Who was once at the back of some of the warfare’s deadliest assaults?

Caution: This text accommodates main points some readers would possibly to find distressing.

For 40-year-old farmer Ali Ibrahim, the nightmare started within the past due afternoon on 5 June, with the sound of heavy guns.

“We had by no means noticed such shelling since we had been younger,” he remembers. “The bombardment lasted for 4 hours, with properties destroyed, screaming youngsters – girls and the aged had been helpless to flee.”

A minimum of 100 civilians had been killed that day within the assault at the Sudanese village of Wad al-Nourah, in step with estimates via volunteers of the native resistance committee.

Mr Ibrahim says the villagers had been unarmed: ”We’re easy farmers. We now have by no means carried guns. We don’t have any enemies. We’re simply voters making an attempt to give protection to our lives.”

The BBC has heard testimonies from a number of survivors who accuse armed males from the Speedy Make stronger Forces (RSF) – the paramilitary crew combating the Sudanese military – of opening hearth and storming the village in two successive assaults, the use of heavy weaponry. Dozens of citizens had been killed or injured.

The alleged choice of deaths on this incident would make it some of the deadliest incidents involving civilians because the warfare between the military and the RSF started in April 2023.

The BBC controlled to talk to a number of survivors of the Wad al-Nourah assault, who’re lately receiving remedy on the Al Managil executive health center the place they had been transferred for remedy.

Newshounds had been additionally ready to analyse the movies they shared.

The health center is situated about 80km (50 miles) from the village, and lots of survivors arrived there hours after the assault. Consistent with their testimonies, the RSF forces additionally attempted to forestall them leaving the village, and looted maximum in their automobiles.

After enduring “hours of terror” all through the bombardment, adopted via frantic makes an attempt to have the opportunity to move the wounded and bury the ones killed via the shelling, the citizens had been “surprised” via a 2nd large RSF assault on their village early the following morning, some of the survivors on the health center instructed the BBC.

“They entered our space, beat me and my siblings, and requested, ‘the place is the gold?’. My little sister was once scared and instructed my mom to provide them the gold.”

This account is in keeping with the ones of alternative survivors, all of whom showed RSF forces had “attacked the village from 3 instructions, entered properties, killed civilians, and looted valuables, together with gold, vehicles, and saved agricultural merchandise”.

Hamad Suleiman, a 42-year-old retail dealer, stated armed RSF warring parties entered his brother’s space and started taking pictures with out caution.

“I went to my brother’s space and located them there… They shot my brother and nephew useless, and some other nephew was once injured and is right here with me within the health center.”

He says he attempted to reason why with the RSF warring parties and requested why that they had killed his circle of relatives.

“I attempted to speak to them, they usually instructed me to recite the Shahada [The Islamic profession of faith that is recited when the feeling of death is near]. They shot me within the hand and fled… they looted the entire vehicles.

“I used to be wounded and could not have the opportunity out for hours.”

The BBC contacted the RSF for his or her reaction to the survivors’ testimonies, and the accusations of assaults, killings, looting and intimidation. We had won no answer by the point of this file’s e-newsletter.

RSF spokesperson Al-Fateh Qurashi issued a video remark on X, previously referred to as Twitter, an afternoon after the incident – denying their forces had focused civilians.

He said that the forces had engaged with parts of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Intelligence – sometimes called ‘Al Mustanfaron’ – a military sporting small guns and aligned with the SAF, who had been within the village on the time of the assault.

The BBC’s fact-finding crew analysed movies supplied via the RSF, which they claimed depicted places and ditchs utilized by Al Mustanfaron in Wad al-Nourah. The research printed those places had been all located out of doors the village, now not inside it.

The research additionally confirmed that individuals of the RSF opened hearth against the village, the use of heavy guns from a couple of mile away.

Wad al-Nourah is very similar to loads of villages scattered throughout Gezira state. Maximum of its citizens paintings in agriculture and industry, and it has a small weekly marketplace the place buyers from neighbouring villages come to shop for and promote cattle and plants.

The RSF took keep watch over of Gezira state, to the south of the capital, Khartoum, in December 2023, and has been accused of sporting out a large number of abuses towards civilians there – which it many times denies.

Gezira state is among the areas maximum suffering from the warfare, with the combating spreading there early on within the warfare. It additionally changed into a safe haven for hundreds of displaced folks fleeing Khartoum and Darfur.

Because the RSF took keep watch over of the world on the finish of ultimate yr, one village after some other has suffered acts of violence.

The RSF proceed to disclaim accusations of warfare crimes equivalent to killing, looting, rape and burning villages – as an alternative pointing the finger at what they name “unruly” folks.

1000’s of folks have died and 10 million had been compelled to escape their properties since April ultimate yr, when Sudan was once thrown into disarray after its military and a strong paramilitary crew started a vicious combat for energy.

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, has referred to as for a complete and clear investigation to discover the cases of the Wad al-Nourah assault.

The villagers, who misplaced dozens of family members, hope an investigation committee might be established, and that the perpetrators might be held responsible – somewhat than escaping punishment as has came about previously in Sudan.

Further reporting via Abdelrahman Abutaleb and Richard Irvine-Brown