Amnesty documents RSF atrocities in Sudan's El Fasher
Sudan's Rapid Support Forces committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during their campaign to seize the Darfur city of El Fasher, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
The rights group said the paramilitary force unlawfully detained civilians, holding many for ransom. It interviewed 45 people, including eight children, who were detained between mid-2024 and early 2026. Detainees described being beaten and abused with ethnic slurs, denied adequate food and water, and held in overcrowded rooms where illness spread and people died from dehydration or disease.
The RSF seized full control of El Fasher in October 2025 after a siege lasting about 18 months. The takeover was followed by mass killings, with reports of civilians being indiscriminately attacked and slaughtered.
A United Nations fact-finding mission has separately found that the RSF carried out a coordinated campaign of destruction against non-Arab communities in the area, concluding that acts amounting to genocide had been committed.
El Fasher was the last major city in Darfur outside RSF control, and its fall marked a grim turning point in Sudan's devastating civil war. The conflict, which erupted in April 2023 between the RSF and the army, has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, creating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
