One year after RSF took el-Fasher, survivors face detentions and erasing graves

Survivors of the el-Fasher massacre say the violence that followed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) capture of the city has not stopped. One year after the RSF took control, women who returned to the city report new detentions, ransoms, and a growing effort to destroy physical evidence of the killings.

The RSF launched its final offensive on October 26, 2025, after a siege lasting more than 500 days. The attack marked the largest single massacre of the war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which began in April 2023. Monitoring groups used satellite imagery to count at least 6,000 dead in the first 72 hours of the assault. The full toll remains unknown because the RSF has maintained a communications blackout and barred human rights investigators from entering the city.

In the North Kordofan town of Bara, volunteers found 200 mass graves this week. They have recovered more than 600 bodies, most of them civilians whom witnesses say the RSF killed during the same October offensive. Researchers at Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains between October 26 and November 28, 2025. Of those sites, 20 showed signs of burning, and 57 vanished entirely within four weeks.

A woman identified as Hala returned to el-Fasher three weeks ago from the Tawila refugee camp to collect documents. She told the campaign group Avaaz that RSF fighters issued her a handwritten entry permit. The day after her arrival, fighters spoke to her in the street with abusive language. Hala said she was not physically attacked only because other civilians were nearby. "There is no security in el-Fasher at all," she said. She has since returned to Tawila and says she will not go back.

Displacement continues to strain resources in the region. Tawila now hosts around 800,000 people, most from el-Fasher. Survivors say the RSF still detains fleeing men and demands ransoms of up to $3,000. Khadijah, an elderly woman originally from el-Geneina, said she now lives under a tree on a farm with little food and no shelter. Mudathir Mohammed Diqourni of an el-Fasher resistance committee said RSF militias are destroying farms and killing farmers in South and Central Darfur.

The United Nations fact-finding mission concluded in February that the RSF committed acts of genocide in el-Fasher. The mission also found reasonable grounds to believe that private companies and recruiters based in the UAE routed weapons through Chad, southeastern Libya, and Bosaso in Somalia. Mona Rishmawi, a member of the mission, said the supplies included weapons, drone-related equipment, logistical help, and personnel. The US government and Amnesty International have reached similar findings about Darfur.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, announced an investigation into what he called violations by his soldiers. A UN team that entered the city under close supervision in December described it as a crime scene. One in six people screened during that visit had severe acute malnutrition. The World Food Programme reported that residents inside the city survived on animal fodder and food waste during the siege. A doctor who worked inside an el-Fasher hospital for almost two years said generators ran only two hours a night, and emergency surgery was done by phone flashlight.