Cairo (AP) – Sudanese authorities said that many bodies were found on Sunday at the bottom of a well in the capital, Khartoem, a few days after the army had cleared the area from a notorious paramilitary group.
The bodies of 11 people, including women and children, were found on Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa district of the city, according to the police.
Colonel Abdul-Rahanan Mohamed Hassan, head of the field team of the civil defense in Khartoem, said that a search for the area was mounted after residents reported that they found a dead body in the well.
“We found different characters (bodies), men and women, adults and children in these well,” Hassan said, adding that the authorities were still going to the well.
The police say that the victims were killed by the rapid strict forces before they were thrown into the well when the paramilitary force checked the area. Earlier this month, the army recaptured the area as part of its radical progress in Khartoem and the sister city of Omdurman.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
Afraa Al-Hajj Omar, a resident of the nearby Hajj Youssef district, said that the RSF killed many people in the area and left their bodies on the street for days. She said that many bodies were thrown into the well. “They robbed us, hit us and tortured us,” she said.
Sudan was immersed in chaos in April 2023 when the simmering tensions between the army and the powerful paramilitary rapid spotlights exploded in open warfare throughout the country.
At least 20,000 people were killed, although the number is probably much higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people out of their houses and pushed parts of the country to the famine.
The battles that have destroyed Khartem and other urban areas is characterized by atrocities, including mass rape and ethnically motivated murders that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international law groups.
The war has been intensified in recent months, whereby the army makes steady progress at the RSF in Khartoem and elsewhere in the country.
