Army soldiers fled key Sudanese city - leaving 200,000 civilians trapped

Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers fled a key city in the hours before the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured its infantry division - leaving around 200,000 civilians trapped, Sky News understands.

The SAF withdrew from military positions in the heart of Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, and the symbolic site was captured by the RSF with no resistance. Insiders told Sky News that the army struck a deal to facilitate safe passage for their soldiers.

Remaining fighters, many of them local resistance forces from Al Fashir, withdrew to the western neighbourhood Daraja Oula, where civilians have been seeking refuge from intensified RSF shelling and drone attacks in recent months. Summary executions of the senior commanders who stayed behind are being shared on RSF social media channels in violent videos and celebratory posts.

Other videos show queues of unarmed men leaving Al Fashir on foot. A senior humanitarian source told Sky News that aid workers first confirmed the arrival of army soldiers to displacement centres in the town Tawila, 50km (30 miles) from Al Fashir, on Monday evening in civilian clothing, having surrendered their weapons.

Hundreds of injured civilians and malnourished children have also arrived in Tawila since the fall of Al Fashir. More than 400 patients checked into the Medicines Sans Frontieres hospital on arrival with malnutrition and trauma wounds since Sunday, according to Medical Team Leader Dr Mouna Hanebali.

"We are seeing a lot of gunshots infected, unstable fractures and wounds infected as well - those are the injuries and torture. We see lots of malnutrition, all of the kids are malnourished, and even most of the adults as well," says Dr Mouna.

"Yesterday, we had around 70 (patients) under five. All the injured are mainly men, but still we are receiving kids, elderly, women, but the main proportion is young men." Ethnically-motivated attacks against civilians are being reported across Al Fashir at the hands of the RSF.

Humanitarian groups are pushing for the evacuation of civilians as civil society groups report increasing attacks on first responders and community volunteers who are currently unable to access the safe passage privileges used by some soldiers to escape the RSF - after enduring 18 months of forced starvation and shelling by the paramilitary group. After 24 hours of silence from the Sudanese military, SAF commander-in-chief Abdelfattah Burhan confirmed whispers of abandonment.

He said: "Everyone is following what happened in Al Fashir. Certainly, the leadership there, including the security committee, estimated that they should leave the city due to the systematic destruction and killing of civilians it was subjected to." Army soldiers have withdrawn from other state capitals in Darfur, including Al Geneina and Nyala.

Soldiers told Sky News at the time that those instructions came directly from the military command. Read more:Key Sudan city falls - what does this mean for the war?'Massacre' in Sudan kills at least 53, including children In Kutum, one of the first towns in North Darfur to fall in June 2023, army soldiers were accused of cutting deals with the RSF who carried out ethnically-motivated attacks against civilians in the aftermath..