The battered city of El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region has become a symbol of the country’s spiraling humanitarian crisis, as harrowing accounts from survivors and mounting evidence from international monitors reveal a campaign of mass killings, starvation, and displacement following its capture by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in late October 2025.
For Ahmad Abdullah, a 47-year-old donkey cart driver from El-Fasher, the ordeal began when the RSF seized control of the city after months of siege. “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,” Abdullah recounted to Egab/Mohammed Adam. But his journey to the displaced persons camp in Tawila, 60 kilometers away, was marked by repeated detentions, beatings, and robberies at the hands of various armed groups. “They beat me savagely until blood poured from everywhere on my body. Then they threatened me with death or ransom,” he said. Ultimately, his poverty may have saved his life: “They demanded I recite the Shahada before they killed me. But one of them said, ‘Leave him. Let him go. He has nothing.’”
Abdullah’s story is echoed by thousands of others who fled El-Fasher only to find themselves in dire conditions at the overcrowded Tawila camp. Many, like Rumaytha Adam, witnessed atrocities along the way. “We found dead bodies along the way. We couldn’t help anyone because we were forced to keep moving in one direction,” she told Egab. “Many of my people died. My brothers died too. The Rapid Support Forces killed everyone with knives—not just from bombardment or bullets.”
Fatima Saleh, another survivor, lost her brother to shrapnel just before escaping. “Many families lost people. Some were killed, others died in the fighting—it was God’s will,” she said. The trauma among the displaced is compounded by acute malnutrition, especially among children and pregnant women. According to Doctors Without Borders, more than 70% of children under five and 60% of over a thousand adults screened in Tawila were acutely malnourished. “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,” said Aline Serin, the group’s head of mission to Sudan.
While survivors struggle to recover, satellite imagery and on-the-ground reports paint an even grimmer picture of what transpired in El-Fasher. Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, described the city as “a mass killing site.” His team’s analysis of satellite images revealed phenomena consistent with the execution of large groups and the disposal of bodies. “Everywhere we look, we are seeing potential phenomena consistent with the execution of large groups of people,” Raymond told Al Jazeera. On November 14, 2025, Yale’s lab identified four new locations in and around El-Fasher where the RSF was disposing of bodies, including the University of Alfashir, the edge of Abu Shouk camp, near al-Hikma Mosque, and at Saudi Hospital, where hundreds were reportedly massacred.
Raymond estimated that 150,000 civilians remain unaccounted for in El-Fasher. “Daily monitoring of city streets shows no activity in markets or water points, but only RSF patrols and many bodies. We can see them charred. So the question is, where are the people and where are the bodies coming from?” he asked. The RSF, ironically, has supplied much of the video evidence of their own crimes, often posting footage of their actions on social media.
The international response has been swift but so far ineffective in halting the violence. The United States, after determining in January 2025 that the RSF was committing genocide, imposed sanctions on the group’s leaders and companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Sudan’s government has accused the UAE of complicity in the genocide, alleging it supplied the RSF with finance and advanced weaponry—a charge the UAE denies, calling the allegations “an abuse of process.” Amnesty International and a UN panel have found credible evidence of UAE involvement, including the transfer of weapons via a field hospital in eastern Chad and the supply of Chinese-made arms. The International Court of Justice dismissed a case against the UAE on technical grounds.
In the wake of the RSF’s capture of El-Fasher, the paramilitary group’s leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), announced an investigation into violations by his soldiers. The RSF released footage showing the arrest of a fighter known as ‘Abu Lulu,’ accused of executing unarmed civilians—a claim BBC Verify confirmed through geolocated footage. However, skepticism abounds. As the UN’s top humanitarian official Tom Fletcher told the Security Council, “There must be accountability for those carrying out the killing and the sexual violence. For those giving the orders. And those providing the weapons should consider their responsibility.”
British Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty called the scale of suffering “unconscionable, often based on ethnicity, women and girls facing sexual and gender-based violence, and there is evidence mounting of defenceless civilians being executed and tortured.” The UN Security Council condemned the assault on El-Fasher, demanded safe passage for fleeing civilians, and reiterated it would not recognize the RSF’s parallel government.
Reports from the Sudan Doctors Network, corroborated by BBC analysis and the World Health Organization, confirm that over 450 civilians, including patients and their companions, were shot dead at Saudi Hospital, the last partially functioning hospital in El-Fasher. “The RSF soldiers went into the wards killing inpatients as well as going to the outpatient areas and killing the people who are waiting to be seen in the clinics—so many people,” said Dr. Mohamad Faisal of the Sudan Doctors Network. The RSF has denied these killings and claims that no hospitals were operational when they seized the city.
The RSF’s offensive, which began in tandem with the capture of El-Fasher, also targeted towns in North Kordofan state, including Kazqil and Bara. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) managed to recapture Kazqil and Um Dam Haj Ahmed on November 14 and 15, 2025, but the broader conflict rages on, with more than 12 million people displaced across Sudan and tens of thousands killed or injured, according to the United Nations.
Despite international outcry and calls for ceasefire, both the RSF and the army have continued to amass troops and equipment, with little sign of a negotiated peace. The war, which began in April 2023, has not only torn apart communities but also exposed deep divisions exacerbated by external actors and the failure to address Sudan’s longstanding issues of exclusion and ethnic tension.
For the people of El-Fasher and beyond, the suffering is far from over. The city stands as a stark reminder of the cost of war and the urgent need for accountability, humanitarian aid, and genuine efforts toward peace.
