Displaced Sudanese who fled El-Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), rest near a town in war-torn Sudan’s western Darfur region on October 28, 2025. Fears mounted in Sudan on October 28, three days after paramilitaries seized the key city of El-Fasher, amid reports of mass atrocities and the killing of five Red Crescent volunteers in Kordofan. The capture of El-Fasher, the historic heart of Darfur, has sparked fears of mass killings reminiscent of the region’s darkest days. (Photo credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
On October 26, 2025, after some eighteen months of siege, El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The fall follows days of bombardment and the withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied groups. The takeover of El Fasher is said to have unleashed atrocity crimes, including targeted ethnic violence, extrajudicial killings and executions. Some of these alleged crimes will likely amount to international crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. Earlier this year, the then U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. State Department determined the atrocities in Darfur amounted to genocide. Justifying this recognition, the then Secretary Blinken relied on evidence of the RSF and allied militias systematically murdering men and boys—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeting women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. The RSF and allied militias are also said to have “targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and preventing remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.” The statement refers to the atrocities following the conflict unleashed by the SAF and the RSF in April 2023. The conflict resulted in the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, with over 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and over 638,000 people experiencing the worst famine in Sudan’s recent history. Tens of thousands are said to be dead, but the exact number is unknown. The new wave of atrocities committed by RSF in El Fasher requires urgent attention and response.
The evidence of the atrocities is ever-growing. On October 27, 2025, the U.N. Human Rights Office reported that it was receiving “multiple, alarming reports that the [RSF] are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions, after seizing control of large parts of the besieged city of El Fasher, North Darfur and of Bara city in North Kordofan state.” The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, warned that: “The risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day. Urgent and concrete action needs to be taken urgently to ensure the protection of civilians in El Fasher and safe passage for those trying to reach relative safety.” The U.N. further added that hundreds of people have reportedly been detained while trying to flee, including a journalist. It also raised the extremely high likelihood of sexual violence being used against women and girls as a method of war.
The same day, on October 27, 2025, the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health (Yale HRL) published a report evidencing the RSF conducting alleged mass killings after capturing El-Fasher, according to satellite imagery analysis collected that day. As the report explains, Yale HRL has observed “vehicles deployed in tactical formations consistent with house-to-house clearance operations in Daraja Oula neighborhood (…). These activities include the blocking of side streets with vehicles and the presence of gun-mounted vehicles. Imagery analysis shows objects consistent with the size of human bodies on the ground near RSF vehicles, including at least five instances of reddish earth discoloration.” Yale HRL has identified multiple credible reports of mass killings in El-Fasher across social media and open sources.
Following the takeover of El Fasher, entire neighborhoods are said to have been destroyed. According to the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, “tens of thousands of civilians are now at imminent risk of mass killings and ethnic cleansing.” In addition, hospitals are reduced to rubble and humanitarian access is completely severed. As the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect warns, “This is not only a humanitarian emergency; it is an atrocity crisis deepening by the day. The fall of El Fasher marks a critical point of no return. Without immediate and decisive action, the city could soon become the site of another mass atrocity etched into Darfur’s tragic history. It is unacceptable for the world to stand by once again as civilians are hunted, starved and killed.”
Unfortunately, as the atrocities have been unleashed in El Fasher and Darfur more broadly, very little is being done to address the atrocities. Civil society organizations are calling for concrete and urgent actions, including demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities in and around El Fasher and other conflict hotspots, condemning deliberate attacks on civilians, and calling for protection of civilians in, identifying strategies to overcome barriers to humanitarian access, halting the transfer of arms and financial support to parties to the conflict, among others. However, responses are not forthcoming despite the horrific evidence being published every single day.
In the words of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, “Every government, every leader and every institution has the capacity – and the responsibility – to act. Whether through diplomacy, humanitarian assistance or public pressure, there are avenues to make a difference. Silence and inaction are choices. In the face of such horror, they are indefensible.” We, as the international community, must act in the face of yet another genocide in Darfur in two decades. Global leaders must stand up to the challenge and stop looking away. With all the evidence of mass atrocities too easily available online, they cannot claim they did not know.