Thousands murdered as El Fasher falls to Rapid Support Forces
Background Image: Satellite imagery of El Fasher from Yale HRL. Foreground Image: RSF fighters in captured army base from social media.
A fast-paced genocide is unfolding in the city of El Fasher, Sudan. It’s estimated over 3,000 Sudanese have already been killed. The actual death toll is likely far higher.
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The besieged capital of North Darfur and last army stronghold in western Sudan fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on October 26 and 27. The paramilitaries are now on a killing spree in the city, and the massacre is being committed at such breakneck speed that bodies and bloodstained soil can be seen by satellites.
Map: Location of El Fasher. (Operation Broken Silence)
El Fasher was surrounded by the RSF for nearly two years and under violent siege for most of that time. According to the United Nations, over one million people —almost certainly an undercount— have fled the Greater El Fasher area since the start of the war. It’s estimated 260,000 civilians, half of them children, remain trapped in the city today without aid.
Famine has been rampant in El Fasher for months, with many resorting to eating animal fodder to try to survive. Nearby displacement camps such as Zamzam and Abu Shouk were largely destroyed by extreme shelling and RSF looting throughout this year.
The army’s 6th Infantry Division, the Joint Forces —comprised of surviving Darfuri rebels from the 2000s genocide— and local militias had been defending El Fasher, supplied via infrequent airdrops by army cargo planes. After months of attritional attacks by the RSF and with dwindling ammunition, some of the army garrison and local officials managed to escape in a handful of armed convoys during the RSF takeover. Early reports suggest defending fighters who were left behind are being hunted down and executed by the RSF.
As we have noted for months in our own coverage, Sudanese in El Fasher were always going to be on borrowed time without a major and sustained outside intervention by either the army or international community. That intervention never came, deepening fears that when the RSF did capture the city, the genocidal paramilitary force would engage in a localized massacre on a scale unprecedented in our time.
The massacres are now underway
The RSF launched their final offensive on El Fasher roughly a week ago, breaching multiple defensive lines and invading neighborhoods from the north, east, and south. At some point over the weekend they seized control of the 6th Infantry Division’s headquarters —where some the heaviest armed resistance had been— forcing army troops and their allies to fall back into the city’s western neighborhoods.
Videos quickly emerged on social media showing RSF fighters inside army HQ and elsewhere in El Fasher. Virtually all communications networks in the city have since gone dark, and getting information out is now incredibly difficult. The army confirmed on Monday that its surviving forces have withdrawn from the city entirely.
What information that is available comes in the form of stories told by fleeing refugees, satellite imagery, and videos posted online by RSF perpetrators. Every indicator points to a massacre in progress, with the Joint Forces saying as early as Tuesday that the RSF had already executed more than 2,000 unarmed civilians. Sudan’s warring factions often inflate battlefield and civilian casualty numbers to try to boost their own standing, but this time it is likely an undercount, especially considering the speed at which the massacres are unfolding across the city.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has been tracking the situation in El Fasher using satellite imagery and open-source data for months. In an interview given Tuesday, Director Nathaniel Raymond said HRL has evidence consistent with mass killings:
“We are only at the beginning of a wave of violence,” he said. “I have never seen a level of violence against an area like we are seeing now. This is only comparable with a Rwandan style killing in the first 24 hours.”
Some of that evidence can be seen in two new reports issued by HRL, on October 27 and October 28, respectively. Multiple satellite images show “dark colored objects consistent with the size of human bodies” with “reddish ground discoloration” underneath in areas where the RSF is running house-to-house clearance operations. Translation: these are massacre sites with clusters of bodies and bloodstained soil.
Image by Yale HRL
In a press release on October 28, Yale HRL adds:
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) corroborates evidence of continuing mass killing in the past 48 hours since RSF took control of El-Fasher. These mass killing events include corroboration of alleged executions around Saudi Hospital and a previously unreported potential mass killing at an RSF detention site at the former Children’s Hospital in eastern El-Fasher. Yale HRL concludes that systematic killing in the vicinity of the earthen wall, hereafter berm, outside the city is continuing.
