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, Reuters reported.

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 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."