United Nations seeks entry to Sudanese city of al-Fasher after reports of atrocities

(Patria) - The United Nations is seeking access to al-Fasher, a hunger-stricken city in Darfur where witnesses have reported mass reprisals following the takeover by the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last month, said UN aid chief Tom Fletcher.

Fletcher told Reuters that providing aid to the city, which will be treated as a "crime scene" for investigations following reports of systematic executions, detentions and rapes, will be a huge task.

For many of those thought to have remained in al-Fasher when the paramilitary RSF took control after a long siege, their fate is still unknown.

Safe passage was needed for aid workers to enter the city and for survivors to leave, Fletcher said in an interview late on Tuesday from N'Djamena in Chad, after a visit to Darfur.

Fletcher said talks with the RSF were "super delicate", but he hopes the UN will gain access in days or weeks, not months. "We will try to get in," he said.

Atrocities of horrific scale

The fall of al-Fasher on October 26 consolidated the RSF's control over the Darfur region in a two-and-a-half-year war with the Sudanese army. The city has been cut off from communications since the RSF offensive.

"There have been mass atrocities, mass executions, mass torture, sexual violence on a horrific scale," Fletcher said. "This is a city that has been under siege for so long that they will need food, water, medicine. There is a huge task ahead of us," he added.

The RSF says reports of atrocities are exaggerated but that it is investigating cases of abuse by its soldiers. The International Criminal Court said it is gathering evidence of alleged mass killings and rapes in al-Fasher.
Although more than 100,000 people are believed to have fled al-Fasher since the RSF takeover, only a fraction have reached the nearby town of Tawila, controlled by neutral forces.

The majority are thought to be in inaccessible villages around al-Fasher.
Securing full access

Fletcher, who visited Tawila, where an estimated half a million displaced people have already taken shelter, described the 350 km journey from there to the border with Chad as "completely dangerous".

Few people had the resources to pass the estimated thirty to forty checkpoints along the route, "which is why it is so urgent that we get full authorisation to operate on a large scale inside Sudan - inside Darfur, Tawila and in al-Fasher," he said.

Fletcher said the delivery of aid would depend on the RSF ensuring safe passage for UN convoys, as well as fleeing civilians, and demanding accountability for fighters who committed crimes.

The UN aid chief also said he spoke last week in Port Sudan with Sudanese army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan about full access to the country. The Sudanese army has in the past placed bureaucratic obstacles to such access.