Mass Killing at Former Children’s Hospital, El-Fasher North Darfur (13.6217898, 25.3826549)
Apparent Mass Killing at Saudi Hospital (13.629694679116708, 25.329653418909288)
Systematic Mass Killings of People along the Berm
Red Crescent Society of Sudan (RCS) Office, El-Fasher (13.629489605115484, 25.356066434927207)
Survivor testimony has corroborated the nature of these killings:
A nurse working at El Fasher South hospital told The Guardian “They killed six wounded soldiers and civilians in their beds – some of them women. I don’t know what happened to my other patients. I had to run when they (RSF) stormed the hospital.”
The World Health Organization says that on October 28, six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist were abducted and that the RSF shot and killed over 460 patients and their companions in the hospital.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that RSF fighters are going “from house to house, beating and shooting people, including women and children…Many died of gunshot wounds in the streets, some while trying to flee to safety, witnesses said.”
Over 26,000 individuals fled El Fasher on foot between October 26-29. Many headed toward Tawila roughly 34 miles west of El Fasher. That town and surrounding areas are under the control of an independent Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction, a surviving rebel group from a previous war. Tawila is now the last true safe haven in all of western Sudan and is already sheltering 650,000+ displaced people. Many new arrivals from El Fasher are showing up hungry and dehydrated, some wounded, and all with stories of losing loved ones.
A brief history of how we got here
Sudan is home to the world largest humanitarian emergency and one of the worst armed conflicts in modern history. Fighting between the army and RSF has left Khartoum in ruins. In the oppressed western Darfur region, entire communities are being annihilated by the RSF. Villages are burning and families are fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Hardly any of this ever makes international news, which goes to show just how horrifying this massacre is, that it’s finally breaking into news cycles.
Sudan Crisis Guide
Trying to make sense of the war in Sudan? We’ll get you up to speed in a few minutes.
Darfur is not only home to historically-persecuted African tribes, but also their main oppressor: the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF was born from the Arab militias that spearheaded the 2000s Darfur genocide. Those militias were known as janjaweed, a term loosely understood as devils on horseback. With arms provided by the Khartoum regime, the janjaweed massacred ethnically African villages and destroyed clean water wells, orchards and farms, and markets.
In 2013, the regime consolidated the janjaweed into the Rapid Support Forces and outfitted them with machine gun-mounted trucks, artillery and rockets, and anti-aircraft guns. The RSF quickly spread into other parts of Sudan and expanded into mercenary recruitment in Chad, Central African Republic, and even as far away as Mali.
The army teamed up with the RSF in October 2021, overthrowing a transitional government that was steering Sudan toward a democratic future. The RSF’s participation in the coup showed the paramilitary force’s power rivaled the army. Both sides expected to be the top player in a new regime. Predictably, in April 2023, the army and RSF went to war with each other in Khartoum. Hundreds of miles away in Darfur, communities braced for an inevitable return to mass killing.
Within days the RSF launched a long-planned assault on Darfur’s African tribes, most notably the Masalit in West Darfur, where an estimated 15,000 people were exterminated in the state capital alone. The situation spiraled further in October 2023, when the RSF launched a lightening offensive across Darfur that saw state capitals and towns fall. El Fasher was spared due to a fragile ceasefire brokered by local leaders. Many people unable to escape Darfur fled into the city, one of the last safe havens in all of western Sudan.
The El Fasher ceasefire fully collapsed in April 2024, when the RSF cut off the last road into the area, trapping a then-estimated two million Sudanese with dwindling food, water, and health services. The situation has worsened ever since, with the army and its allies barely able to fight off constant onslaughts by the RSF. While there have been moments when people have been able to escape El Fasher and the surrounding displacement camps en masse, many have been robbed, beaten, raped, and even killed by the RSF as they fled.
The big picture
At the time of this posting the RSF massacre is ongoing. The Sudan Doctors Network described the situation on Wednesday as “a true genocide…The massacres the world is witnessing today are an extension of what occurred in El Fasher more than a year and a half ago, when over 14,000 civilians were killed through bombing, starvation, and extrajudicial executions.”
