Human rights groups have accused Sudanese government forces of conducting a wave of reprisal killings against civilians and detainees in Khartoum, after videos emerged showing men being dragged through the streets, beaten and shot.
In one video, an emaciated and wounded captive with his left leg bandaged and in a splint was pulled along by jeering soldiers, thrown in a ditch and shot. One of the soldiers knelt down and decapitated him with a knife, holding his head aloft for the others to see.
The video is one of multiple showing revenge killings and summary executions posted online since March 26, when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) commander-in-chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared Khartoum liberated after his troops routed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries from the capital.
The videos, along with witness testimonies, chart killings taking place in southern and eastern Khartoum by armed men in uniform and civilian clothes, apparently searching for RSF stragglers and collaborators as they conduct mop-up operations in the newly captured areas.
Saying he was “utterly appalled” by the emerging evidence of war crimes in Khartoum, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, called for an immediate end to the killings.
“I urge the commanders of the Sudanese Armed Forces to take immediate measures to put an end to arbitrary deprivation of life,” Turk said after a UN review of the evidence last week. It included “multiple horrific” videos, some of which included the killers stating that they were punishing RSF collaborators.
“Extrajudicial killings are serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” Turk said. “Individual perpetrators, as well as those with command responsibility, must be held accountable for such unacceptable actions.”
The civil war erupted in Khartoum in April 2023 when two allies, the SAF under Burhan and the RSF commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, fell out over power-sharing. The violence quickly spread across the country, precipitating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than 12 million people have been driven from their homes and a further 2 million have fled abroad. About 26 million are in urgent need of food and more than 150,000 have died.
The US, leading the humanitarian response, has given more than $2 billion in aid to Sudan since the start of the conflict and in November the foreign secretary, David Lammy, announced that a reinvigorated commitment would double Britain’s humanitarian assistance to Sudan to £113 million.
The RSF, whose allies include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have previously been accused of prime culpability for war crimes, including rape, mass killings and genocide. However, even before the capture of Khartoum by its troops in March, the SAF had faced multiple allegations of war crimes, including the killings of hundreds of civilians in air strikes on markets in the Darfur region.
The most recent killings by SAF units and affiliated groups in Khartoum appear to follow a pattern of reprisals in recently recaptured territory against civilians accused of collaborating with the RSF.
“We have witnessed people beheaded or shot after a brief field trial and others beaten on that day,” one member of Khartoum’s community-run emergency response rooms (ERR), which supply humanitarian aid in the city, told Avaaz, the online activist organisation specialising in rights abuses.
The ERR member, whose name has been withheld to protect their safety, said people accused of collaborating with the RSF, including women, had been paraded around east Khartoum in trucks. Their fate was unknown. The witness said that other civilians, including ERR members, had been listed in social media posts accusing them of collaboration with the RSF and calling for them to be targeted.
In one video, collated by Avaaz, a large, ululating crowd was seen gathering outside a café before a soldier in SAF uniform shot and killed a man in civilian clothing. Avaaz geolocated the incident to a café in Siteen Street, which runs through eastern Khartoum. SAF troops appeared in the area a day after capturing the presidential palace on March 26.
Another video, also believed to have been filmed in Khartoum, showed two men being forced to crawl across a road while being struck with what appeared to be a baton or a machete. A final clip shot in the Mayo neighbourhood of southern Khartoum showed dozens of unarmed men in civilian clothing, their hands bound behind their backs, being repeatedly whipped as they were led along a road by armed soldiers.
Some reports referred to mass killings. Among those being assessed by the UN Human Rights Office, one instance involved at least 20 civilians, including one woman, who were said to have been killed by SAF and affiliated militias in the Janoub al-Hezam area of southern Khartoum.
Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in reports of attacks on civilians in areas previously controlled by the RSF as the SAF advanced on Khartoum. Some of the revenge killings appeared arbitrary, others premeditated. In February, Amnesty International said it had received reports of lists being circulated of supposed “partners of the RSF” that included the names of politicians, activists, medical workers, public prosecutors and members of protest groups.
The killings have happened before a meeting of foreign ministers that will be held in London on April 15, co-hosted by Britain, the European Union, France and Germany, to discuss ways of alleviating the humanitarian crisis and ending the conflict. The conference has been criticised by Sudanese officials aligned to the SAF, who have not been invited, for including the UAE, the main financier of the RSF.
