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Men Shot by the Hundreds, Disappeared After Sudanese City Falls to Paramilitaries, Witnesses Say
Displaced Sudanese gather and sit in makeshift tents after fleeing Al-Fashir city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, Oct. 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters’ video. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal
Fighters riding camels rounded up a couple of hundred men near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir at the weekend and brought them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.
One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist known to Reuters in the nearby town of Tawila in the country’s western Darfur region.
“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,’” Ismail said. “Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”
He said he had been bringing food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday – and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account due to the conflict but has verified earlier material obtained from the journalist.
Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.
Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized al-Fashir – the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.
The UN human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.
The RSF, whose victory in al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses – saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.
RSF SAYS MEN REMOVED FOR INTERROGATION
Reuters has verified at least three videos posted on social media showing men in RSF uniforms shooting unarmed captives and a dozen more showing clusters of bodies after apparent shootings.
A high-level RSF commander called the accounts “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters “to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir.”
The RSF’s leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said, adding that the RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organizations to assist those who remained.
He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians had been taken away for interrogation. “There were no killings as has been claimed,” the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.
The RSF’s capture of al-Fashir entrenches the geographical division of a country already reduced by the independence of South Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war.
In a speech on Wednesday night, RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations will be prosecuted. He appeared to acknowledge reports of detentions by ordering the release of detainees.
Most of the fighters holding back the RSF advance in al-Fashir came from the Zaghawa ethnic group whose enmity with the largely Arab RSF fighters dates from the early 2000s, when, as the Janjaweed militias, they were accused of atrocities in Darfur.
Alex de Waal, a genocide expert and specialist on Darfur, said the reported RSF acts in al-Fashir looked “very similar to what they did in Geneina and elsewhere,” referring to another Darfur city the RSF took during the latest war’s early stages as well as the early 2000s conflict.
The US said the RSF had committed genocide in Geneina and the attack is under investigation by the International Criminal Court. The Sudanese army and others accuse the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF, charges the Gulf state denies.
‘WE CAN’T SAY THEY ARE ALIVE’
Mary Brace, a protection adviser at Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO working in Tawila, said those arriving “are women, children, and older men generally,” adding that trucks organized by the RSF have taken some people from Garney to Tawila while others have been taken elsewhere.
The RSF on Thursday posted a video it said showed the provision of food and medical aid to people displaced in Garney. Aid workers said the force may also be trying to keep people in towns it controls to attract foreign aid.
Some 260,000 people were still in al-Fashir around the time of the attack, but only 62,000 have been counted elsewhere, and only several thousand of them in Tawila, which is controlled by a neutral force.
In another of the testimonies obtained and verified by Reuters, Tahani Hassan, a former hospital cleaner, said she fled to Tawila early on Sunday after her brother-in-law and uncle were killed by stray bullets.
On the way, she and her family were apprehended by three men in RSF uniforms who searched them, beat them and insulted them, she said.
“They hit us hard. They threw our clothes on the ground. Even I, as a woman, was searched,” she said, adding that their food and water was also spilled on the ground.
They eventually made it to Garney where the fighters separated women and children from the men, most of whom they did not see again, including her brother and a second brother-in-law.
“We can’t say they are alive, because of how they treated us,” Hassan said. “If they don’t kill you, the hunger will kill you, the thirst will kill you.”
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