The fall of El Fasher will loom large over all of Sudan in the coming months, if not years. The RSF now control all five state capitals in western Sudan and most of Darfur’s rural areas. RSF commanders deployed significant man/firepower to capturing and massacring El Fasher, and they paid a heavy price themselves for its capture. Several RSF leaders and countless fighters were killed by the city’s now-routed defenders.
Map: Click or tap to expand. (source)
Zooming out, once the RSF feels that El Fasher is firmly under its tyrannical control, many of its fighters will likely be deployed north and east to the main battle lines. In recent months the army has struggled to advance toward the Darfur provinces and even lost minimal ground the past few weeks. The arrival of thousands of battle-hardened RSF fighters from El Fasher to the front lines will almost certainly set the army back even further.
The army’s leadership is again facing mounting frustration that had subsided some earlier in the year, when army troops captured Khartoum and made a significant push westward. With battlefield progress once again stalled and the army losing another major city to the RSF, questions about General Buhran’s ability to lead the army are likely to resurface. Ongoing frustration could easily give way to unexpected changes in the army itself, some of which could be bloody, unless the army can shift the tide of the war again.
Altogether and put simply, the war and humanitarian crisis still have no end in sight. And the worst may still lie ahead.
This massacre was preventable
And what of the Sudanese who manage to escape the genocide in El Fasher? Most all will face the pangs of hunger and preventable illness wherever they go. International aid is only 27% funded for all of 2025 and the year is almost over. The refugee camps in eastern Chad are overwhelmed. Those reaching Tawila in the heart of Darfur are finding safety, but few medical and humanitarian services. As has been the case throughout this war, another stage of the humanitarian crisis is brewing from another round of senseless carnage.
The international community had ample time and warning to intervene by air and on the ground in El Fasher, either through the forceful delivery of aid or even more aggressive measures. Indeed, what we are seeing in El Fasher is one of the most predicted genocides in modern history. It has been well over a year since the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding that the RSF end its siege of El Fasher and allow for aid access. RSF commanders ignored these hollow words. The political will never emerged to prevent the massacres that are now unfolding in El Fasher, and there is still a lack of will to provide mere humanitarian aid to survivors.
The promise of “never again” when it comes to genocide is being broken by world leaders yet again. It now falls to ordinary citizens to do what we can to save and change lives for the better.
How you can help
Our free global event turns everyday runs, bike rides, and walks into lifesaving support. Every mile you put in and dollar you raise helps fund emergency aid, healthcare, and education programs led by Sudanese heroes. We also have an option where you can skip the exercise and just fundraise. Every dollar raised makes a difference. Donations are being matched for a limited time!
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The besieged capital of North Darfur and last army stronghold in western Sudan fell to the Rapid Support Forces on October 26-27. The resulting massacre is being committed at such breakneck speed that bodies and bloodstained soil can be seen by satellites. https://operationbrokensilence.org/blog/thousands-murdered-as-el-fasher-falls-to-rapid-support-forces
A fast-paced genocide is unfolding in the city of El Fasher, Sudan. It’s estimated over 3,000 Sudanese have already been killed. The actual death toll is likely far higher. https://operationbrokensilence.org/blog/thousands-murdered-as-el-fasher-falls-to-rapid-support-forces
Multiple satellite images show “dark colored objects consistent with the size of human bodies” with “reddish ground discoloration” underneath in areas where the RSF is running house-to-house clearance operations. Translation: these are massacre sites with clusters of bodies and bloodstained soil. https://operationbrokensilence.org/blog/thousands-murdered-as-el-fasher-falls-to-rapid-support-forces
Sudanese in El Fasher were always going to be on borrowed time without a major and sustained outside intervention by either the army or international community. That intervention never came, deepening fears that when the RSF did capture the city, the genocidal paramilitary force would engage in a localized massacre on a scale unprecedented in our time. https://operationbrokensilence.org/blog/thousands-murdered-as-el-fasher-falls-to-rapid-support-forces
Operation Broken Silence is dedicated to Sudanese communities, cultivating resilience and driving meaningful change through crowdfunded programs. Will you join us? https://operationbrokensilence.org/blog/thousands-murdered-as-el-fasher-falls-to-rapid-support-forces
