Hundreds may have been executed in capture of Sudanese city, UN rights office says

Hundreds of Sudanese civilians and unarmed fighters may have been killed during the Sudanese paramilitary forces' capture of the long-besieged city of Al-Fashir, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.

The city, the Sudanese army's last significant holdout in the western region of Darfur, fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on Sunday, ending an 18-month siege. 

"We estimate the death toll of civilians and those placed hors de combat during the RSF attack on the city and its exit routes, as well as in the days after the takeover, could amount to hundreds," U.N. human rights office spokesperson Seif Magango told a Geneva press briefing on Friday, describing testimonies of summary executions and mass killings.

One witness described the killing of a couple of hundred men by fighters who shouted racial slurs and then began shooting.

A high-level RSF commander called accounts of killings "media exaggeration" by the army and its allied fighters "to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir."

The RSF's leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city amid the upheaval and some of the testimonies of the al-Fashir atrocities are from survivors who had to walk for three or four days to the town of Tawila, he said. 

Magango said the office had received testimonies from aid workers that at least 25 women were gang-raped when RSF fighters entered a shelter for displaced people near the university. 

"Witnesses confirm RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint, forcing the remaining displaced persons - around 100 families - to leave the location amid shooting and intimidation of older residents," he told reporters.

The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, said the abuses in al-Fashir were indefensible. "Lives in Sudan now depend on strong and decisive action to stop these atrocities," she said in a statement.