Massacre in West Darfur: Eyewitness Accounts

Editor’s Note: This report includes a graphic image and details of violence.

CNN
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The Escape from Hell

Hundreds of families gathered in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina on June 15, plotting their escape from what had become a hellscape of blown-out buildings scrawled with racist graffiti and streets strewn with corpses. The state governor had just been executed and mutilated by Arab militia groups, leaving civilians with no choice but to flee.

The Gruesome Massacre

What followed was a gruesome massacre, eyewitnesses said, believed to be one of the most violent incidents in the genocide-scarred Sudanese region’s history. The powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allied militias hunted down non-Arab people in various parts of the city and surrounding desert region, leaving hundreds dead as they ran for their lives, according to evidence collected by CNN.

An Investigation into the Atrocities

CNN analyzed videos, photographs, and satellite imagery, and gathered 11 testimonies from eyewitnesses and survivors of the violence in El Geneina to piece together the horrors of June 15. As the killing continues unabated in Sudan, with reports that the violence is accelerating, CNN’s investigation into atrocities carried out over that single day offers a window into the scale of abuses, largely hidden from view.

The Bloodiest Days

In the early hours of that morning, residents set off en masse from southern El Geneina, many trying to reach the nearby Sudanese military headquarters where they thought they might find safety. But they said they were quickly thwarted by RSF attacks. Some were summarily executed in the streets, survivors said. Others died in a mass drowning incident, shot at as they attempted to cross a river. Many of those who managed to make it out were ambushed near the border with Chad, forced to sit in the sand before being told to run to safety as they were sprayed with bullets.

Independent Verification

Without access to the city, it has been impossible for CNN to independently verify the true toll, but testimonies from body collectors, aid organizations, doctors, and survivors offer clues.

Reviving Darfur’s Dark Past

Conflict erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese army in April. Since then, more than one million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration.

A Nationwide Struggle for Control

Darfur has been ravaged by a decades-long ethnic cleansing campaign that peaked in the early 2000s, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known as Hemedti. Then a leader of the Janjaweed militia, Hemedti, now commander of the RSF, appears to have revived those tactics in a nationwide struggle to wrest control of Sudan from the country’s military.

Targeting the Masalit Community

“To say you were Masalit was a death sentence,” said Jamal Khamiss, a human rights lawyer, referring to his non-Arab tribe, one of the biggest in Darfur. Khamiss was among those who said that they fled from El Geneina to Chad, surviving a series of RSF and allied militia positions by concealing his ethnicity.

The Brutal Escape

The escape from El Geneina became even more perilous after the families made it out of the city, according to survivors, with the path to the Chadian border peppered with RSF and allied militia positions.

Video Evidence and International Silence

Videos picturing piles of bodies and a propaganda video shared by the RSF on its official YouTube channel further corroborated allegations of the massacres carried out in El Geneina. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not spoken out about the atrocities and it is unknown whether they have shared evidence with third parties.

The Aftermath

A day after the massacre, life in El Geneina came to a standstill, according to eyewitnesses and video from the ground. The city had fallen to the RSF and allied militias, and civil resistance by the non-Arab population had been vanquished.

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