Tens of thousands of people are believed to have escaped from the violence-wracked city of el-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region.

Over 62,000 people are thought to have fled the el-Fasher area between Sunday and Wednesday, according to the United Nations.

But far fewer have made it to safety in nearby Tawila, about 40 miles (67 kilometres) away from el-Fasher.

The displacement hub there is managed by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

It has put the number of arrivals at around 5,000, raising fears over the fate of tens of thousands of the other displaced.

The displaced and exhausted men and women that did arrive in Tawila brought with them stories of the horror they experienced on the way.

They spoke of surviving beatings, being shot at and walking through streets littered with dead bodies before they made it to safety.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group, captured the key city of el-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months.

Witnesses have reported fighters going house-to-house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults.

Many victims died of gunshot wounds in the streets, some while trying to flee to safety, some of the displaced in Tawila recounted.

Fatima Abdulrahim, 70, fled el-Fasher with her grandchildren a few days before it was captured to escape the siege.

She described a harrowing journey out of the town, hiding in trenches, dodging bullets and gunmen behind walls and empty buildings.

She walked for five days to reach Tawila.

Along the way, she said she witnessed militiamen shoot and kill young men trying to bring food into the besieged el-Fasher.

The road was littered with bodies of people killed and injured, unable to move.

"We covered the eyes of the young children who were scared so that none of them would see the bodies of the deceased," she recounted.

Groups of gunmen are also reported to have killed at least 460 people at a hospital in the city, attacking it in several waves.

They abducted doctors and nurses, then gunned down staff, patients and people sheltering there, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Many details of the hospital attack and other violence in the city have been slow to emerge, and the total death toll remains unknown.

The fall of el-Fasher heralds a new phase of the brutal, two-year conflict between the RSF and the military in Africa’s third-largest country.

El-Fasher was the Sudanese military’s last stronghold in Darfur, and its fall secures the RSF’s hold over most of the large western region.

That raises fears of a new split in Sudan, with the military holding Khartoum and the country's north and east.

The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures.

Aid groups, however, say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher.

The war has displaced more than 14 million people and fueled outbreaks of diseases believed to have killed thousands.

Famine has been declared in parts of Darfur, a region the size of Spain, and other parts of the country.