At least 14 civilians have been killed while attempting to flee the war-torn city of El-Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region, according to a rights group monitoring atrocities committed during the ongoing civil conflict.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that documents human rights violations in Sudan, reported on Monday that the killings occurred on Saturday during an attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the outskirts of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. The group added that dozens more civilians were wounded in the assault, and an unknown number were taken into custody by RSF fighters.
The RSF, a powerful paramilitary faction locked in a brutal war with the Sudanese army since April 2023, has maintained a siege on El-Fasher since May 2024 but has so far failed to wrest control of the strategic city from military forces.
The recent assault came just two days after the RSF’s political leadership urged civilians to evacuate the city and head toward Qarni, a nearby village where RSF and its allied forces from the Tasis political alliance were stationed. In a video address on Thursday, Al-Hadi Idris, the RSF-appointed governor of Darfur, assured residents that those who relocated would be protected.
“I call on you to leave El-Fasher and head to Qarni, the northwest gate of the city, where our forces and the Tasis alliance forces are located and will ensure your safety,” Idris said in the address.
However, the Emergency Lawyers claim that it was in this same area that civilians were targeted and killed, raising serious concerns over the RSF’s intentions and the safety of those attempting to escape the siege.
The United Nations has issued repeated warnings over the dire humanitarian situation in El-Fasher, where hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped without access to aid, clean water, or basic services. Reports suggest that many families have resorted to eating animal feed to survive, though even that supply is now dwindling.
Since the civil war erupted in April 2023, the conflict between the RSF and Sudan’s army has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and plunged the country into one of the world’s worst hunger crises, according to the UN.
If the RSF succeeds in capturing El-Fasher, it will gain full control of the entire Darfur region and, alongside allied factions, much of southern Sudan—an outcome that would mark a major turning point in the ongoing war and further consolidate the group’s grip on large swathes of the country.
