Sudanese rebels have pushed authorities forces from El Fasher, the final stronghold of the nation’s regime within the western Darfur area, amid a brutal battle for territory that has led to alleged genocide and contributed to at least one of the world’s most extreme humanitarian crises.
For greater than a yr, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has besieged El Fasher, its remaining main barrier to controlling Darfur. The RSF goals to determine a parallel authorities within the area. It has been battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for energy since April 2023.
Estimates recommend that more than 150,000 people have died because of the battle, whereas a further 14 million have been displaced from their houses.
Sudan’s military chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who can be the de facto head of state, acknowledged the rebels’ seize of El Fasher. In a broadcast on Monday, he said that his troops retreated from the city because of the destruction and systematic killing of civilians.
Justin Lynch, a Sudan researcher and managing director of Conflict Insights Group, a knowledge analytics and battle monitoring group, advised NCS that the RSF’s seize of El Fasher marks “the beginning of what we fear to be a massacre of civilians.”
According to Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief, tons of of hundreds of civilians stay trapped in El Fasher, missing meals and well being care. He reported that escape routes have been blocked amid “intense shelling and ground assaults” that “have engulfed the city.”
The RSF has claimed it is committed to defending civilians in El Fasher and offering secure corridors for these looking for to go away.
However, the UN Human Rights Office said it had acquired “multiple, alarming reports” of the RSF committing atrocities together with abstract executions of civilians, and movies displaying dozens of unarmed males being shot or mendacity useless surrounded by RSF fighters.
It additionally cited “indications of ethnic motivations for killings.”
According to Jalale Getachew Birru, a senior analyst on the crisis-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), there may be a “high risk of ethnically targeted attacks, particularly against non-Arab groups.”
Between April 2023 and mid-October 2025, her group documented 390 incidents of violence towards civilians in El Fasher and surrounding areas, leading to over 1,300 reported fatalities, together with 180 assaults on internally displaced individuals (IDPs) that triggered a minimum of 830 deaths.
Ethnically motivated killings have been a function of the battle from its outset, notably in Darfur. The area skilled some of its worst ethnic violence in 2023, with tons of of people from non-Arab ethnic teams massacred by the RSF and forces linked to it.
For the previous 30 months, military chief al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who heads the RSF, have been combating over management of Sudan.
These two males, as soon as allies and among the many strongest generals within the nation, collectively ousted President Omar al-Bashir from energy in 2019.
They additionally performed important roles in a subsequent coup in 2021 when al-Burhan seized management from Sudan’s transitional authorities.
Both generals have confronted Western sanctions resulting from their involvement in struggle crimes. However, Dagalo’s RSF, together with its allied Arab militias, has been accused by the United States of committing genocide throughout the ongoing civil struggle. This marks the second time in twenty years that the US has declared genocide in Sudan.
The US authorities mentioned when making the declaration in January that the RSF had executed “direct attacks against civilians,” together with the systematic homicide of “men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis.”
Furthermore, it mentioned, they’d “deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” and “targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
Sudan’s army authorities has accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying weapons to the RSF, though the UAE has denied this.
The RSF is a paramilitary group with an estimated 100,000 fighters, roughly half the size of the SAF.
The RSF has a historical past tied to ethnically-driven violence.
The group emerged from the Arab Janjaweed militia, which was liable for the genocide in Darfur throughout the early 2000s. That resulted in an estimated 300,000 deaths.
The latest killings in El Fasher and different areas of Darfur replicate a sample of focused violence much like that seen throughout the earlier genocide.
According to Lynch, the RSF’s takeover of El Fasher will “only mean more misery for civilians.”
Why is El Fasher’s seize important, and what would possibly occur subsequent?
The RSF’s seizure of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, represents a important turning level that enables the group to strengthen its maintain on the broader Darfur area, based on Birru.
It comes within the wake of the SAF regaining control of the country’s capital, Khartoum, from the RSF earlier this yr.
Fighting is now anticipated to shift to the central and oil-rich Kordofan area, which borders Darfur, based on Birru.
The RSF announced on Saturday it had taken Bara, a essential transport hub in North Kordofan state that connects the strategic city to the remainder of the nation.
“In Kordofan, the SAF and its allies are seeking to secure key routes connecting central Sudan to the Darfur region, while the RSF is working to consolidate control across both regions to rein in its alternative government in western Sudan,” Birru mentioned.
“The outcome of battles in El Fasher and Kordofan will likely determine the future trajectory of Sudan’s conflict and the country’s political future,” she added.
According to Lynch, the seize of El Fasher – and, by extension, all of Darfur – positions the RSF in a stronger negotiating stance amid a international push for a ceasefire.
International human rights lawyer Yonah Diamond advised NCS that the worldwide group should intervene as violence escalates in Sudan and civilian casualties improve in El Fasher, asking whether or not world leaders would enable the RSF “to commit another genocide in Darfur with impunity.”
“The time for emergency action is right now – to end the bloodshed, open humanitarian corridors, and protect the people of El Fasher and what’s left of any global conscience,” he mentioned.