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Satellite images from Sudan have played a crucial role in uncovering the atrocities committed during paramilitaries' takeover of the last army stronghold in the western Darfur region.In an interview with AFP, Nathaniel Raymond of Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) said the aerial images were the only way to monitor the crisis unfolding on the ground in the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.On October 26, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been fighting a brutal war with Sudan's army for more than two years, claimed full control of the city they had besieged for nearly 18 months.Close-up satellite images have emerged showing evidence of door-to-door killings, mass graves, red patches and bodies visible along an earthen berm -- findings consistent with eyewitness accounts.On October 28, HRL published footage from El-Fasher's maternity hospital showing "piles of white objects" that were not present before and measured between "1.1 to 1.9 metres" -- roughly the size of human bodies lying down or with limbs bent.It said there were "reddish earth discolourations" on the ground nearby that could have been blood.The following day, the World Health Organisation announced the "tragic killing of more than 460 patients and medical staff" at the hospital.The images released by HRL, which had been tracking the situation in El-Fasher throughout the siege, became "a spark plug for public outrage", said Raymond.Since the start of the siege, HRL has been alerting the United Nations and the United States to developments on the ground, with its reports becoming a reference point for tracking territorial advances in the area.Population movements, attacks, drone strikes and mass killings have been closely monitored in the city, where access remains blocked despite repeated calls to open humanitarian corridors.Satellite imagery has become an indispensable tool for non-governmental organisations and journalists in regions where access is difficult or impossible -- including Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.Several companies specialising in satellite imaging scan the globe daily, hindered only by weather conditions.Depending on the sensors onboard, satellites can clearly distinguish buildings, vehicles and even crowds.HRL then cross-references the images with other material including online footage, social media and local news reports, according to Yale's published methodology.Raymond said that after El-Fasher's fall paramilitaries "started posting videos of themselves killing people at the highest volume they ever had", providing more material for analysis.The team cross-checked these videos with the limited available information to identify, date and geolocate acts of violence using satellite imagery.Raymond said the lab's mission is to raise the alarm about the atrocities and collect evidence to ensure the perpetrators of war crimes do not escape justice.He referenced similar aerial images taken after the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which eventually helped bring charges against former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic.An international tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment for war crimes and genocide.The images from El-Fasher have triggered international outcry.The prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court said on Monday that the atrocities there could amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.The public outrage was followed by a significant reduction in the amount of footage posted by paramilitaries on the ground, according to the HRL.Of the videos still being shared, "very few, if any, have metadata in them", said Raymond, who noted that the researchers had to count the bodies themselves.He said they were not counting individual remains but tagging piles of bodies and measuring them as they get bigger.He added, however, that the researchers' workload has not decreased with the reduction in videos. Instead, they are now focusing on the grim task of tracing "the perpetrator's transition from killing phase to disposal"."Are they going to do trenches? Are they going to light them on fire? Are they going to try to put them in the water?"

Darfur city fell to paramilitary force after long siegeFate of many of those who remained in El-Fasher is unclearWitness says he saw bodies strewn along the roadAt a clinic in Sudan's North Darfur where dozens of bony children lie on cots and men with bandaged wounds await surgery, patients described a desperate escape from the city of El-Fasher as it was captured last week by a paramilitary force.They are among up to 10,000 people who arrived in the town of Tawila after fleeing the capture of nearby El-Fasher by the Rapid Support Forces, and are now being treated at the clinic run by international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres. Famine-stricken El-Fasher was the final stronghold of the Sudanese army in the vast, western Darfur region before it fell to the RSF after an 18-month siege. Witnesses have reported mass killings following the RSF takeover and many of El-Fasher's residents are unaccounted for. The city's capture marked a turning point in a two-and-a-half-year-old war between the RSF and the army. The siege had cut off food supplies, forcing many locals to eat animal feed as they sought shelter from drones and shelling.**media[377473]**In addition to those who reached Tawila, more than 60,000 others are believed to have escaped El-Fasher, according to the International Organisation for Migration, though their whereabouts are unclear. As many as 200,000 people may still be trapped inside the city, according to estimates of the city's population towards the end of the siege. The head of the RSF has called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations will be prosecuted. Rights groups and U.S. officials have accused the RSF and allied militias of ethnic cleansing in Darfur earlier in the conflict.The dire conditions inside El-Fasher were described by two patients at the MSF clinic, in accounts obtained by a local journalist who has previously provided verified material for Reuters.