For more than a year and a half, the people of El Fasher have lived under siege. Now, with the city falling into the hands of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the capital of Darfur’s long-suffering region has become the epicenter of renewed horrors. The atrocities unfolding there mass executions, ethnic killings, and forced displacements are reviving the specter of Darfur’s genocide while the world looks on in silence.
Reports from local medical and humanitarian sources describe scenes of unspeakable brutality. RSF fighters, under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, have carried out summary executions of civilians and captured soldiers, targeting victims based on their ethnic identity. Videos shared by local resistance committees show streets strewn with bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and civilians fleeing through the ruins of their neighborhoods.
According to the Sudanese Doctors’ Network, dozens have been executed in El Fasher, while hospitals, pharmacies, and health facilities have been looted. “This is the worst form of ethnic cleansing,” said one local activist, describing how community volunteers providing food aid were killed in cold blood. Among the victims is Siham Hassan Hasballah, the youngest parliamentarian in Sudan’s history, and Asiya Khalifa, a spokesperson for the Sudanese army’s Sixth Infantry Division.
The wave of terror has reached journalists as well. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate reported the arrest of reporter Muammar Ibrahim, warning that the collapse of telecommunications and access routes is turning El Fasher into a black hole of silence and suffering.
The Emergency Lawyers group accused the RSF of executing surrendered soldiers and civilians amid widespread revenge killings. “Thousands fled only to be hunted down and slaughtered,” the group said in a statement on October 27. Witness accounts describe mass executions filmed by the perpetrators themselves—a chilling echo of the methods once used by genocidal militias in Darfur two decades ago.
Despite mounting evidence, the international response has been muted. The Sudanese government condemned the crimes, and Darfur governor Minni Arko Minnawi called for an independent investigation. UN humanitarian official Tom Fletcher urged safe passage for civilians, while U.S. presidential adviser on African affairs Masad Pauls said the world “watches with deep concern.” Yet concern has rarely translated into action.
A Parallel Slaughter in North Kordofan
Even as El Fasher drowns in blood, another massacre unfolded to the east. In the town of Bara, North Kordofan, the RSF executed 47 civilians, including nine women, according to the Sudanese Doctors’ Network. The victims were killed in their homes, accused of “belonging to the army.”
Witnesses reported a campaign of terror house raids, abductions, looting, and arbitrary killings—designed to spread fear among residents. Communication lines were cut, apparently to suppress evidence of the crimes. The Emergency Lawyers said the killings began on October 25, after Sudanese army units withdrew from the town. “It was a direct assault on civilians,” their statement read, adding that hundreds were killed, most of them young men.
Rights groups and political organizations, including the Sudanese Congress Party, condemned the massacre as a crime against humanity and demanded international intervention. They warned that hate speech from RSF-aligned accounts calling for killings “based on identity” amounted to incitement of war crimes.
A Country Engulfed in Collapse
Across North Kordofan, repeated RSF attacks have displaced thousands, forcing families to flee toward Al-Obeid—a city now buckling under humanitarian strain. With food, medicine, and water in short supply, the displaced suffer amid the continuing siege.
Since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF erupted on April 15, 2023, vast stretches of the country especially Darfur and Kordofan have witnessed atrocities: mass killings, looting, and ethnic targeting. More than two decades after the world swore that Darfur’s genocide would “never happen again,” history is repeating itself in real time.
El Fasher now stands as a grim symbol not only of Sudan’s descent into chaos but also of the world’s moral failure. The silence surrounding these crimes is no longer neutrality it is complicity.
