Ahmad Abdullah believes his poverty likely saved his life.
The 47-year-old was detained, beaten and robbed multiple times while fleeing the Sudanese city of El-Fasher when it was conquered by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group in the last week of October.
Warning: This story contains details of war that readers may find confronting.
Like many people who escaped, he was accosted by groups of gunmen as he walked to the displaced persons camp of Tawila, 60 kilometres away.
"When I first left El-Fasher, I ran into two armed men. One asked what I was carrying. I said I had nothing. He told me to go," Mr Abdullah said.
"After walking a short distance, two men in a four-wheel-drive vehicle attacked me and beat me. They took my money, my phone, my ID document, and a piece of paper where I'd written down my relatives' money transfer numbers. They also took a knife I had, then told me to leave.
"I kept walking when I came across people on camels. They beat me too and left me there."
Mr Abdullah's ordeal continued as he kept walking and was even robbed of lemons he had found at a farm.
"I kept walking when seven men with automatic weapons confronted me," he said.
"They beat me savagely until blood poured from everywhere on my body. Then they threatened me with death or ransom."
Mr Abdullah said his poor status as a donkey cart driver in El-Fasher led a militiaman to take pity on him and prevent his execution.
"They kept beating me, then ordered me to take off my clothes and lie on the ground," he said.
"They demanded I recite the Shahada (the Muslim declaration of faith) before they killed me. But one of them said, 'Leave him. Let him go. He has nothing.'"
Survivors suffering in camp
Many of El-Fasher's residents did not survive the fall of the city to the RSF, which had been besieging the capital of North Darfur since April 2024.
The city was one of the key battlegrounds in Sudan's long-running civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, a conflict which had already included widespread atrocities, with allegations the RSF has committed genocide against ethnic African Sudanese groups.
"I've seen many people killed," Mr Abdullah said, adding his brothers were killed too.
Others were kidnapped, with their families told to pay enormous ransoms to stop them being killed.
Human rights monitors said the RSF killed tens of thousands of people and that many more are still missing.
Rumaytha Adam, 20, was also attacked on her way out of El-Fasher, saying she saw evidence of mass killings in and around the city.
"We found dead bodies along the way. We couldn't help anyone because we were forced to keep moving in one direction. You could only look ahead and keep going until we got here," she said.
"Many of my people died. My brothers died too. The Rapid Support Forces killed everyone with knives — not just from bombardment or bullets.
"They threw themselves on people and killed them."
Multiple survivors in Tawila said they had lost family members.
"Many families lost people. Some were killed, others died in the fighting — it was God's will," survivor Fatima Saleh said.
"I lost my older brother directly before we left. He was killed by shrapnel from an artillery shell."
The charity Doctors Without Borders has set up a clinic in Tawila to treat those fleeing El-Fasher.
The group's head of mission to Sudan, Aline Serin, said many people from El-Fasher, particularly men, had not reached the camps, indicating they are trapped or were killed there.
"(We are seeing) women, children, elderly people. But we also see quite a lot of unaccompanied children arriving in Tawila and a lot of households headed by women," she said.
"Our teams witnessed people arriving in shock, starved, injured; that are arriving weakened and very tired from the trip, and the violence they have experienced in El-Fasher.
"They're reporting mass killings, people being kidnapped for ransom, and they're also reporting lots of people still stranded in El-Fasher."
Many arrivals are also badly malnourished, which is especially high among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
More than 70 per cent of children under the age of five and 60 per cent of the 1,130 adults screened were acutely malnourished, according to the group.
'The whole city is a mass killing site'
The RSF conquest of El-Fasher appears to have been one of the most horrific episodes in a war that has already included many atrocities.
Massacres have been reported inside hospitals, with satellite imagery appearing to show bodies and discolouration on the ground consistent with pools of blood.
Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, leads a team that has analysed satellite images showing the scale of the killings.
"The whole city is a mass killing site," he said.
"Everywhere we look, we are seeing potential phenomena consistent with the execution of large groups of people."
Mr Raymond said the latest satellite imagery suggested the RSF was now collecting bodies and disposing of them.
The RSF has acknowledged atrocities were committed, but said the scale of them is being exaggerated.
In a video from October 30, a media spokesman for the group, Yassin Ahmed Abdullah, said a key perpetrator, known as "Abu Lulu" had been arrested and jailed.
"So that justice and the law could be applied according to established judicial procedures. The arrest was carried out, by the grace of God, in an atmosphere of discipline and professionalism, without any obstacles. And, by the grace of God Almighty, the accused is now in custody," he said in the footage.
In January, the United States found the group was committing genocide and issued sanctions against the group's leaders and companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Sudan's government accuses the UAE of complicity in genocide by supplying the RSF with finance and advanced weaponry.
The UAE has military bases and agricultural operations in Sudan, as well as interests in its gold and other minerals projects.
A UN panel found allegations the UAE was using a field hospital next to an airport in eastern Chad to transfer weapons to the RSF were "credible".
Amnesty International also identified the use of a Chinese-made weapons by the RSF, which it said had been purchased by the UAE.
The UAE denies providing weapons to the RSF.
Its government said the allegations it was complicit in genocide were an abuse of process, and the International Court of Justice case against it was dismissed on a technicality.
