Surviving the Siege: A Doctor's Flight from Darfur's Fallen Stronghold
Surviving the Siege: A Doctor's Flight from Darfur's Fallen Stronghold
CAIRO (AP) — Smoke choked the air, and the streets were littered with the dead. For Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, the frantic dash from building to building through Sudan's burning city of el-Fasher was a race against a setting sun he feared he would never see.
The October assault marked a grim turning point in Sudan's 18-month civil war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally breached the army's last remaining fortress in the vast Darfur region. From the epicenter of the violence, Ibrahim, 28, provides one of the most detailed personal narratives to emerge from the blackout that followed the city's fall.
"We moved from house to house, from wall to wall under non-stop bombardment," Ibrahim told The Associated Press from the relative safety of Tawila, some 70 kilometers away. "Bullets were flying from all directions. It was like judgment day."
Three months later, the full scale of the brutality is coming into focus. United Nations officials, calling el-Fasher a "massive crime scene," estimate only 40% of its 260,000 residents survived the initial onslaught. Thousands were killed, with thousands more wounded. A Doctors Without Borders team visiting this month described a "ghost town," largely emptied of life.
Nazhat Shameem Khan, deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the U.N. Security Council that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in el-Fasher "as a culmination of the city’s siege." She described "organized, widespread mass criminality" used to assert control.
The Collapse of the Last Refuge
El-Fasher's fate was sealed by a broken alliance. The RSF, born from the notorious Janjaweed militias of the early 2000s genocide, was once the army's partner in a 2021 coup. That partnership shattered, plunging Darfur back into a familiar nightmare.
By late October, the RSF—accused by the U.S. of carrying out genocide in the current war—had the strategically vital city surrounded. Civilians, pressed into a shrinking western enclave, were reduced to eating animal fodder. Ibrahim's Saudi Maternity Hospital, the city's last functioning medical center, was down to 11 doctors.
"We worked endless shifts and supplies dwindled to nothing," he said.
The final assault began at dawn on Oct. 26. As shelling intensified, Ibrahim and a colleague fled the hospital on foot. An hour later, RSF fighters stormed the facility, killing a nurse. The World Health Organization reports a second attack two days later killed at least 460 and abducted six health workers.
A Perilous Escape
What followed was a 72-hour odyssey of survival. The doctors darted between corpses, hid in an empty water tank during two hours of shelling, and jumped between rooftops. They witnessed RSF fighters gunning down civilians scrambling over walls and running others down with vehicles.
After finally reaching an army base, Ibrahim helped tend to the wounded with makeshift bandages before joining a moonlit exodus of 200 to Tawila. The group navigated a series of 3-meter-deep trenches dug by the RSF to tighten the blockade. At the final trench, those ahead came under fire; five from the group were killed.
Captivity and Ransom
The ordeal was far from over. On Oct. 27, RSF fighters on motorcycles captured the survivors. After executing two men, they chained Ibrahim and his colleague to motorcycles, forcing them to sprint behind.
Taken to a village, they were interrogated. When their identities as doctors were revealed, the ransom demands began. "They said, 'You are doctors. You have money. The organizations give you a lot of money,'" Ibrahim recalled.
The initial demand was $20,000 each—an astronomical sum in a country where the average monthly salary is $30 to $50. Beatings followed his stunned laughter. After hours of abuse, his colleague agreed to a ransom of $8,000 each. Following a fraught money transfer, they were blindfolded, transported, and eventually abandoned in RSF territory, forcing a final, terrified trek to safety.
‘A Miracle’ of Survival
In Tawila, Ibrahim was reunited with a colleague from the Saudi hospital who had seen Facebook videos of their capture and presumed them dead. "He embraced me and we both wept," Ibrahim said. "He didn’t imagine I was still alive. It was a miracle."
The RSF did not respond to detailed AP questions about the attack or Ibrahim's account. Its commander, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has acknowledged abuses by his fighters but disputes the scale of atrocities.
For Ibrahim and the scattered survivors of el-Fasher, the physical wounds may heal, but the memories of the siege—and the unanswered questions about those left behind—endure.
Reader Reactions:
Mark Thompson, Humanitarian Aid Worker (Nairobi): "This account is devastating but crucial. It corroborates the patterns of systematic violence and extortion we're documenting. The international community's failure to protect civilians and secure humanitarian access here is a moral catastrophe."
Dr. Aisha El-Hassan, Sudanese Diaspora Medical Coordinator (London): "Mohamed's bravery is beyond words. Staying when his family fled, then surviving this—it highlights the impossible choices our medical colleagues face. We must amplify these stories to pressure for safe corridors and accountability."
Col. (Ret'd) James Powell, Security Analyst (Washington D.C.): "The tactical fall of el-Fasher is a major strategic shift. The RSF now controls most of Darfur. This isn't just a rebel victory; it's the fragmentation of the Sudanese state, creating a power vacuum that will fuel conflict for years."
Rebecca Vance, Political Commentator (Online Blog): "Where is the global outrage? Another African city reduced to ashes, another genocide unfolding in plain sight, and the world's response is a collective shrug. The UN's 'concern' is worthless. We are watching the RSF commit crimes with impunity, funded by regional backers everyone is too polite to name."
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AP writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Adam Geller in New York contributed to this report.