**media[377472]**One, who gave her name as Fatuma, said she was entrusted with the care of three children orphaned when their parents and brother had been killed by a drone strike as they fetched a meal.The youngest, a thin infant just 40 days old, lay crying in her arms. His sister, sitting nearby, had suffered a leg injury when shrapnel hit her as she ran into a dugout shelter.**media[377468]**Fatuma took the children out of the city on a donkey cart with other injured people just before El-Fasher fell, but came across RSF soldiers on the road. "They made us lay the baby on the ground and made all of us get down on the ground, and took everything we had," she said. She was eventually able to bring the baby to the MSF clinic.Some 170 other children arrived in Tawila unaccompanied, said Sylvain Penicaud, MSF project coordinator, and all the children screened by the agency were malnourished. "People are arriving extremely emaciated," he said. On Monday, a global hunger monitor found that El-Fasher had been experiencing famine prior to its fall, conditions expected to persist until January. Mouna Hanebali, another member of the MSF team, said the clinic received almost 1,000 trauma cases stemming from attacks on the road, but also from inside El-Fasher. The city's last-standing hospital was under constant attack and deprived of antibiotics and gauze, leading to unstable fractures and infected wounds that need new surgeries. A second patient, Abdallah, said he had escaped El-Fasher amidst intense shelling and gunfire on the day of the takeover."People left in chaos, carrying children, some in wheelbarrows, some on donkey carts, some on their feet," he said. "No one walking around was untouched, everyone was injured." Abdallah, awaiting surgery in the MSF clinic after being shot multiple times, said he saw what he estimated to be more than 1,000 bodies on the road.**media[377471]**"Some were killed by thirst, some by exhaustion, some by their injuries, the bleeding," he said. Reuters could not independently verify his account.With only a fraction of those who remained in El-Fasher arriving in Tawila, medical supplies are still plentiful but water and latrines less so, the MSF staff said. Cholera had ravaged Tawila during the rainy season, and Penicaud said a new case had been recorded on Sunday, though it was unclear if it was isolated or the result of a new outbreak of the disease.

Over 36,000 Sudanese civilians have fled towns and villages in the Kordofan region east of Darfur, according to the UN, as the paramilitary warned that its forces were massing along a new front line.In recent weeks, the central Kordofan region has become a new battleground in the two-year war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).Central Kordofan is strategic because it is located between Sudan's Darfur provinces and the area around the capital Khartoum.The widening of the war comes just over a week after the RSF took control of El-Fasher -- the army's last stronghold in Darfur.The RSF has set up a rival administration there, contesting the pro-army government operating out of the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.In a statement late Sunday, the UN's migration agency said an estimated 36,825 people have fled five localities in North Kordofan between October 26 and 31.Residents on Monday reported a heavy surge in both RSF and army forces across towns and villages in North Kordofan.The army and the RSF, at war since April 2023, are vying for El-Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital and a key logistics and command hub that links Darfur to Khartoum, and hosts an airport.The RSF claimed control of Bara, a city north of El-Obeid last week."Today, all our forces have converged on the Bara front here," an RSF member said in a video shared by the RSF on its official Telegram page late on Sunday, "advising civilians to steer clear of military sites".Suleiman Babiker, who lives in Um Smeima, west of El-Obeid, told AFP that following the paramilitary capture of El-Fasher, "the number of RSF vehicles increased"."We stopped going to our farms, afraid of clashes," he told AFP.Another resident, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal, also said "there has been a big increase in army vehicles and weapons west and south of El-Obeid" over the past two weeks.Awad Ali, who lives in al-Hamadi on the road linkinig West and North Kordofan, said he has seen "RSF vehicles passing every day from the areas of West Kordofan toward El-Obeid since early October".Kordofan is a resource-rich region divided administratively into North, South and West Kordofan.It "is likely the next arena of military focus for the warring parties," Martha Pobee, assistant UN secretary-general for Africa warned last week.She cited "large-scale atrocities" perpetrated by the RSF, adding that "these included reprisals against so-called 'collaborators', which are often ethnically motivated."She also raised the alarm over patterns echoing those in Darfur, where RSF fighters have been accused of mass killings, sexual violence and abductions against non-Arab communities after the fall of El-Fasher.At least 50 civilians, including five Red Crescent volunteers, were killed in recent violence in North Kordofan, according to the UN.Both the RSF, descended from Janjaweed militias accused of genocide two decades ago, and the army face war crimes allegations.The United States under Joe Biden in January this year concluded that "members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan".But international action on Sudan has largely been muted and peace efforts have failed so far.The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million more and created the world's largest displacement and hunger crises.

