Sudan’s UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during their campaign to seize el-Fasher in Darfur, according to a new Amnesty International report.
The siege and takeover of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, marked one of the bloodiest episodes in Sudan’s devastating civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 14 million.
Amnesty said RSF crimes included murder, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, other forms of sexual violence, enslavement, extermination and persecution.
The RSF has not commented on the latest report, but has previously denied similar accusations.
Sudan has been engulfed by war for 3 years amid a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF paramilitary group. The conflict has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 28 million people facing acute hunger, according to aid agencies.
The UN has also warned that widespread sexual violence against men, women and children is being used as a weapon of war.
Ethnic cleansing in Darfur
After being driven out of Khartoum in March last year, the RSF shifted its focus towards consolidating control over Darfur by capturing el-Fasher and expanding its reach into the Kordofan states in southern Sudan.
Amnesty said RSF fighters committed grave human rights violations in and around el-Fasher during an 18-month siege.
“Children were not collateral damage of this violence — often, they were deliberately targeted and have suffered immensely. They have been killed, injured, raped, abducted, and forcibly recruited on a massive scale,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
The report, based on dozens of accounts from more than 200 survivors, said evidence gathered “may be relevant to the crime of genocide”.
One 17-year-old survivor from Abu Zerega, south of el-Fasher, described being attacked by RSF fighters.
“They tied me up and beat me with sticks and the back of an AK-47. Then one of them approached on a camel and… just shot me in the leg,” he said.
The teenager, who now uses crutches, said 8 of his cousins, including 4 boys aged between 11 and 17, were killed in the same attack.
Amnesty researchers reviewed 89 open-source videos and analysed satellite imagery from North Darfur. The rights group said many victims were targeted and killed because of their ethnic identity.
According to Amnesty, Arab fighters from the RSF targeted members of non-Arab communities, often using ethnic slurs translated as “slave” or “servant”.
Arab militias associated with the RSF have a long history of violence against black African communities in Darfur.
In el-Fasher, the armed groups defending the city were predominantly from the Zaghawa ethnic group. Amnesty said RSF fighters targeted Zaghawa civilians as well as combatants.
Witnesses also described mass killings, sexual violence and the deliberate targeting of children.
Pressure grows on RSF backers
Callamard said the world had been warned about the horrors facing civilians in el-Fasher as the RSF laid siege to the city.
“It is a stain on the conscience of humanity,” she said, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the urgent deployment of an international force to protect civilians.
Amnesty said it had identified RSF commanders responsible for violations of international law and called for accountability.
The RSF leadership has acknowledged that some violations occurred and claimed it is investigating them, but continues to insist that the scale of the atrocities is being exaggerated.
The report adds to mounting evidence of mass atrocities in el-Fasher. The UN previously warned that violence in the city bore the “hallmarks of genocide”.
According to the UN, more than 6,000 people were killed in just 3 days during the assault on el-Fasher.
International pressure is now growing on the foreign backers fuelling Sudan’s war, including the UAE, which has repeatedly been accused of supporting the RSF despite the militia’s record of massacres, sexual violence and ethnic cleansing.
For many Sudanese civilians, especially in Darfur, the latest report confirms what survivors have been saying for years: the RSF’s campaign is not merely a fight for territory, but a campaign of terror against communities already scarred by decades of violence.