Tens of thousands of civilians have fled El Fasher in Darfur, after the Rapid Support Forces (RSD) captured the city from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) last week, with dozens of videos emerging showing atrocities and massacres.
According to the United Nations and aid agencies, hundreds of civilians have been massacred, with reports of house to house executions, sexual violence, looting and specifically the targeting of non-Arab communities. Tom Fletcher, the UN Humanitarian chief, stressed the “catastrophic levels of human suffering, has descended into an even darker hell”.
Videos published by the RSF themselves show scores of civilians gunned down as they enter the city.
With an 18-month siege on El Fasher was captured by RSF, there has been irreversible damage with hundreds of thousands of residents trekking through a desert to reach safety with high risks of dying of thirst and hunger during their journey. The scale of the bloodshed in El Fasher was visible from space with, Yale Humanitarian Research Lab reporting satellite images showing clusters resembling human bodies and wide patches of red-stained earth.
The fall of El Fasher means that RSF now have control of all five Darfur state capitals, consolidating its hold across the region. Political analysts warn this could be the turning point in the Sudan’s two-year long war. There may be potential for a de facto partition between (now) RSF-controlled Darfur and SAF-held eastern regions – formalising the country’s fragmentation.