Thousands of civilians remained trapped in Sudan's stricken city of El-Fasher, with fears growing for their safety, the United Nations and local groups said on Monday, after paramilitary forces claimed control of the army's last stronghold in the western Darfur region.Since May 2024, El-Fasher has been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been fighting a brutal war with Sudan's army for over two years.Footage shared by pro-democracy activists on Monday purportedly showed dozens of people lying dead on the ground alongside burned-out vehicles.AFP was unable to contact civilians in the city, where the Sudanese Journalists' Syndicate says communications, including satellite networks, have been cut off by a media blackout.The syndicate expressed "deep concern for the safety of journalists" in El-Fasher, adding that independent reporter Muammar Ibrahim has been detained by RSF forces since Sunday.The RSF said on Sunday they had seized control of the city, but the army and its allies did not respond to requests for comment.If confirmed, the city's capture would mark a significant turning point in Sudan's war, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 12 million people since April 2023.It would give the RSF control over all five state capitals in Darfur, consolidating its parallel administration in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur.Such a shift could potentially partition Sudan, with the army holding the north, east and centre, and the RSF dominating Darfur and parts of the south."This represents a terrible escalation in the conflict," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in answer to an AFP question on Monday, adding that "the level of suffering that we are witnessing in Sudan is unbearable".Around 260,000 civilians, half of them children, remain trapped in El-Fasher without aid, where many have resorted to eating animal fodder.Despite RSF assurances of civilian protection, the local resistance committee accused the paramilitaries of committing atrocities, saying that since Sunday, innocent civilians had suffered "the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing."A video circulated by the RSF appeared to show fighters detaining dozens of men in civilian clothing accusing them of supporting the army and the Joint Forces.Fighting, pro-democracy activists said on Sunday night, continued "in the vicinity of El-Fasher airport and several areas west of the city," with a "complete absence of air support", citing failures by the army and its allies to protect residents.The army-aligned governor of Darfur called on Monday for the protection of civilians in El-Fasher and demanded "an independent investigation into the violations and massacres carried out by the militia away from public view."The UN last month voiced alarm over potential massacres targeting non-Arab communities in El-Fasher, similar to those reported after the RSF captured the nearby Zamzam camp in April.The United Nations's migration agency said 2,500 to 3,000 people fled El-Fasher on Sunday, seeking safety within the city or westward to Tawila and Mellit towns.Sudan's de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, appeared publicly on Sunday night but only for a meeting with the Turkish ambassador in Port Sudan.The army-led Transitional Sovereignty Council said they discussed the "siege imposed by the terrorist Rapid Support militia on El-Fasher."Tom Fletcher, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), called for safe passage for civilians trapped in the fighting.Access to the city remains severely restricted due to ongoing combat.Since August, the RSF have intensified artillery and drone attacks on El-Fasher, gradually eroding the army's last defensive positions.Despite repeated international appeals for a ceasefire, with both the RSF and the army accused of committing atrocities, neither side has shown willingness to compromise.Representatives from the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates met in Washington on Friday to plot a path towards "peace and stability in Sudan" and a transition to civilian rule, according to a statement by US senior advisor for Africa Massad Boulos.But the meeting appeared not to yield any tangible progress."It is clear that... it is not only a Sudanese problem, with the army and Rapid Support Forces fighting each other," Guterres said."We have more and more an external interference that undermines the possibility to a ceasefire and to a political solution."