El Fasher , May 18(Darfur 24)
Army Military Intelligence in the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, carried out a massive arrest campaign against civilians under the pretext of their cooperation with the Rapid Support Forces.
Since May 10, the city of El Fasher has witnessed violent battles between the army and its allied armed movements on the one hand, and the Rapid Support Forces and the militias cooperating with them on the other, in which heavy weapons and indiscriminate artillery shelling were used.
The arrest campaign, which began yesterday, Thursday, and today, Friday, included Professor Abdullah Musa Yaqoub, Director of El Fasher University, and Dr. Issa Dawoud, Head of the Center for Call, Guidance, and Reconciliation at El Fasher University, and they were later released.
Yacoub said in an audio recording that he was arrested by intelligence from the mosque after receiving information about the presence of a sniper in the mosque’s minaret.
He added: “They fired heavy bullets into the minaret, and when they found nothing, they took me to the counter-intelligence headquarters and released me after half an hour.”
A number of citizens revealed that their relatives were arrested on charges of cooperation and coordination with the Rapid Support Forces in the southern neighborhoods of the city.
Aisha Adam Ahmed told “Darfur 24” that her husband was arrested from his home in the Al-Nasr neighborhood on Friday morning by individuals in civilian clothing using military vehicles, including armed movements, and they took him to an unknown destination.
One of the eyewitnesses, who preferred to withhold his name, confirmed to “Darfur 24” that the Military Intelligence, on board three four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying individuals in civilian clothes, launched an arrest campaign, as it works to monitor and follow up on people and arrest them on charges of cooperating and coordinating with the Rapid Support and providing them with coordinates and the locations of the army forces and movements. .
He said that last week, the city witnessed the arrest of dozens of civilians without any response from the media.
A military source reported that there was a campaign of arrests among civilians, and said that military intelligence personnel arrested 12 people with close ties to the Rapid Support Forces who admitted to corresponding with field commanders to direct strikes in places where the army and the joint force were gathered and based, in addition to arresting a number of armed elements who had infiltrated the city by various means of monitoring and follow-up. Via Wi-Fi devices.
Army Intelligence asked the owners of Internet stores via Starlink satellite devices in the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, to close their stores and not operate the devices until further notice.