fleeing

Aid organisations fear that far fewer people than hoped have been able to leave the besieged Darfur city.

Those who have fled the western city of el-Fasher in wartorn Sudan are recounting scenes of horrific violence at the hands of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as aid workers say they fear only a fraction of the besieged city’s residents have managed to escape.

The RSF has killed at least 1,500 people in el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, since seizing it Sunday – including at least 460 at a hospital in a widely-condemned massacre.

More than 36,000 people have fled since Saturday, largely on foot, to Tawila, a town around 70 kilometres (43 miles) west that is already sheltering roughly 650,000 displaced people.

Hayat, a mother of five children, told the AFP news agency via satellite phone that seven RSF fighters ransacked her home, searched her undergarments and killed her 16-year-old son in front of her.

As she fled with neighbours, “we saw many dead bodies lying on the ground and wounded people left behind in the open because their families couldn’t carry them,” she recalled.

Another survivor named Hussein was wounded by shelling but made it to Tawila with the help of a family carrying their mother on a donkey cart.

“The situation in El-Fasher is so terrible — dead bodies in the streets, and no one to bury them,” he said. We’re grateful we made it here, even if we only have the clothes we were wearing.”

Aisha Ismael, another displaced person from el-Fasher recounted to The Associated Press news agency: “Shelling and drones (attacks) were happening all the time. They hit us with the back of the rifles day and night unless we hid in the houses. At 3 in the morning we sneaked outside the houses till we arrived Hillat Alsheth (area in north Darfur) where we were looted. They left us with nothing, I came here barefoot, even my shoes were taken.”

But aid workers in Tawila say they’re still waiting for most of el-Fasher’s supposed evacuees.

Mathilde Vu, advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which manages the Tawila camp, told the Associated Press “the number of people who made it to Tawila is very small”.

“Where are the others?” she said. “That tells the horror of the journey.”

The United Nations moved to approve a $20 million allocation for Sudan from the Central Emergency Response Fund to help scale up response efforts in Tawila and elsewhere in Darfur, UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

The UN was “horrified” by the slaughter of more than 450 people at Saudi Hospital, where patients, health workers and residents had sought shelter, Dujarric added.

Elderly people, the wounded and those with disabilities remained “stranded and unable to flee the area”, he said.

Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist, told Al Jazeera the massacre of civilians was “most devastating because we in civil society have been warning the international community for over a year about the atrocity risks for the civilian population of North Darfur”.

For 18 months before Sudan’s army withdrew from the city, an RSF siege had trapped hundreds of thousands of people trapped inside without food or essentials.

What’s most “astonishing”, Lewis added, was the ability to see the bloodshed from outer space: Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) reported satellite imagery shows clusters of objects consistent with human bodies and large areas of red discolouration on the ground.

A 24-year-old Honduran man who was fleeing federal immigration agents in Virginia died on a highway after being struck by a vehicle.

The death of Josué Castro Rivera follows recent incidents in which three other immigrants in Chicago and California were killed during immigration enforcement operations under the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Castro Rivera was headed to a gardening job Thursday when his vehicle was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, brother Henry Castro said.

Agents tried to detain Castro Rivera and the three other passengers, and he fled on foot, tried to cross Interstate 264 in Norfolk and was fatally struck, according to state and federal authorities.

Castro Rivera came to the United States four years ago and was working to send money to family in Honduras, according to his brother.

“He had a very good heart,” Castro said Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped by ICE as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and passengers were detained for allegedly living in the country without legal permission.

DHS said in a statement that Castro Rivera “resisted heavily and fled” and died after a passing vehicle struck him. DHS officials did not respond Sunday to requests for further comment.

Virginia State Police said officers responded to a report of a vehicle-pedestrian crash around 11 a.m. Thursday on eastbound I-264 at the Military Highway interchange. Police said Castro Rivera was hit by a 2002 Ford pickup and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The crash remains under investigation.

Federal authorities and state police gave his first name as Jose, but family members said it was Josué. DHS and state police did not explain the discrepancy.

Castro called his brother’s death an injustice and said he is raising money to transport the body back to Honduras for the funeral.

“He didn’t deserve everything that happened to him,” Castro said.

DHS blamed Castro Rivera’s death on “a direct result of every politician, activist and reporter who continue to spread propaganda and misinformation about ICE’s mission and ways to avoid detention.”

Similar deaths amid immigration operations elsewhere have triggered protests, lawsuits and calls for investigation amid claims that the Trump administration’s initial accounts are misleading.

Last month in suburban Chicago, federal immigration agents fatally shot a Mexican man during a traffic stop. DHS initially said a federal officer was “seriously injured,” but police body camera video showed the federal officer walking around and describing his own injuries as “ nothing major.”

In July, a farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic ICE raid at a California cannabis facility died of his injuries. And in August, a man ran away from federal agents onto a freeway in the same state and was fatally struck by a vehicle.

Tareen and Walling write for the Associated Press.

Renewed fighting between rival leaders forces mass exodus across South Sudan’s borders as fears of wider war rise.

About 300,000 people have fled South Sudan so far in 2025 as armed conflict between rival leaders threatens civil war, the United Nations warns.

The mass displacement was reported on Monday by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. The report cautioned that the conflict between President Salva Kiir and suspended First Vice President Riek Machar risks a return to full-scale war.

The commission’s report called for an urgent regional intervention to prevent the country from sliding towards such a tragic event.

South Sudan has been beset by political instability and ethnic violence since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The country plunged into civil war in 2013 when Kiir dismissed Machar as vice president. The pair agreed a ceasefire in 2017, but their fragile power-sharing agreement has been unravelling for months and was suspended last month amid outbreaks of violence among forces loyal to each.

Machar was placed under house arrest in March after fighting between the military and an ethnic Nuer militia in the northeastern town of Nasir killed dozens of people and displaced more than 80,000.

He was charged with treason, murder and crimes against humanity in September although his lawyer argued the court lacked jurisdiction. Kiir suspended Machar from his position in early October.

Machar rejects the charges with his spokesman calling them a “political witch-hunt”.

Renewed clashes in South Sudan have driven almost 150,000 people to Sudan, where a civil war has raged for two years, and a similar number into neighbouring Uganda, Ethiopia and as far as Kenya.

More than 2.5 million South Sudanese refugees now live in neighbouring countries while two million remain internally displaced.

The commission linked the current crisis to corruption and lack of accountability among South Sudan’s leaders.

“The ongoing political crisis, increasing fighting and unchecked, systemic corruption are all symptoms of the failure of leadership,” Commissioner Barney Afako said.

“The crisis is the result of deliberate choices made by its leaders to put their interests above those of their people,” Commission Chairwoman Yasmin Sooka said.

A UN report in September detailed significant corruption, alleging that $1.7bn from an oil-for-roads programme remains unaccounted for while three-quarters of the country faces severe food shortages.

Commissioner Barney Afako warned that without immediate regional engagement, South Sudan risks catastrophic consequences.

“South Sudanese are looking to the African Union and the region to rescue them from a preventable fate,” he said.