The memories of what happened in el-Fasher were difficult for her to put into words.
“The dead bodies were everywhere – in the streets, inside houses and at the gates of many houses,” Yahya told Al Jazeera. “Wherever you are in el-Fasher, you will see dead bodies scattered.”
Her testimony is one of several accounts from people who fled North Darfur’s capital after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s regular army, captured the city on October 26.
(November 2, 2025)
Days after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, in a violent assault that included the killing of more than 400 people at a hospital, aid groups warn that tens of thousands of civilians are at risk amid continuing violence, including some that may be trapped in el-Fasher and others harmed while fleeing.
(Novemebr 2, 2025)
A total of 70,894 people have been displaced since the RSF took control, it said.
However, less than 6,000 have made it to the nearest camp in Tawila, 65 kilometers (40 miles) away, said Shashwat Saraf, Sudan director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs the camp.
Almost 1,000 people arrived in the last three days, he said.
“The numbers are still very few. We are not seeing the hundreds of thousands that we were expecting. If people are still in el-Fasher, it will be very difficult for them to survive,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Tawila.
“What is unfolding in El Fasher recalls the horrors Darfur was subjected to twenty years ago,” Mr. Fletcher said, referring to the atrocities of the early 2000s that shocked the world and eventually led to International Criminal Court indictments.
“But somehow today we are seeing a very different global reaction – one of resignation,” he continued. “This is also a crisis of apathy.”
“The Sudan crisis is, at its core, a failure of protection, and our responsibility to uphold international law,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Atrocities are committed with unashamed expectation of impunity…the world has failed an entire generation.”
(October 30, 2025)
The United States condemns in the strongest terms the horrific violence occurring in El Fasher. The situation is both tragic and appalling.
We have said this before, and we will say it again – the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have committed genocide.
The RSF has and continues to systematically kill men and boys – even infants – and deliberately target women and children for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. These crimes are ethnically motivated.
RSF militias are targeting civilians as they flee, killing innocent people escaping conflict, and preventing those who remain from accessing life-saving supplies.
The United States condemns these abhorrent atrocities in no uncertain terms. Those responsible should be held accountable, including through sanctions, as noted by the Sudan Sanctions Panel of Experts in its most recent report.
(…)
Colleagues, ending wars is a priority for President Trump, and the United States remains committed to working with our partners and other stakeholders to resolve the crisis.
Together, we are focused on securing an immediate humanitarian truce, halting external support, and advancing a transition to civilian governance.
Since the powerful paramilitary group made a major incursion into the city last week, the UN human rights office has received “horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement,” said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
Speaking from Nairobi to journalists in Geneva, Mr. Magango said numerous testimonies had been received from residents who had fled in terror as the city fell, then “survived the threatening journey to Tawila, approximately 70 kilometres away” – a journey that takes three to four days on foot.
(October 28, 2025)
Middle East Eye has reviewed dozens of video clips and images allegedly taken in el-Fasher since the RSF assault began.
Some were published by the RSF itself; others emerged on social media, particularly Sudanese Telegram groups.
The footage depicts chaotic and bloody scenes, captured by triumphant RSF fighters. Investigations suggest the videos are new.
The Arabic dialect spoken is Sudanese – particularly Darfuri – and the fighters’ dress is consistent with members of the RSF.
(October 28, 2025)
Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.
The agency has received reports of summary executions of civilians trying to escape what was the last Sudanese military government stronghold of El Fasher – with indications of ethnic motivations for killings – and of former combatants who have put down their weapons, which is prohibited under humanitarian law.
“The risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day,” warned UN human rights chief Volker Türk.
“Urgent and concrete action needs to be taken to ensure the protection of civilians in El Fasher and safe passage for those trying to reach relative safety.”
Das sudanesische Ärztenetzwerk teilte mit, RSF-Kämpfer hätten nach ihrem Einmarsch in Al-Faschir am Sonntag Dutzende Zivilisten getötet und Krankenhäuser und andere Gesundheitseinrichtungen geplündert.
