Dr. Omar Selik desperately wanted to be seen. At the end of a grueling, hour-long interview about life in El Fasher, a Sudanese city under relentless siege, where he communicated through a rare satellite internet connection, he asked to activate his camera. His face, etched with exhaustion and the weariness of war, appeared, then blossomed into an enormous grin.
“This is a good day for me,” Dr. Selik declared, visibly relieved. “I feel like a human being again.”
I found myself smiling in return.
This simple moment of connection offered him a brief respite after 500 horrific days of siege. Dr. Selik, 43, was one of the last remaining healthcare workers in El Fasher, a city of a quarter-million desperate residents in Darfur, where death rained down and starvation loomed constantly.
Just moments before, Dr. Selik had been in tears, recounting how a pregnant woman under his care had bled to death, simply for the lack of basic medicines. He then tilted his camera, inviting me to see his lunch. What I saw was almost unbelievable.
He held up a plate of lumpy brown mush – animal fodder typically fed to camels and cows. This had become the primary food source for most people in El Fasher, he explained, a stark and disturbing illustration of how both the doctor and the community he served had been stripped of their fundamental humanity.
Image: Sudanese residents gathered to receive food in El Fasher, a city in Darfur that has been under a siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2024.
That personal connection, he emphasized, was why speaking with someone from the outside felt so good. “People are dying,” he said, “and nobody is even watching.”
For me, too, it was a moment of stark clarity. Since Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023, I had been unable to enter Darfur, the epicenter of a nationwide famine and an unrelenting siege. Now, through the dense fog of war, I had found someone whose raw, urgent testimony brought the conflict’s depravity into sharp focus.
And then, he was gone.
Days later, Dr. Selik left his home to attend dawn prayers at a nearby mosque. A missile struck the roof, exploding amidst the worshipers and killing approximately 75 people. Dr. Selik was among them.
Image: A screenshot shows Dr. Omar Selik, top, speaking via a satellite internet connection with journalists Declan Walsh, bottom right, and Abdalrahman Altayeb.
His death was another tragic example of the destructive combination of advanced technology, brutal violence, and pervasive impunity that defines a war estimated by some experts to have claimed up to 400,000 lives. Witnesses reported that the missile was launched by a drone, one of many allegedly supplied by the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), the paramilitary group besieging El Fasher. The Emirates, however, denies supporting either side in the conflict.
For El Fasher’s beleaguered residents, it was yet another devastating loss. “My heart is broken,” lamented Salwa Ahmed, a university lecturer who had sought refuge in Dr. Selik’s home.
Like many others, Ms. Ahmed felt abandoned by the outside world and doubted that help would ever arrive. However, a faint glimmer of hope has emerged, led by President Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, Massad Boulos.
For weeks, Mr. Boulos has been negotiating with the R.S.F. to allow international aid into El Fasher. Last week, he indicated that an aid convoy could arrive “very, very soon.”
A senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously due to lack of authorization to comment publicly, stated that the convoy would likely consist of about 45 U.N. trucks and could depart as early as next Monday. However, crucial details, including how aid would be distributed once it reaches the devastated city, are still being finalized.
Image: Volunteers prepared meals for residents of El Fasher, a besieged city in Sudan’s western Darfur region, in August.
The U.S. official expressed uncertainty about whether the R.S.F. would permit aid to reach neighborhoods held by its adversary, the Sudanese military – precisely the areas that have suffered the most from the siege.
The State Department declined to comment on these talks, referring to Mr. Boulos’s previous public statements regarding his efforts in Sudan.
The siege of El Fasher began in April 2024, as the R.S.F., primarily composed of fighters from Darfur, sought to expel the Sudanese military from the vast region. The conflict escalated in March after the R.S.F. was forced to withdraw from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.
While others fled, Dr. Selik remained. “He said, ‘I can’t leave these people behind,’” recalled Omer Eltahir, a fellow doctor living in Ireland, who spoke with Dr. Selik in July.
Dr. Selik dedicated himself to the city’s last operational hospital, which had already endured 30 bombings, swiftly retraining as a combat medic. “Head trauma, chest trauma, punctured abdomens,” he listed, detailing the common injuries he treated. “Anything caused by a bullet or a bomb.”
This summer, the crisis worsened after R.S.F. fighters constructed a formidable earthen wall around El Fasher, now stretching 42 miles long. Anyone attempting to cross it at night was shot dead.
At the hospital, food and medicine supplies dwindled. Surgeons resorted to using mosquito nets as medical gauze for operations. Cholera and malaria outbreaks swept through the wards.
One day, at a small clinic he managed in the northern part of the city, Dr. Selik encountered a group of Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the R.S.F. “They were speaking Spanish,” he noted. Later, the bodies of Colombians killed in battle were brought to the hospital, he added.
Dr. Selik had sent his wife and children to Khartoum for their safety. Yet his sister, who stayed behind, was tragically killed along with her three children in August when a shell crashed into their home. “That’s just one story,” he confided. “In this city, there are countless others just like it.”
A Starlink terminal, provided by a relative, offered a crucial lifeline to the outside world. But even there, the conflict’s shadow loomed. Within WhatsApp groups of Sudanese medics, Dr. Selik was disheartened by bitter disputes escalating along political or ethnic lines, as Dr. Eltahir recounted.
“People were calling each other pigs,” he said. “Omar asked them to stop.”
Despite the internal strife, the Starlink terminal also provided him a means to call for help. Dr. Selik’s greatest fear, he told me, was the complete overrun of the city by the R.S.F. “They will kill everyone,” he warned.
Aid workers and American officials share similar grave concerns. The U.S. official indicated that the city could fall to the R.S.F. within weeks, or even sooner. Many fear a grim repetition of the massacre in El Geneina, in western Darfur, in late 2023, where R.S.F. fighters reportedly killed as many as 15,000 people, according to the United Nations.
“We fear that as the battle for the city intensifies, the worst is yet to come,” stated Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, at the United Nations in New York last week. “We should not allow this to happen.”
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed reporting from Khartoum, Sudan.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of a doctor. He is Omer Eltahir, not Eltayeb. This correction was made on Oct. 1, 2025.