The armed men arrived at dawn on motorcycles, horses and cars. For hours, they fired at homes, rampaged through businesses and destroyed clinics in a frantic attack that turned life upside down in El Geneina, a town in Sudan’s Darfur region, witnesses said.
The violence in mid-May, the killed At least 280 people over two days arrived just hours after two military groups were fighting for control of Sudan signed a declaration of commitment to protect civilians and enable the flow of humanitarian aid.
have armistice agreements failed so far to end this brutal fights which erupted on April 15 between the Sudanese army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Peace talks in Saudi Arabia took place officially suspended last Thursday.
The fight has decimated many areas of the capital Khartoum. But the war between the military factions has also spread across the country, engulfing the long-suffering western region of Darfur – an area plagued by genocidal violence for the past two decades.
The armed men who poured into El Geneina were supported by paramilitary forces. According to doctors, aides and analysts, they met fierce resistance from armed militants, including some residents of the city who had received weapons from the army.
In the course of the fighting, numerous markets were destroyed, dozens of aid camps burned down and health facilities closed. As heavy artillery rained from the sky, militants went door to door finding targets and firing on unarmed civilians. With no food or water in the 104 degree heat, thousands began fleeing the city – only to be killed by snipers, leaving bodies piled in the streets.
“The situation in parts of Darfur is dire,” said Toby Harward, the Darfur coordinator for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which hosts displaced people in neighboring Chad. “Its people live in a dystopian nightmare where there is no law and no order.”
Communications with West Darfur have been down for two weeks. But interviews over the past week with two dozen displaced people, humanitarian workers, United Nations officials and analysts showed the region is being gripped by a level of violence unprecedented in recent years. More than 370,000 people fled Darfur according to the International Organization for Migration, in the last seven weeks.
Many of the displaced reach border towns like Adré in Chad, hungry and traumatized, and telling harrowing stories of their escape.
They include Hamza Abubakar, a 30-year-old, who fled the village of Misteri in west Darfur after it was attacked by Arab militants backed by Rapid Support Forces at dawn in late May. As people fled their homes, militants carrying AK-47s and other weapons chased them down on horses, camels and in cars, he said. Mr Abubakar sustained a gunshot wound to his left arm and was recovering in a hospital.
“They had no reason to kill us,” Mr Abubakar said in a telephone interview. Although his wife and one-year-old daughter made it through, he said his brother and sister died on the road from their injuries.
“Many others could not make the journey,” he said.
The government of the former dictator has been in power for years Omar Hassan al-Bashir carried out a campaign of murder, rape and ethnic cleansing in Darfur that has killed up to 300,000 people since 2003.
The two generals are now vying for power in Sudan – General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan the army and Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Members of the paramilitary forces – were among those who committed these atrocities which eventually led to an indictment of Mr al-Bashir before the International Criminal Court.
Fighting in the region has also increased sharply in recent years UN peacekeepers withdrew and mercenaries and rebel fighters poured through the porous borders with neighboring Libya and Chad. Sometimes African farmers and nomadic Arab herdsmen supported by General Hamdan’s men – there were also disputes over dwindling resources and land.
In the weeks before the war startedTensions were already mounting in Darfur.
In various towns in the region, community leaders, aid workers and observers reported an increase in weapons and intensified recruitment campaigns by both the army and paramilitary forces. General Hamdan, whose forces are mainly recruited from Arab tribes, also began recruiting soldiers from African tribes to ingratiate himself with them and increase his power in the region.
When fighting started in Khartoum in April, so did the rival forces clashes erupted in Darfurresulting in mass killings of civilians, looting of food stores and attacks on aid workers.
But community leaders, civil society organizations and some regional political leaders were quick to negotiate a ceasefire that ended fighting in parts of Darfur. Observers said the ceasefire in east Darfur has largely held, although insecurity remains due to bandit attacks.
This opened up a small opportunity that allowed UN staff and international humanitarian workers across Darfur to evacuate by road and air to Chad and South Sudan in late April.
But shortly after the evacuations, chaos reigned in the region again.
The two sides have clashed over control of key facilities, including the airport and military bases in towns such as El Fasher in north Darfur and Zalingei in central Darfur. Clashes erupted and banks were looted in the south Darfur town of Nyala after paramilitary members could not receive their salaries after General al-Burhan froze their accounts and assets, aides and analysts said.
Arab militants, supported by the paramilitary forces, also mobilized and advanced towards El Geneina, where the army was already arming members of ethnic African tribes in self-defense.
“El Geneina is one of the worst places on earth right now,” said Fleur Pialoux, MSF project coordinator in El Geneina, who evacuated the town in late April.
Before the conflict, her team was battling a spate of malaria and malnutrition in Darfur in the run-up to the rainy season in June.
But when bullets riddled her workers’ compound, Ms Pialoux, 30, knew she had to get her workers out. After four days huddled in a safe room and scouring social media apps for news of a truce, she learned of a brief truce that allowed for bodies to be picked up on the streets. As she and her associates fled the city, Ms. Pialoux recalled speeding past burned eviction camps, a looted market and ruined roads.
The warring factions in Darfur, she said, “will stop at nothing until they run out of ammunition or bodies to kill.”
With the failure of the ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia and the call to arms Darfur Governor Mini Arko Minawi’s decision could embroil the region in an even worse and protracted war.
Aid workers have no way of obtaining visas to enter Sudan or finding safe routes for street food delivery. Food, water and fuel prices have skyrocketed and many people have no access to cash.
On Monday, the army was accused by the DRC government of bombing a university in Khartoum on Sunday. Killing of 10 Congolese citizens. An army spokesman did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
In El Geneina, a Sudanese doctor who took refuge with a colleague at a medical guesthouse in late April said armed gunmen beat and robbed them before dumping them on the street.
“The streets were filled with the smell of death and gunshots,” said the 30-year-old doctor, who asked to be addressed by his nickname Yousef for security reasons. “Body rotting in the streets, covered with gunshot wounds.”
He and his colleague lived on the run for the next month, he said, dodging gunfire and roving militia on motorcycles to reach a series of emergency shelters: a mosque, an abandoned clinic, a burned market.
“The city was flooded with weapons of all kinds. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the doctor, who worked in El Geneina for four years. He said he witnessed gunmen indiscriminately killing local residents, and when armed groups began going door-to-door killing local residents in late May, he and his colleague fled.
At least a dozen women were raped in El Geneina, according to Mona Ahmed, a women’s rights activist who fled the city last month. Ms Ahmed said the actual number of rape victims is most likely higher.
“There is no protection for them, no medical or social support,” said Ms. Ahmed, 27. “Terror thrives in an environment cut off from the rest of the world.”
Elian Peltier contributed to reporting from Chad.