Das Darfur-Netzwerk für Menschenrechte berichtete von mehr als 1.000 teilweise willkürlichen Festnahmen.
Since 11 August, the UN has documented the killing of at least 125 civilians in the El Fasher area, including summary executions – although the actual number is likely to be higher.
“The Secretary-General is alarmed at the grave risks of serious violations of international humanitarian law as well as violations and abuses of international human rights law, including ethnically motivated ones,” said Mr. Dujarric.
Meanwhile, supplies are pre-positioned near El Fasher, but the UN and partners continue to face obstacles in moving them into the city.
Some 70 trucks of humanitarian assistance are currently waiting in Nyala, South Darfur, a top official with the UN aid coordination office OCHA said on Thursday in New York.
Mr. Dujarric also noted that repeated attacks on humanitarian personnel and assets in North Darfur have occurred over recent months.
(today)
He said 260,000 civilians remain trapped in the city, facing hunger and disease, with 130,000 children suffering from malnutrition. Al-Amin accused RSF fighters of raping 23 children and killing 1,000 others, whose bodies he said were mutilated.
The RSF has also destroyed six schools and 35 hospitals, according to Al-Amin. He called on the international community to work together to deliver humanitarian aid.
The government’s Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, Salwa Adam Binnia, called for the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 2736, which demanded the RSF halt the siege. She said government relief has been blocked from reaching the city.
(April 10, 2025)
Sudan has told the United Nations’ top court that the United Arab Emirates is breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces
More than a million people in Sudan’s el-Fasher are pleading for protection after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) advanced on the city, killing hundreds of people while on its way.
Multiple sources in and around el-Fasher told Middle East Eye that the RSF is preparing to invade the city, which is the capital of North Darfur state and the only place in western Sudan still held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allies.
The latest attacks, which began on 11 April, saw Rapid Support Forces (RSF)-affiliated forces launch coordinated assaults on Zamzam and Abu Shouk – two of the largest camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Darfur – as well as the regional capital, El Fasher.
Among those killed were 23 children as well as nine humanitarian workers who were operating one of the last remaining health posts.
The group’s deputy leader, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, who is under American sanctions, was greeted by hundreds of cheering people as he arrived at the elaborate event, held at a state-owned convention center in downtown Nairobi.
Mr. Dagalo did not speak at the event, and a promised charter meant to pave the way for a parallel government in R.S.F.-controlled areas was not signed. Officials said they needed another three days to negotiate the terms of the charter with Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the leader of another Sudanese rebel faction, who sat beside Mr. Dagalo.
The latest massacre comes as senior RSF leaders and allied figures arrived in the Kenyan capital to set the wheels in motion for the formation of a parallel government in areas the paramilitary group controls.
Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy commander of the RSF and brother of its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemeti), arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday for the two-day conference.
A political charter “for the government of peace and unity”, as it’s being dubbed, is set to be signed on Wednesday.
Ms. DiCarlo condemned not only the RSF attacks but also the indiscriminate airstrikes by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in civilian-populated areas such as the capital Khartoum and El Fasher, a major city in North Darfur hosting thousands of internally displaced which has been besieged for months by the RSF.
“Both warring parties bear responsibility for this violence,” she stressed.
She added that as the rainy season nears its end, both sides continue to escalate their military operations, recruit new fighters and intensify their attacks, fuelled by “considerable” external support and a steady flow of arms.
“To put it bluntly, certain purported allies of the parties are enabling the slaughter in Sudan. This is unconscionable, it is illegal, and it must end.”
(…)
The situation in Sudan has been in a freefall since the war erupted last April.
It is now the world’s worst displacement crisis, with more than 11 million people driven from their homes – nearly three million among them into neighbouring countries as refugees, according to the UN relief coordinating office, OCHA.
The war has also unleashed a severe hunger crisis, affecting millions.
Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil resources after South Sudan’s separation in 2011. This paper explores the consequences of Sudan’s experience with traumatic decarbonization and how this informs thinking on the durability of systems of monetized political governance: political marketplaces. First, the lasting power of Sudan’s leftover oil shows that even in exceptional cases, where the loss of oil is so abrupt and deep, ruling regimes can cling onto power and maintain their position in the political marketplace. By exploiting the remaining oil resources and tapping into alternative resources, regimes can – at least temporarily – plug gaps in political budgets to maintain the patronage networks that ensure their political survival. Second, new resources, gold in Sudan’s case, do not necessarily change existing <strong>political marketplaces. Sudan demonstrates that even with new political figures at the top, political marketplaces often hold the same attributes as former ones. What new resources do influence, however, is who rises and who falls within a political marketplace. Finally, the paper shows how the fluidity and diversity of regional and international relations and commerce also allow domestic actors to maintain political marketplaces.
(March 9, 2023)
The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution Wednesday renewing an arms embargo and other sanctions imposed over violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region that began in 2004.
Thirteen of the 15 council members voted for the resolution. Russia and China abstained, arguing that the Darfur conflict is largely over.
The resolution also extends the mandate of the U.N. panel of experts monitoring the arms embargo and travel ban and asset freeze on certain individuals. It now runs until March 12, 2024.
„There is no right to go on fighting for power when the country is falling apart,“ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television.
The latest three-day ceasefire — due to expire at midnight (2200 GMT) Sunday — was agreed Thursday after mediation led by the United States, Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the United Nations.
„We woke up once again to the sound of fighter jets and anti-aircraft weapons blasting all over our neighbourhood,“ a witness in southern Khartoum told AFP.
In this conflict frontiers have no significance, control of resources is the primary prize, with forces arising in borderlands seeking their revenge on once contemptuous metropolitan elites. Trafficking networks across swathes of desert are extensions of the “battlespace”, and almost innumerable actors with an axe to grind or an agenda to pursue vastly outnumber those who seek to stop the fighting.
All of this happens in a shadowy penumbra defined by backroom deals, obscure alignments of interests, brutal realpolitik and disinformation. The poor and the weak and the unarmed suffer most, as ever.
(22 February 2023)
Sudan signed the Abraham Accords in January 2021, a step viewed as a condition for US munificence in removing Sudan’s name from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and paving a loans-ridden route for Sudan’s reintegration into the global financial system after decades of exclusion.
Sudan had reached out to Israel a year earlier, when General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – who came to power after countrywide popular demonstrations preceded a 2019 palace coup against former leader Omar al-Bashir – held a meeting in Uganda’s Entebbe with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February 2020.
(April 18, 2023)
Last December, under pressure from Western nations and other African countries, the two agreed to a framework deal that would eventually transition the government back to civilian control.
That led to uncertainty among Sudan’s powerbrokers and civilian leaders, and rising tensions between military factions until on the morning of April 15, fighting broke out between units loyal to Burhan and Hemedti’s RSF.
Khartoum – Sudan’s army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who became the face of endless military rule in Sudan with his 2021 coup, is now locked in battle with his second-in-command.
To seize power in Sudan’s most recent coup, Burhan joined forces with Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the large and heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
They have now turned on each other.
(18.04.2023)
RSF leader early on Tuesday posted a tweet announcing his approval for a 24-hour cessation of hostilities to establish a humanitarian corridor to evacuate wounded civilians.
The announcement of the ceasefire by the RSF come after a telephone call Mohamed Hamdan Daglo “Hemetti” received from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to propose a humanitarian ceasefire.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has called for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan and urged the Sudan Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to return to negotiations.
Für Berlin ist die Entwicklung im Sudan nicht nur deshalb ein wenig pikant, weil dort jetzt RSF-Chef Dagalo eine führende Position einnimmt. Die RSF – inzwischen zählen sie zehntausende Mitglieder – haben darüber hinaus zahlreiche Krieger in den Jemen entsandt, wo sie im Auftrag Saudi-Arabiens und der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate Kämpfe gegen die Huthi-Truppen führen. Als Gegenleistung wird der sudanesische Militärrat nun von Riad und Abu Dhabi, zwei Verbündeten Berlins und der EU, mit Milliardensummen finanziert.