Crawling to escape slaughter, people flee Sudan paramilitary group on their hands and knees

Malnourished people are crawling through the desert on their elbows and knees in fear of being caught by fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Malnourished and dehydrated people are crawling through the desert on their elbows and knees in constant terror of being caught by fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), humanitarian organizations have warned.

The journey from the RSF-controlled city of el-Fasher to the town of Tawila is just 30 miles, but nonetheless perilous as gunmen rove around, robbing people, taking them hostage and in some cases slaughtering them by the dozen, the organizations say.

Under international pressure, the RSF said Thursday that it was willing to engage in a U.S.-brokered humanitarian ceasefire. But the Sudanese military, which it has been fighting since April 2023, has yet to agree to a truce, and the State Department has said it is still working to get both parties to agree to a pause in the fighting amid warnings from the humanitarian organizations that the northeast African nation is returning to its genocidal past.

While talks are ongoing, eyewitness accounts, videos shared to social media and an analysis of satellite imagery that has shown pools of blood visible from space have revealed the scale of the killing in the region and the increasing use of drone strikes by both sides as they seek to gain an advantage on the battlefield.

Images of a former children’s hospital in el-Fasher show the appearance of new disturbed earth consistent with a mass grave from Oct. 30, top left, to Nov. 3, bottom right.Yale Humanitarian Research Lab / VantorHanaa Abdullah Musa said RSF fighters detained her brother at one of several checkpoints she came across as she made her way to Tawila, which is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.