With a scarf wrapped tightly around his eyes so he couldn’t see, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters stuck a syringe into Adam’s hand and took his blood.
“I don’t know how much they took,” the 35-year-old Sudanese resident of el-Fasher, the North Darfur state capital that was taken by the RSF at the end of October, told Middle East Eye.
“I was afraid that they might take it all and that I would die. But I had no way to resist or to flee. I was tied down and there were soldiers outside, carrying weapons and ready to kill anyone.”
In the process of taking el-Fasher, which had been under siege for over 550 days, the paramilitary RSF raped, executed and held to ransom large numbers of civilians.
The war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which began in April 2023, has driven a third of Sudan’s people from their homes and is considered the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.
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Minni Minnawi, the former rebel commander and governor of Darfur, who now sides with the SAF, told MEE this week that the RSF killed at least 27,000 people in three days in el-Fasher in late October.
Now, following interviews with multiple victims, eyewitnesses, aid workers and diplomatic sources, MEE can reveal that RSF fighters have forcibly taken blood from civilians in North Darfur.
Adam, who had to use a different name for security reasons, was arrested by RSF fighters on 26 October close to el-Fasher airport. “They put us in one of the hospitals then they moved us to the commander’s house, where we stayed for a week,” he said.
‘I saw containers full of blood in a place that seemed like a small clinic. There were many beds separated by curtains, with RSF soldiers withdrawing blood from the victims’
– Adam, el-Fasher citizen
During his days in captivity, RSF soldiers took blood from him. “When they finished withdrawing blood from me, after a really long period of time they’d allow me out of the room,” he said.
It was then that he realised he wasn’t alone and that the house he was being held captive in was operating as a makeshift blood bank.
“I saw containers full of blood in a place that seemed like a small clinic. There were many beds separated by curtains, with RSF soldiers withdrawing blood from the victims, who were people fleeing el-Fasher,” Adam said. He counted more than 50 people who were subjected to this procedure.
In the commander’s house, Adam said that he and dozens of others taken captive by the RSF were forced to cook, clean and do laundry for the soldiers. “When we finished the day’s work, they kept me inside a small, dirty bathroom with one other person, who I didn’t know. We had to stand up until the morning because it was so small.”
After a week in captivity, he was told, as many other RSF captives have been, that if he wanted to be released, he would have to pay a ransom.
He knew, though, that securing the ransom might not mean freedom. Others who had found the money had been asked to pay again. “At this point, me and two others decided to escape and in one day we used the night to get out of the toilets and flee,” Adam said.
“It was a hard trip as we needed to walk for many hours in the night and we were all very fatigued because of the blood withdrawal and bad food we had been forced to eat,” he told MEE.
Adam fainted many times on the road, but he and his two companions made it to Tawila, a town to the west of el-Fasher that now hosts 650,000 civilians and over 300 foreign aid workers. It was from there that he spoke to MEE.
Blood on the road
The removal of blood was not confined to makeshift detention centres in the city of el-Fasher.
Other victims and aid workers told MEE that RSF soldiers arrested people on the road from el-Fasher to Tawila and withdrew their blood then and there.
“I was arrested with two of my cousins as we fled for Tawila,” one Sudanese resident of el-Fasher, who did not want to be named for security reasons, told MEE.
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“They put ropes around us and withdrew our blood. They bring the devices with them and have a small ambulance unit with them in the military vehicles they are using,” the victim said.
“They were laughing as they withdrew the blood, telling us, ‘You’re a slave, don’t worry, you won’t die, we need this for our soldiers’.”
Ahmed, a Sudanese school teacher, told MEE in a phone call that on 27 and 28 October, he saw RSF fighters “withdrawing blood from some civilians and even military personnel arrested with us”.
“That was brutal to see. I don’t know what they are doing with the blood but I think they are storing it for their injured fighters,” he said.
Ahmed and about 450 other civilians, including women, old people and children, were detained at al-Shahid Siraj school for about three days.
“That came after we tried to flee the city to the south and then west from the early morning of 26 October,” he said. “Me and my cousins were moving in the city amid intensive fire. We saw people dying, bodies lying on the streets dead or injured, someone begging for us to help them, but we couldn’t.”
In these moments, Ahmed was sad and afraid, “but everybody was fleeing, no one cared about anything other than escaping that hell”. At one point, as he, his cousins and his friends tried to leave to the west, the RSF appeared in dozens of vehicles to prevent the civilians from escaping.
‘They were laughing as they withdrew the blood, telling us, ‘You’re a slave, don’t worry, you won’t die, we need this for our soldiers’
– RSF victim
“The was one of the moments we understood that this is a genocide,” Ahmed said.
From the school, Ahmed was moved to the house of an RSF commander, where the fighters blackmailed him and his cousins, telling them to pay a ransom.
“We agreed with the RSF soldiers to pay around 20 million Sudanese pounds (more than $7,000) for me and the other two persons,” Ahmed stated.
“As they agreed to release us, we asked them to let us go back to the school to get our luggage, but when we got there we found that none of the 400 people we had left behind were there.”
When Ahmed asked an RSF fighter where these civilians were, he was told not to ask again. “I realised they had assassinated them,” he told MEE.
‘Most brutal act’
Other sources, including local and international aid workers and organisations monitoring Sudan’s war, have confirmed that the RSF has taken blood from civilians in North Darfur.
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A Sudanese aid worker, who has worked in Darfur for many years, told MEE that he had seen many cases of young people suffering because of blood being withdrawn.
“It is one of the most brutal acts of the RSF,” he said.
“They detain those who are attempting to flee el-Fasher and take their blood. This kidnapping has also happened along the road and they suffer from blood withdrawal, they are thirsty, hungry and have witnessed atrocities they will not forget.”
An international aid worker, who could not be named for security reasons, said that before the fall of el-Fasher in late October, they had seen cases of blood being withdrawn by RSF fighters in Zamzam, a camp for internally displaced people.
“We heard that these incidents were recurring after the fall of el-Fasher… We can’t track the huge numbers of violations that continue to take place in and around el-Fasher,” the aid worker said.
