littered with bodies. Around him, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur province lay enveloped in smoke and fire.

Explosions, shelling and gunfire thundered from every direction.

After 18 months of battling, paramilitary fighters had overrun el-Fasher, the Sudanese army's only remaining stronghold in the Darfur region. Ibrahim, who fled the city's last functioning hospital with a colleague, said he feared he would not live to see the sun go down.

''All around we saw people running and falling to the ground in front of us,'' the 28-year-old physician told The Associated Press, recounting the assault that began Oct. 26 and lasted three days. ''We moved from house to house, from wall to wall under non-stop bombardment. Bullets were flying from all directions.''

Three months later, the brutality inflicted by the militant Rapid Support Forces is only now becoming clear. United Nations officials say thousands of civilians were killed but have no precise death toll. They say only 40% of the city's 260,000 residents managed to flee the onslaught alive, thousands of whom were wounded. The fate of the rest remains unknown.

The violence, including mass killings, turned el-Fasher into a ''massive crime scene,'' U.N. officials and independent observers said. When a humanitarian team finally gained access in late December, they found the city largely deserted, with few signs of life. A Doctors Without Borders team that visited this month described it as a ''ghost town'' largely emptied of the people who once lived there.

Nazhat Shameem Khan, deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in el-Fasher ''as a culmination of the city's siege by the Rapid Support Forces.''

With el-Fasher cut off, details of the attack remain scarce. Speaking with the AP from the town of Tawila, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the defeated capital, Ibrahim provided a rare, detailed first-person account.

As fighters swarmed in, they opened fire on civilians scrambling over walls and hiding in trenches in a vain effort to escape, while mowing down others with vehicles, Ibrahim said. Seeing so many killed felt like he was running toward his own death.

''It was a despicable feeling,'' he said. ''How can el-Fasher fall? Is it over? I saw people running in terror. … It was like judgment day.''

The Rapid Support Forces didn't respond to phone calls and emails from the AP with detailed questions about the brutal attack and Ibrahim's account. RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo acknowledged abuses by his fighters but disputed the scale of atrocities.

Prelude to the assault

But the army and militants quickly became rivals. By late October, they'd fought fiercely for over two years in Darfur, already infamous for genocide and other atrocities in the early 2000s.

The army's last stronghold was strategically-located el-Fasher. But the RSF, accused by the Biden administration of carrying out genocide in the ongoing war, had the city surrounded. As paramilitary forces tightened the noose, residents pressed into a small area on the city's western side.

Civilians were forced to eat animal fodder as food gave out, Ibrahim said. His family fled after their home was shelled in April, wounding his mother. But with few health workers left, Ibrahim stayed, working at the Saudi Maternity Hospital as the RSF closed in.

The Saudi-financed hospital was el-Fasher's last functioning medical center. But months of RSF shelling and drone strikes had driven away most of its staff, leaving just 11 doctors.

''We worked endless shifts and supplies dwindled to nothing,'' Ibrahim said.

''People were running in every direction,'' he said. ''It was obvious that the city was falling."

Searching for a way out

Around 7 a.m., he and another doctor decided to flee, setting out on foot for the army base about 1.5 kilometers (a mile) away. An hour later, RSF fighters attacked the hospital, killing a nurse and wounding three others. Two days later, the militants stormed the facility again, killing at least 460 people and abducting six health workers, according to the World Health Organization.

Ibrahim and his colleague darted from house to house, passing four corpses and many wounded civilians, before reaching a dormitory at the University of el-Fasher. Thirty minutes later, RSF artillery began pounding the area.

Separated from his colleague, Ibrahim sprinted across an open area where ''anything could happen to you — a drone strike, a vehicle ramming over you, or RSF chasing you,'' he said.

When the bombardment slowed, he headed to the university's medical school, jumping from roof to roof to avoid being seen. He found a broken wall behind the school's morgue and took cover for nearly an hour. By then it was noon and RSF fighters rampaged across el-Fasher.

Ibrahim ran past 25 to 30 more dead before finally reaching the army base around 4 p.m. and reuniting with his coworker.

Thousands, mostly women, children or older people, were taking refuge there. Many sheltered in trenches; scores were injured and bleeding. Ibrahim used clothing scraps to dress wounds, stabilizing one man's broken wrist with a sling made from a shirt.

The road out

Around 8 p.m., Ibrahim and about 200 others, mostly women and children, left the base for Tawila, a town swelled by the influx of tens of thousands fleeing the fighting. Guides led the way under a bright moon.

Eventually the group reached a trench the militants built on the outskirts of el-Fasher to tighten the blockade. They helped each other scale the 3-meter-high (10-foot-high) trench. But when the group reached a second and then a third trench, some struggled and turned back. Their fate remains unknown.

At the last trench, those ahead of Ibrahim came under fire as they climbed out. Ibrahim and his colleague lay flat in the trench until the shooting subsided.

Finally, around 1 a.m., they ventured into the darkness. Five from the group lay dead, with many others wounded.

‘You're doctors. You have money.'

The survivors walked for hours toward Tawila. Around noon on Oct. 27, they were stopped by RSF fighters on motorcycles and trucks mounted with weapons.

At an RSF-controlled village, fighters chained the prisoners to trees and interrogated them. At first Ibrahim and his friend told them they were ordinary civilians.

''I didn't want to tell them I was a doctor, because they exploited doctors," he said. "But my friend admitted he was a doctor, so I had to.''

That evening the fighters met with a commander, Brig. Gen. Al-Fateh Abdulla Idris, who has been identified in videos executing unarmed captives.

Ibrahim and his colleague were brought out in chains then taken back to the village, where the fighters demanded ransom for their release.

''They said, ‘You are doctors. You have money. The organizations give you money, a lot of money,''' he said.

''My entire family don't have that,'' he told them.

After hours of abuse, the militants asked Ibrahim how much he could pay. When he offered $500, they "started beating me again,'' he said. ''They said we will be killed.''

The fighters turned to Ibrahim's friend, repeating the demands and beatings.

Ibrahim said his colleague eventually agreed to $8,000 each — an enormous sum in a country where the average monthly salary is $30 to $50.

''I almost hit him. … I didn't trust them to let us go,'' Ibrahim said.

Instead, they were dropped off in an RSF-controlled area, prompting fears they would be recaptured. When they spotted fighters, the doctors hid in the brush. They emerged an hour later, spotted tracks of horse-drawn carts and began following them.

Alive but haunted

Three hours later, they spotted the flag of the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wahid, a rebel group not involved in fighting between the RSF and government troops.

The rebels allowed them entry. They were met by a Sudanese-American Physicians Association team, which provides care for those fleeing el-Fasher, then continued on.

When they finally reached Tawila, Ibrahim was reunited with survivors, including another Saudi hospital physician. The man said he had seen video of the doctors' capture on Facebook and was sure they had been killed.

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