"They treated us like slaves," says Hussein, a survivor of makeshift prisons where hundreds of people are being held by Sudanese paramilitaries of the RSF who have taken control of the large city of El-Facher.

After an 18-month siege, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took on October 26 this last strategic stronghold that was beyond their control in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan with an area comparable to that of metropolitan France.

Since then, reports and testimonies have multiplied regarding executions, looting, sexual violence, and attacks against humanitarian workers in and around this city in northern Darfur.

To the point where the German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described the situation on the ground this weekend as "absolutely apocalyptic", where telecommunications remain largely disrupted.

Witnesses contacted by AFP reported hundreds of young men arrested by the FSR in and around El-Facher. This was the case of Hussein, arrested along with approximately 200 others by the FSR in Garni, a hamlet 25 km northwest of El-Facher.

"They gathered us together and took us to a nearby area. There, they locked us up in a school. After four days, some were released. But every day, they brought in new people," he testified, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

In this makeshift prison in a school, the detainees were beaten, insulted, and received only one meal a day, he said. "They hit us with sticks and treated us like slaves."

"The price of my life"

In total, more than 65,000 civilians have managed to flee El-Facher, including about 5,000 in Tawila, a town located 70 km to the west, according to the UN, which estimates that tens of thousands of people are still trapped.

"The number of people who have arrived in Tawila is very low (...) Where are all the missing people who have already survived months of famine and violence in El-Facher?" worries Michel-Olivier Lacharité, head of emergency operations at Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

"Based on what the patients say, the most likely, though frightening, answer is that they are killed, held captive and chased when they try to escape," he adds.

Satellite images analyzed Friday by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Laboratory suggest that people have been displaced towards Garni.

Abbas al-Sadek, a professor at El-Facher University, was among those detained there, according to a relative who also requested anonymity.

Shortly before his disappearance, the academic had sent him a video in which he begged him to transfer 900 USD to a bank account.

"This sum is the price of my life," says Mr. Sadek, who was released after payment in this apparent kidnapping for ransom case, in this video viewed by AFP.

"Everyone is looking for a loved one"

Sudan has been torn apart since April 2023 by a war between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, which controls the north and east of the country, including the cities of Port Sudan and Khartoum, and the FSR of Mohamed Daglo, now masters of Darfur (west).

This war raises fears of a new partition of the country, already deprived in 2011 by the independence of South Sudan, and of ethnic violence like in the Darfur conflict of the early 2000s.

Especially since the FSR paramilitaries themselves come from the Janjaweed Arab militias mobilized at the time by the central government to suppress rebel movements in Darfur whose leaders were non-Arab Fur, Massalit or Zaghawa tribes.

A week after the capture of El-Facher by the FSR, many people are still missing. "Everyone is looking for a loved one," summarizes Sylvain Pénicaud, MSF operations coordinator in Tawila.

"The most terrifying thing is hearing how people were hunted down as they fled for their lives or attacked simply because they were Black."

"Dead or alive"

Zahra, a mother of five who has taken refuge in Tawila, told AFP that the RSF abducted her two sons, aged 16 and 20. "They released the younger one, but I don't know if Mohammed (the older one) is dead or alive," she said.

On the road near Garni, Mohammed, a father of four, said he "saw the corpses and wounded abandoned on the spot because their families were no longer able to carry them."

"The RSF robbed us and arrested the young men who were travelling with us. We don't know what happened to them," he says.

Adam, another survivor, said he was arrested with his sons aged 17 and 21 in Garni by RSF who accused him of being a soldier, therefore fighting for the rival forces of General Burhane: "they killed my sons in front of me".