BBC testifies to the battle for Khartum

The BBC heard evidence of atrocities made by retreating fighters in the fighting for the control of the Sudan Khartum capital.

The city was conducted by the rapid support forces (RSF) since the beginning of the country’s fierce civil war almost two years ago – but the army most of it believes it is on the way to confiscation.

The restoration of the capital would be a huge victory for the military and the turning point in the war, although it did not end the conflict.

In recent weeks, the troops mainly surrounded Khartum, coming from the south after the Central Sudan increased, and clearing urban areas in the north and east, squeezing the rest of RSF in the center.

Large areas of reclamated territory are completely destroyed.

We drove past the block after the block damaged and broken buildings – some of them blackened from fire

The covers in front of them were littered with vanded vehicles, the items of the castor furniture, the contaminated remains of looted goods and other debris.

But even in places that look intact, terror is fresh.

In Hajju Yusuf, Khartum district, east of the Nile River, residents described chaos and violence as RSF fighters that included civilians.

“It was a shock, they came suddenly,” says Intar Adam Suleiman.

Two of her sons, an 18-year-old Muzamil and a 21-year-old mudant, were sitting with a friend. RSF soldiers ordered them inside and then shot them in the back when they entered the gate, says Ms Suleiman.

Muzamila fled with a bullet wound on his leg, but “our friend died instantly,” he told me.

“Then the men wanted to enter the house, and my mother tried to close the door, push and push.

The mudater died the next morning because the blood bank at the hospital was cut off by a long shutdown of electricity, and he could not get the necessary transfusion.

Ms Suleiman says she knew RSF soldiers and was engaged with them earlier to try to de -escalate violence.

One of them said to her, “We came to death, we are people of death.”

She says she said to them, “When you come to death, this is not a place to death.”

But too much death is what Mr. Suleiman saw in this war.

So many people died, she says, “I used to these injuries.”

In several quarters, Osma Mubarak Abdel Karim tells me that she and a group of women got into battle when the Sudanese forces closed.

He says they encountered, retreating RSF soldiers who accused them of the military because they were on the market in the army.

“They shot on the ground around us, at our feet, horribly us,” she says, explaining how they then pulled one woman into an empty house and raped her.

She says the RSF fighter kept the woman under the end and said to her, “Come with us.”

He knocked her weapon, says Ms. Karim.

“And then we heard the shooting, and the man ordered her,” Receive! Do it! “Do it!” Then the fighting around us intensified and we could no longer hear – the bullets fall into this area, so we hid in the house. “

She wipes tears when asked what’s best for her.

“Security,” she says gently, “the best security. They tortured so badly. “

The RSF press secretary denied reports, saying the group had controlled the area for two years “without any serious crimes” and that “massive killings” were registered in the areas taken by the military.

Army and allied militias are accused of conducting extensive atrocities after the restoration of the territory, in particular in the Central State of Gezir.

The UN and we say that both sides committed war crimes, but nominated the RSF for criticizing mass rape and accusations of genocide.

Not only RSF soldiers go on the move.

Higher officials abandoned their homes in a nearby wealthy suburbs.

The RSF Elite laid itself in the creation of Khartum in front of the paramilitary group, and the army joined each other in April 2023 in the Battle of Control.

Carfuries are now terribly blank and carefully looted.

Even RSF deputy commander Abdel Rahim Hamdan poured and the brother’s brother did not lose.

A large blank pool in the yard is scattered.

The sofas in the spacious rooms overturned, broken windows, golden jewelry naked, high waist doors were removed.

The army says that most of the highest RSF leadership is now outside the city and that those who are still fighting for Khartum’s heart are the junior commanders and low -rating soldiers.

We were told that the military was using drones to drop leaflets that urge to leave the militants to leave rather than fight the street.

The samples shown to us were written in Arabic, but also a French, obviously aimed at foreign militants from neighboring Chad.

“Make a weapon, go to civilian clothes and leave the area to save your life,” one says.

In the north, Khartum, closer to the Neil, RSF pushed a few months ago, but calmly breaks the sound of shelling when the army worsens the positions of the group across the river.

Many people here say they finally feel safe enough to sleep at night, but still count great damage.

Zeinab Osman al-Haj showed me the wreckage of his home, telling me that RSF fighters would come at night and break the door if it does not open it.

“They filled their backpacks, and even my food, sugar, my flour and butter, soap, they took it before burning the house, she says.

“It was not a war,” she says, pointing to a bunch of ash, where she once stood the library of her brother-in-law, burned footage in the destroyed bedrooms.

“It was chaos: there was the theft, theft and robbery, that’s all.”

A few streets down we meet Hussein Abbas.

He was almost 70 years old, walking with a cane and dragging a broken suitcase down the empty street to the horizon of burnt and enduring buildings.

He tells us that he had been moved three times from the date of the capital seven days after the war.

“At the moment when I left here, I almost cried,” he says when tears start to roll on my cheeks. “Two years, two years I haven’t seen this place. We suffered a lot, strong suffering.”

Survivors, like Mr. Abbas, are slowly coming back to try to save their homes.

In this terrible war in the army there is a prevailed, but there is still a lot of suffering for the people of Sudan.