Sudan’s military has officially retreated from the beleaguered city of El Fasher in Darfur, a move that has sparked urgent warnings from human rights organizations. Reports indicate that paramilitary fighters, now in control of the city, are targeting and shooting civilians attempting to escape.
The fall of El Fasher, following a grueling 18-month siege, intensifies fears of widespread ethnically motivated killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), who already dominate much of western Sudan’s Darfur region. This marks a critical moment in the brutal civil war, now entering its third year, as the Sudanese military has lost its final major stronghold in Darfur, a vast area comparable in size to France.
The R.S.F. intensified its offensive on El Fasher in April after being pushed out of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Months of relentless drone and heavy artillery attacks culminated in the R.S.F.’s capture of the city’s primary military base on Friday, forcing Sudanese troops and their Darfuri allies to scatter into residential areas.
Initially, Sudanese military officials claimed their forces were still engaged in combat. However, by late Monday, they had abandoned the city. In a televised address, Sudan’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, stated that the retreat was a strategic decision to “spare citizens and the rest of the city from destruction.”
Even as the military withdrew, disturbing allegations rapidly spread across social media and from aid organizations: R.S.F. fighters were reportedly pursuing and killing fleeing civilians.
The Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said satellite images provided evidence of suspected mass killings by R.S.F. troops as the city fell. The images appeared to show bodies clustered near a long earthen berm that R.S.F. troops built around El Fasher over the past five months to completely encircle the city, the Humanitarian Research Lab said in a report published on Monday.
The images were consistent with reports of “executions near the berm, and the killing of people attempting to flee the city by crossing the berm,” it said.
Human Rights Watch said the images emerging from El Fasher “reveal a horrifying truth: the Rapid Support Forces feel free to carry out mass atrocities with little fear of consequences.”
“The world needs to act to protect civilians from more heinous crimes,” it said.
The R.S.F. began to lay siege to El Fasher in April 2024, a brutal assault that set off a famine in the city, cleared out a camp filled with about 500,000 displaced civilians and launched numerous drone and artillery strikes on hospitals and homes.
By many accounts, a wave of panic and desperation seized El Fasher in the final days of the siege. The R.S.F. had warned that it considered its remaining quarter-million residents to be enemy supporters. Many feared they could be targeted in ethnic violence.
According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 26,000 people fled the city between October 26 and 27.
Doctors Without Borders said at least 1,000 arrived on Saturday night by truck at a camp where it works 40 miles west of El Fasher. About 130 of those people needed emergency treatment, the organization said, without providing details.
Al Jazeera said that Muammar Ibrahim, a freelance journalist who reported for the news organization, had been detained by the R.S.F. as he tried to flee El Fasher. It cited a video it said showed Mr. Ibrahim crouching on the ground and surrounded by fighters who urged him to say he was being treated well. The network appealed for his release.
Video footage verified by The New York Times showed jubilant R.S.F. fighters riding camels and motorbikes down an empty street in El Fasher over the weekend. Another video shows fighters at the city’s deserted airport, one of the military’s last strongholds.
Control of El Fasher is a major victory for the paramilitaries, who now rule most of the western and southwestern regions of Sudan. Sudan’s army still controls the east and the capital, Khartoum.
Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023 with a feud between rival generals, and has since ballooned into a sprawling conflict that has drawn in a plethora of Sudanese armed groups and a host of rival foreign powers sponsoring both sides in the fight.
As many as 400,000 people have been killed, by some estimates, and millions have fled their homes. Both the R.S.F. and the Sudanese Army have been accused of war crimes and human rights violations, although only the paramilitaries have been formally accused of genocide by the United States.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said on Monday that it had received multiple reports that the R.S.F. was committing atrocities and executing civilians trying to flee El Fasher.
“The risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day,” the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said in a statement. The African Union also said that it was deeply concerned “over the escalating violence and reported atrocities in El Fasher.”
Foreign nations are actively contributing to the ongoing bloodshed. The United Arab Emirates has supplied drones, artillery, and other weaponry to the Rapid Support Forces. Meanwhile, Turkey, Russia, and Iran have provided or sold weapons to the military, often in exchange for gold.
President Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, has engaged with Emirati diplomats in attempts to broker peace in Sudan. Yet, some Republican leaders in Washington are pushing for stronger measures against the R.S.F.
Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the “horrors” in El Fasher and advocated for the R.S.F. to be formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Previous warnings from American officials regarding a potential massacre in El Fasher, should it fall to the R.S.F., were based on the tragic events in El Geneina, another Darfur city, in late 2023. Up to 15,000 civilians were killed there after the R.S.F. gained control, according to the United Nations. These atrocities were a key factor in the U.S. decision to accuse the R.S.F. leadership of genocide in January.
Reporting contributed by Sanjana Varghese and Hannah Yi from London.