Survivors describe executions, arson in attack on Sudan's Zamzam camp

(Reuters) - Sitting in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces men poured into Darfur's Zamzam displacement camp, looting and burning homes as shells rained down and drones flew overhead.

She lost track of most of her family as she fled. "I don't know what's become of them, my mother, father, siblings, my grandmother, I came here with strangers," she said - one of six survivors who told Reuters of arson and executions in the raid.

The Rapid Support Forces - two years into their conflict with Sudan's army - seized the massive camp in North Darfur a week ago in an attack that the United Nations says left at least 300 people dead and forced 400,000 to flee.

The RSF did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied accusations of atrocities and said the camp was being used base being used as a base by forces loyal to the army. Humanitarian groups have denounced the raid as a targeted attack on civilians already facing famine.

Najlaa Ahmed managed to get her children to safety in Tawila - a town 60 km (40 miles) from Zamzam controlled by a neutral rebel group - the third time, she said, she had been forced to flee the RSF in a matter of months.

She said she watched seven people die of hunger and thirst, and others succumb to their injuries on her latest journey.

The RSF has posted videos of its second-in-command, Abdelrahim Dagalo, promising to provide displaced people with food and shelter in the camp where famine was determined in August.

BODIES FOUND

More than 280,000 people have sought refuge in Tawila according to the General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees, an advocacy group, on top of the half a million that have arrived since the war broke out in April 2023.

Speaking from al-Fashir - the capital of North Darfur 15 km north of Zamzam which the RSF is trying to take from the army - one man who asked not to be named said he had found the bodies of 24 people killed in an attack on a religious school, some of them lined up.

"They started entering people's houses, looting... they killed some people ... After this people fled, running in different directions. There were fires. They had soldiers burning buildings to create more terror."

Another man, an elder in the camp, said the RSF had killed 14 people at close range in a mosque near his home. 

"People who are scared always go to the mosque to seek refuge, but they went into every mosque and shot them," he said.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

One video verified by Reuters showed soldiers yelling at a group of older men and young men outside a mosque, interrogating them about a supposed military base.

Other videos verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers shooting an unarmed man as others lay on the ground, calling them dogs. One showed armed men celebrating as they stood around a group of dead bodies.   

The RSF has said such videos are fake.

FIGHT FOR DARFUR

The capture of Zamzam comes as the RSF tries to consolidate its control of the Darfur region. Victory in al-Fashir would boost the RSF’s efforts to set up a parallel government to the one controlled by the army which has been on the upswing lately, retaking control of the capital Khartoum. 

The war between the Sudanese army - which has also been accused of atrocities, charges it denies - and the RSF broke out in April 2023 over plans to integrate the two forces. The RSF's roots lie in Darfur's Janjaweed militias, whose attacks in the early 2000s led to the creation of Zamzam and other displacement camps across Darfur.

Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health said in a report on Wednesday that more than 1.7 square km of the camp, including the main market, had been burned, and that fires had continued every day since Friday.

The researchers also saw checkpoints around the camp, and witnesses told Reuters that some people were being prevented from leaving.

In Tawila, Medical aid agency MSF received 154 injured people, the youngest of them seven months old, almost all with gunshot wounds, emergency field coordinator Marion Ramstein told Reuters. 

Supplies of food, water and shelter were already low before the new arrivals.

"The lucky ones are the ones who find a tree to sit under," Ramstein said.

Ahmed Mohamed, who arrived in Tawila this week, said he was robbed of all his possessions by soldiers on the road, and was now sleeping on the bare ground.

"We are in need of everything a human being would need," he said.

(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir in Cairo and Mohamed Jamal in Tawila, additional reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Inaki Malvido, Aaron McNicholas, Milan Pavicic, and Eleanor Whalley; Editing by Andrew Heavens)