By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) -A Sudan Red Crescent official said on Monday that three of its volunteers shown in a video being beaten by a man in military fatigues were among those later killed, saying the incident highlighted the need for humanitarian workers to be respected.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said last week that five of its workers distributing food in the city of Bara in the central state of North Kordofan were killed during the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces’ takeover of the strategic location last week.
The U.N. human rights office has said it is treating the deaths as possible summary executions, amid reports of serious violations in the area and other places captured by the RSF in recent weeks.
A video on social media showed a man interrogating the volunteers wearing red vests and striking them repeatedly with sticks, accusing one of being a soldier. Reuters was not able to independently verify the video.
The Secretary General of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society Aida Elsayed confirmed to Reuters that three of those shown were among five who were later killed.
They were among a larger group of volunteers taken hostage, she said, although some had managed to escape including two from a moving vehicle who were still missing.
“We are here in Sudan to help the Sudanese people with this tragic conflict. So we wish that everyone would respect the Sudanese Red Crescent,” she said in an interview from Port Sudan. The aid group has lost 21 aid workers so far in the two-and-a-half-year civil war.
She did not attribute blame and declined to comment on whether the latest victims were executed.
The RSF has denied allegations of summary executions, previously calling accounts of killings “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters.
Elsayed said its teams from the formerly-besieged city of al-Fashir in western Darfur, which was taken over by the RSF in late October, had arrived safely in Mellit and Tawila. But she voiced concern for thousands of other displaced civilians.
“If they flee the way of the desert, they will die from hunger and thirst,” she said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Editing by William Maclean)
