The horrors of Sudan continue on, and further light is shed upon the darkness. A massacre took place in the city of El Fasher, in which 450 people were butchered. Women were also taken, selected and dragged away. As we read in the New York Times:

“There were bodies of men and women everywhere — some people were run over by vehicles,” said Saeeda, a 28-year-old woman who reached Tawila, the aid area 40 miles from El Fasher. “While we were on the road, they took girls from our group — choosing them and dragging them away.”

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Now, hundreds are arriving to Tawila with bullet wounds and many bear the signs of torture, according to local medics. Children — presumably orphaned along the way — are often being deposited not by their parents, but by other escaping strangers. And there is grave concern for the thousands unaccounted for.

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“The treatment was brutal — there were beatings, executions. Some people were taken away just because they were black,” said Nasreldin, who managed to make it on a truck to Tawila with his child after telling a group of women about his wife’s death. “We also left behind a family of about eight people, all of them wounded.”

“Anyone who leaves El Fasher is considered an enemy to them,” he said.

Aid groups warn that thousands are still trapped inside El Fasher, where witnesses described widespread executions and routine shellings. In one of the most alarming accounts, the World Health Organization verified an attack on the city’s last-functioning hospital in which more than 450 people had been killed.And on Monday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the leading international authority on hunger crises declared a famine in city

“When they entered the hospital, they executed some people, others managed to hide and the attackers didn’t find them,” said Saeeda, who was sheltering at the hospital after her house had been shelled. When she left, she said, “there were bodies everywhere,” and “shelling, fighting and many dead people, either from explosions or gunfire.”

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“As long as you’re black, they assume you’re a soldier, or belong to the former regime,” Nasreldin said.

Escaping El Fasher involves an arduous journey stalked by gunmen and riddled with “extortion, arbitrary arrests, detention, looting, sexual violence, and harassment” according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Many face worsening hunger along the way, surviving on animal feed.

The latest abuses have drawn condemnations from Western capitals and international organizations, but few officials have been willing to openly criticize the United Arab Emirates for its role in backing the R.S.F. The Emirates is a key strategic ally of Washington and other Western countries.

In Washington, some congressional leaders have renewed calls for a pause on arms sales to the Emirates until it stops arming the paramilitary in Sudan.