Shelling by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed at least seven civilians and wounded 71 others in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, on Saturday, August 30, 2025, according to medical sources and local doctors. The attack, described by the Sudanese Doctors Network as a “massacre,” marks the fiercest offensive yet on the besieged city, which has become the last major urban stronghold under army control in Sudan’s vast Darfur region.
The RSF, a paramilitary group that evolved from the Janjaweed militias accused of genocide in the early 2000s, has escalated its campaign to seize El-Fasher in recent weeks. Paramilitary forces launched intense artillery barrages and ground incursions into densely populated neighborhoods, the city’s airport, and the famine-stricken Abu Shouk displacement camp. The assault has left hospitals overwhelmed and frequently bombarded, with the local police headquarters reportedly captured by the RSF, according to AFP and Anadolu.
Among those wounded, 22 were reported in critical condition, most suffering from shrapnel injuries. A medical source, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told AFP that the true toll is “likely higher,” as many injured residents have been unable to reach the city’s few remaining operational hospitals due to the intensity of the shelling and the ongoing communications blackout. The attacks struck several neighborhoods in the city’s west, particularly near the airport—a strategic target for the RSF as it seeks to consolidate its hold on Darfur.
El-Fasher has been under siege since May 10, 2024, despite international warnings about the risks of fighting in a city that serves as a crucial humanitarian hub for all five Darfur states. The United Nations estimates that the besieged population—about 300,000 people—has endured severe shortages of water and food for more than a year. Famine was officially declared last year in three displacement camps around El-Fasher, and the UN warned it could spread to the city itself by May 2025. Due to a lack of comprehensive data, an official famine declaration for the city has not yet been made, but nearly 40 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished, with 11 percent severely so, according to humanitarian workers cited by AFP.
In the face of these dire shortages, many residents have resorted to eating animal fodder, and desperate attempts to escape the city into the surrounding desert frequently end in death from exposure, starvation, or violence. Satellite imagery released by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab revealed that the RSF has constructed more than 31 kilometers of berms—raised earth barriers—around El-Fasher, effectively "creating a literal kill box," as described in their report. The imagery also showed munitions impact damage at the city’s water authority, further threatening the already precarious supply of fresh drinking water.
“The pattern of life is ending,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale lab, in an interview with AFP. “They are dying in poverty, crossfire and bombardment and they’re being killed as they’re trying to leave.” The lab’s analysis indicated that the Sudanese army and its allied militias have been confined to less than five square kilometers within the city—the smallest area since the siege began. Satellite images also documented the expansion of local cemeteries in recent months, a grim testament to the rising death toll. “The most worrisome part will be when there’s no one left to dig the graves anymore,” Raymond added.
The Sudanese Doctors Network, in a public statement quoted by Anadolu, denounced the civilian killings as a "massacre," warning that the situation in El-Fasher amounts to “an integrated genocide, involving bombardment, siege, and systematic starvation of residents.” The group held the RSF responsible for the attack and called on the international community and local authorities to take “urgent and immediate action to halt the shelling and open safe humanitarian corridors.” There has been no immediate comment from the RSF regarding these accusations.
Just days before Saturday’s deadly shelling, the Sudanese Doctors Network reported that 24 people were killed and 55 injured in RSF artillery attacks targeting a marketplace and the Awlad al-Rif neighborhood in El-Fasher. Local committees and authorities have repeatedly accused the RSF of responsibility for ongoing artillery attacks and repeated assaults on the city.
The RSF, after being pushed out of Sudan’s capital Khartoum earlier this year, has intensified its campaign to seize full control of Darfur. The group recently announced the formation of a parallel government in the region. If El-Fasher falls, the RSF would control all five Darfur state capitals, consolidating its grip on the region. Experts warn that the city’s non-Arab Zaghawa tribe could face a fate similar to that of the non-Arab Massalit tribe in West Darfur’s state capital of El-Geneina, where UN experts found up to 15,000 people—mostly from the tribe—were killed in 2023 massacres blamed on RSF forces.
Both sides in the conflict—the Sudanese army and the RSF—have been accused of war crimes, but the RSF has drawn particular condemnation for alleged genocide, sexual violence, and systematic looting. In the early 2000s, the Janjaweed militias, which later became the RSF, led a government-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab groups in Darfur, killing an estimated 300,000 people, according to UN figures. “The Janjaweed are about to win the entire genocide that began in the early 21st century,” Raymond told AFP. “And the world isn’t going to do anything about it.”
The war between the Sudanese army and the RSF, which erupted in April 2023, has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced 14 million, according to the UN and local authorities. However, research from U.S. universities puts the death toll much higher, at around 130,000. The ongoing violence and humanitarian catastrophe in El-Fasher have prompted repeated calls from local and international organizations for urgent humanitarian intervention and the opening of safe corridors for civilians.
With hospitals overwhelmed, food and water supplies dwindling, and the threat of further massacres looming, the fate of El-Fasher’s residents hangs in the balance. The city’s siege and the suffering of its people have become a stark symbol of the wider tragedy unfolding in Sudan—a tragedy that, for now, continues largely unchecked.