UN aid chief Tom Fletcher warned that conditions in Sudan’s al-Fashir have deteriorated into large-scale atrocities, describing the besieged city as an “absolute horror show.” He urged immediate, unhindered access for aid groups as survivors flee with gunshot, torture and sexual violence injuries. Verified videos show close-range shootings and bodies in trenches. The RSF denies targeting civilians. Here are the full details from the UN briefing.
00:00Tom, please, you have the floor, and then we'll take some questions.
00:04It's not a bit of a horror show.
00:20El Fasha, based on the testimonies I heard from many survivors, is basically a crime scene right now.
00:30El Fasha, based on the testimonies I heard from many survivors, is basically a crime scene right now.
00:59One of the clinics that we're supporting, who had seen her own husband killed in front of her, and had escaped, and her neighbor, and had escaped with the malnourished child of her neighbor.
01:09Had had to make that perilous walk to Tawila, going through so many checkpoints where people are being fleeced, they're having everything taken from them.
01:19En route, while she carried this malnourished baby, she had her leg broken by men on one of those checkpoints.
01:27And I think you can probably fill in the rest of that story.
01:31A horror show, absolute horror show, countless stories like that.
01:34It's a sexual violence epidemic, as you know.
01:38And our healthcare partners are reporting that they're getting up to 250 people arriving daily with gunshot and torture wounds.
01:47The second question is, El Fasha, you described it as a crime scene.
01:52The commitments I was seeking from the RSF, and actually from other parties on the ground, are that we get unhindered access to people on the basis of need.
02:01And that this is never politicized.
02:02That we don't go in, of course, with any military accompaniments, and so on.
02:09That we are going in under our own steam.
02:11When and how, and would it even be a humanitarian mission at this point?
02:18In terms of when we get into El Fasha, I wouldn't want to put a deadline on it, because we want to test our conditions and make sure we're confident that they will be met.
02:29But my hope is that this is the work of days and maybe weeks and not of months.
02:34We need to get in absolutely urgently.
02:36I'm not going to somehow stop humanitarian operations and let more people die while I wait for member states, international community to think about blue helmets or other ways of stopping this conflict.
02:53I have to deal with the reality on the ground as we find it.
02:57And that means we'll save as many lives as we can in the conditions in which we're allowed to operate.
03:02Now, I desperately hope that those conditions get better and that there is that sustained international engagement to end this conflict, open up humanitarian space.
03:11But I can't, and the people that we're here to serve can't wait for that.
03:15I can't, and the people that we're here to serve can't wait for that.
03:45And throughout, we look at the circumstances of this crisis and that there are no geometries to go away from thisUNDREanges we're going to the city or guard down.
03:50We're looking at a former guard around now.
03:51We're trying to find that current location, that we're here to come today and we're looking for each other's cuarto of the city, and we're on the ground for our t
04:12We're in Korma, in Darfur, we're very close now to Al-Fasha, which has been the epicenter
04:30of inhumanity in this conflict.
04:33And we're meeting survivors of that conflict who have had to fight so hard just to get
04:38here, moving along that road where there's extortion, there's brutality, there are mass
04:44executions, there are mass rapes, and then they get here and they're in desperate need
04:48of help.
04:49And I do not want the teams responding to that to be responding empty-handed.
04:54I'm hearing too often that people have nothing, that there is no food, there's no water, there's
04:58no medicine.
05:00This is a desperate, desperate situation and the world must respond.
05:08In Korma, I also met with RSF representatives to make clear that we demand full accountability
05:18for the atrocities that have taken place in Al-Fasha, that we insist on full civilian protection,
05:25and that we will be vigilant in protecting civilians, and we demand that of all the parties on the
05:30ground.
05:31And for all the masses, let us do the work that the employees, all Quietcien and the
05:39players which exhibition
05:51are very great, so we can't be really strong but rather it is challenges if we compete.
05:59Man, there are people in the house.
06:02There are people here at the streets,
06:03and we don't have that!
06:05We have that!
06:07We are not here so the people who are all with us.
06:11We are all back in the house,
06:13but we are not here in the house.
06:14The house is standing right here,
06:16from the beginning of the war.
06:19That is why these people are here.
06:21We are υptuous,
06:23and we Boralians are standing right out here.
06:26The war is not over.
06:27We had a war, we had no friends, but we were able to stay there, we were able to live in our near the near future.
06:34We had a lot of 60-60 men in the area, and we had a lot of 10-20 men and said,
06:40if they had children, they would go back to the area and take a look.
06:43That was not what happened, I saw them on the other day.
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