Displaced Sudanese wait to receive humanitarian aid at the Abu al-Naga displacement camp in the Gedaref State, some 420km east of the capital Khartoum. AFP
Giving the UN Human Rights Council an update on the situation in El-Fasher, Volker Turk decried the horrific scenes after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) unleashed a "wave of intense violence", following 18 months of brutal siege.
"Thousands of people were killed in a matter of days, and tens of thousands fled in terror," he said, stressing the need to "hold those responsible accountable, and to make sure this never happens again".
The Sudanese regular army and the RSF militia have been at war since April 2023, with the conflict killing tens of thousands of people, displacing millions more and triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that during a recent visit to Sudan, he had heard first-hand accounts from survivors of the El-Fasher violence, and had "rarely seen people so traumatised".
"They consistently reported mass killings and summary executions of civilians... both inside the city and as people fled", Turk said, also saying he heard of widespread torture, rape and sexual violence.
"Survivors also spoke of seeing piles of dead bodies along roads leading away from El-Fasher, in an apocalyptic scene that one person likened to the Day of Judgment," he said.
Such atrocities were predictable and preventable, he added.
His office, he pointed out, had "sounded the alarm about the risk of mass atrocities in the besieged city of El-Fasher for more than a year".
"The threat was clear, but our warnings were ignored," he lamented.
While the RSF militia was responsible for the atrocities committed in El-Fasher, he insisted that the international community had a responsibility to "do better".
The RSF traces its roots to the Janjaweed gangs widely accused of committing atrocities in the Darfur war 2003 – 2008, which claims lives of more than 300,000, and thousands women and girls were raped, according to UN estimates.
"If we stand by, wringing our hands while armies and armed groups commit well-flagged international crimes, we can only expect worse to come," he warned.
Turk said he was currently "extremely concerned that these violations and abuses may be repeated in the Kordofan region", where fighting has intensified since El-Fasher's capture.
Civilians were "at risk of summary executions, sexual violence, arbitrary detention", and family separation, and voiced particular alarm at repeated drone strikes by both sides, he added.
In just over two weeks leading up to February 6, Turk said his office had documented "some 90 civilians were killed and 142 injured in drone strikes".
The strikes, which were carried out by both the RSF militia and the Sudanese army, "struck a World Food Programme convoy, markets, health facilities and residential neighbourhoods in South and North Kordofan", he said.
Short link: