The UN Human Rights Office said more than 6,000 people were killed over three days in late October when Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces overran el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur, after more than 18 months of siege. In a report released Friday, the UN said the offensive included “a wave of intense violence … shocking in its scale and brutality,” and described atrocities that it said may amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
The UN Human Rights Office said it documented the killing of at least 4,400 people inside el-Fasher between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27, and it said more than 1,600 others were killed as they were trying to flee the RSF rampage. The report said the UN’s toll estimate drew from interviews with 140 victims and witnesses and that the accounts were “are consistent with independent analysis of contemporaneous satellite imagery and video footage.”
The report described the offensive as beginning when RSF fighters and allied Arab militias, which the report said are known as Janjaweed, took over el-Fasher on Oct. 26. The UN Human Rights Office said the week-long assault included killings and executions as well as detention, disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, and it described abductions for ransom among the abuses it documented.
In one case, the UN Human Rights Office said RSF fighters opened fire from heavy weapons on a crowd of 1,000 people sheltering at the Rashid dormitory at el-Fasher university on Oct. 26, killing around 500. The report said a witness quoted in the findings described the scene as “like a scene out of a horror movie,” and it also said that around 600 people, including 50 children, were executed on Oct. 26 while taking shelter in university facilities.
The UN report also warned that the actual death toll from the week-long offensive in el-Fasher was “undoubtedly significantly higher.” It said the estimate it released did not include at least 460 people killed by RSF on Oct. 28, when the group stormed the Saudi Maternity hospital, according to the World Health Organization. The UN Human Rights Office also said around 300 people were killed in RSF shelling and drone attacks between Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 in the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people, about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) northwest of el-Fasher.
The UN Human Rights Office said sexual violence was widespread during the offensive, including rape and gang rape. It said RSF fighters and their allied militias targeted women and girls from the African Zaghawa non-Arab tribes over allegations of links to or support for the Sudanese military, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said survivors described how sexual violence was used as a weapon of war.
Türk, who visited Sudan last month, said survivors’ testimonies showed that the practice “was systematically used as a weapon of war.” The report said RSF and allied forces also abducted many people while they attempted to flee, and it said some were released after paying ransom. It further said thousands of people were held in at least 10 detention centers, including el-Fasher’s Children Hospital, which the report said was turned into a detention facility, and it said several thousand people remain missing and unaccounted for.
The UN report said the pattern of the RSF offensive in el-Fasher mirrored other attacks attributed to the group and allied militias. It cited attacks on the Zamzam camp for displaced people and on West Darfur’s Geneina and the nearby town of Ardamata in 2023.
Türk said there were “reasonable grounds” that RSF and allied Arab militias committed war crimes and that their acts also amount to crimes against humanity. In remarks quoted in the report, Türk said persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence and called for holding those responsible, including commanders, accountable.