El-Fasher Anniversary: 6,000 dead in three days

Approximately 6,000 people were killed in the first 72 hours after the Rapid Support Forces captured el-Fasher, according to satellite imagery analysis. This figure represents the initial toll of the largest single massacre in the war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which started in April 2023.

The RSF launched its final offensive on 26 October 2025, following a siege of more than 500 days. Researchers at Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab compared the speed and scale of the killing to the Rwandan genocide. About 260,000 people remained inside the city when the assault began. The RSF maintained a communications blackout and barred human rights investigators from entering.

In Bara, a town in North Kordofan, volunteers recovered more than 600 bodies from 200 mass graves this week. Witnesses identified most victims as civilians killed during the same October offensive. Yale researchers identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains between 26 October and 28 November 2025. Twenty of these clusters showed signs of burning, and 57 vanished entirely within four weeks.

Survivors describe ongoing fear and hunger one year later. Hala, a woman who uses a pseudonym for security, returned to the city from the Tawila refugee camp three weeks ago to collect documents. RSF fighters issued her a handwritten entry permit. She told the campaign group Avaaz that fighters questioned her on arrival and spoke abusively to her in the street the next day. "There is no security in el-Fasher at all," Hala said. She has since returned to Tawila and says she will not go back.

The World Food Programme reported that residents survived on animal fodder and food waste during the siege. A doctor who worked inside an el-Fasher hospital for almost two years said generators ran only two hours a night and emergency surgery was performed by phone flashlight. In February, a UN fact-finding mission concluded that the RSF committed acts of genocide in el-Fasher.

Tawila now hosts around 800,000 people, most from el-Fasher. Survivors report that the RSF still detains fleeing men and demands ransoms of up to $3,000. Khadijah, an elderly woman from el-Geneina, said she 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 team entered the city under close supervision in December and described it as a crime scene. One in six people screened had severe acute malnutrition. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, announced an investigation into violations by his soldiers. The UN mission found reasonable grounds to believe that private companies and recruiters based in the UAE routed weapons through Chad, southeastern Libya, and Bosaso in Somalia.