Dr. Omar Selik desperately wanted to be seen. After a harrowing, hour-long interview about life in the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher, conducted through a fragile satellite internet connection, he asked to activate his camera. An exhausted, war-weary face emerged on screen, then softened into a profound grin.
“This is a good day for me,” Dr. Selik declared, a wave of relief washing over him. “I feel like a human being again.”
That brief moment of human connection offered him fleeting solace after 500 agonizing days under siege. Dr. Selik, 43, was one of the last remaining healthcare workers in El Fasher, a city of a quarter-million desperate souls in western Darfur, where death rained from the sky and starvation was a constant threat.
Just moments before, Dr. Selik had been in tears, recounting the tragic death of a pregnant woman under his care, a life lost for lack of basic medicines. Now, he tilted his camera, offering a glimpse of his lunch. The sight was truly unbelievable.
He presented a plate of lumpy, brown mush – animal fodder typically reserved for camels and cows. This, he explained, had become the primary food source for most people in El Fasher, a stark and disturbing symbol of how both a doctor and the community he served had been stripped of their fundamental humanity.
This, he said, was why connecting with someone from the outside world felt so vital: “People are dying, and nobody is even watching.”
For this reporter, it was a moment of stark clarity. Since Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023, entry into Darfur, the epicenter of a nationwide famine and a relentless siege, had been impossible. Now, through the dense fog of war, a voice had emerged—raw, urgent, and profoundly human—to illuminate the conflict’s true depravity.
And then, he was gone.
Days later, Dr. Selik left his home to attend dawn prayers at a nearby mosque. A missile ripped through the roof, detonating among the worshippers and killing approximately 75 people. Dr. Selik was among the fallen.
His death is a grim testament to the lethal combination of advanced technology, unbridled brutality, and absolute impunity that defines this war, a conflict estimated by some experts to have claimed as many as 400,000 lives. Witnesses reported the missile was launched by a drone, one of many reportedly supplied by the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), the paramilitary group enforcing the siege on El Fasher. The Emirates, however, denies providing support to either side of the conflict.
For the beleaguered residents of El Fasher, it was another crushing 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 expressed a profound sense of abandonment by the international community and deep skepticism about any forthcoming aid. Yet, a faint beacon of hope has appeared, spearheaded by President Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, Massad Boulos.
For weeks, Mr. Boulos has been engaged in negotiations with the R.S.F. to facilitate the entry of international aid into El Fasher. Last week, he indicated to the Financial Times that an aid convoy could arrive “very, very soon.”
A senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the talks, suggested the convoy might consist of around 45 U.N. trucks and could depart as early as next Monday. However, crucial details, particularly how aid would be distributed once it reaches the devastated city, are still being finalized.
The U.S. official noted the uncertainty of whether the R.S.F. would permit aid to reach neighborhoods controlled by their adversary, the Sudanese military – the very areas that have suffered the most under the siege.
The State Department declined to comment on the ongoing discussions, referring instead to Mr. Boulos’s previous public statements regarding his initiatives in Sudan.
The siege of El Fasher commenced in April 2024, as the R.S.F., largely composed of fighters from Darfur, sought to expel Sudan’s military from the expansive region. The blockade intensified in March, following the R.S.F.’s withdrawal from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
While many fled, Dr. Selik remained. “He said, ‘I can’t leave these people behind,’” recounted Omer Eltahir, a fellow doctor now residing in Ireland, who last spoke with him in July.
Dr. Selik took up duties at the city’s sole functioning hospital, which had already endured 30 bombings. There, he rapidly retrained as a combat medic. “Head trauma, chest trauma, punctured abdomens,” he listed, describing the common injuries he treated. “Anything caused by a bullet or a bomb.”
This summer, the crisis escalated further after R.S.F. fighters constructed a formidable earthen wall around El Fasher, now stretching 42 miles. Anyone attempting to cross it at night was shot dead.
Within the hospital, food and medicine supplies dwindled to nothing. Surgeons resorted to using mosquito nets as medical gauze for operations, while cholera and malaria outbreaks ravaged the wards.
One day, at a small clinic he managed in the city’s north, Dr. Selik encountered a group of Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the R.S.F. “They were speaking Spanish,” he noted. He later witnessed the bodies of Colombian fighters, killed in battle, being brought to the hospital.
Dr. Selik had sent his wife and children to Khartoum for their safety. Yet, his sister, who stayed behind, was killed along with her three children in August when a shell struck their home. “That’s just one story,” he shared. “In this city, there are so many like it.”
A Starlink terminal, provided by a relative, offered a vital connection to the outside world. But even there, the conflict’s divisions permeated. In WhatsApp groups of Sudanese medics, Dr. Selik was disheartened by bitter disputes that erupted along political or ethnic lines, according to Dr. Eltahir.
“People were calling each other pigs,” he recalled. “Omar asked them to stop.”
Crucially, the Starlink terminal also allowed him to appeal for help. What concerned Dr. Selik most, he confided, was the prospect of the R.S.F. fully overwhelming the city. “They will kill everyone,” he warned.
Aid workers and American officials share these profound concerns. The U.S. official indicated that the city could fall to the R.S.F. within weeks, or even sooner. Many fear a repeat of the massacre in El Geneina, in western Darfur, in late 2023, where R.S.F. fighters murdered as many as 15,000 people, according to United Nations reports.
“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.”