6,000 died in three days as El-Fasher marks one year of RSF rule

Monitoring groups counted at least 6,000 dead in the first 72 hours after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, on October 26, 2025. That figure marks the start of a year of RSF control, a period defined by a communications blackout and the largest single massacre of the war that began in April 2023.

Researchers at Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab noted the speed and scale of the killing. They identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains between October 26, 2025, and November 28, 2025. Twenty of these clusters showed signs of burning. Fifty-seven clusters vanished entirely within four weeks. The RSF has barred human rights investigators from the city since the takeover.

Survivors say the violence has not stopped. Hala, a woman who uses a different name for security, returned to the city from the Tawila refugee camp three weeks ago to collect her birth certificate and ID. RSF fighters questioned her on arrival and issued a handwritten entry permit. The next day, fighters spoke to her in the street with abusive language. She said she was not physically attacked only because other civilians were nearby. “There is no security in el-Fasher at all,” Hala said.

Mohamed Hassan, an el-Fasher resident, described fighters firing on men and killing anyone judged to be a soldier for the Sudanese Armed Forces or its allied Joint Forces. Close to 500 people were killed at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, where displaced families and medical staff had sheltered. UN investigators documented mass killings at el-Fasher University, on roads leading out of the city, and at the berms the RSF built around it.

In the North Kordofan town of Bara, volunteers recovered more than 600 bodies this week from 200 mass graves. Witnesses say the RSF killed most of these civilians during the same October offensive. The RSF leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, announced an investigation into violations by his soldiers. A UN team that entered the city in December called it a crime scene and found one in six people screened had severe acute malnutrition.

The siege preceded the final offensive by more than 500 days. A doctor who worked in an el-Fasher hospital for almost two years said generators ran only two hours a night. Emergency surgery was performed by phone flashlight. Antibiotics and surgical gauze ran out. The World Food Programme reported that residents survived on animal fodder and food waste.

Displacement continues to grow. Tawila now hosts around 800,000 people, most from el-Fasher. Survivors say the RSF still detains fleeing men and demands ransoms of up to $3,000. Khadijah, an elderly woman from el-Geneina, said she now lives under a tree on a farm with little food and no shelter. Mudathir Mohammed Diqourni of an el-Fasher resistance committee said RSF militias are destroying farms and killing farmers in South and Central Darfur.

A UN fact-finding mission concluded in February that the RSF committed acts of genocide in el-Fasher. The mission found reasonable grounds to believe private companies and recruiters based in the UAE routed weapons through Chad, southeastern Libya, and Bosaso in Somalia. Mona Rishmawi, a member of the mission, said the supplies included weapons, drone-related equipment, logistical help, and personnel. The United States remains the UAE’s top weapons supplier, and British weaponry has been found on Sudanese battlefields.