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TAWILA, Sudan: At a clinic in Sudan’s North Darfur where dozens of bony children lie on cots and men with bandaged wounds await surgery, patients described a desperate escape from the city of El-Fasher as it was captured last week by a paramilitary force.

They are among up to 10,000 people who arrived in the town of Tawila after fleeing the capture of nearby El-Fasher by the Rapid Support Forces, and are now being treated at the clinic run by international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.

In addition to those who reached Tawila, more than 60,000 others are believed to have escaped El-Fasher, according to the International Organization for Migration, though their whereabouts are unclear. As many as 200,000 people may still be trapped inside the city, according to estimates of the city’s population toward the end of the siege. 

The dire conditions inside El-Fasher were described by two patients at the MSF clinic, in accounts obtained by a local journalist who has previously provided verified material for Reuters.

One, who gave her name as Fatuma, said she was entrusted with the care of three children orphaned when their parents and brother had been killed by a drone strike as they fetched a meal.

Fatuma took the children out of the city on a donkey cart with other injured people just before El-Fasher fell, but came across RSF soldiers on the road. 

“They made us lay the baby on the ground and made all of us get down on the ground, and took everything we had,” she said. She was eventually able to bring the baby to the MSF clinic.

A second patient, Abdallah, said he had escaped El-Fasher amidst intense shelling and gunfire on the day of the takeover.

“People left in chaos, carrying children, some in wheelbarrows, some on donkey carts, some on their feet,” he said. “No one walking around was untouched, everyone was injured.” Abdallah, awaiting surgery in the MSF clinic after being shot multiple times, said he saw what he estimated to be more than 1,000 bodies on the road.