Horrific reports are emerging of ethically motivated mass killings and other atrocities from Sudan after paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of El Fasher in the country’s western Darfur region over the weekend. Now, Sudan’s army has claimed that more than 2,000 civilians were brutally massacred at the hands of these paramilitary forces in just 48 hours. 

The RSF has been at war with Sudan’s army for over two years, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of around 12 million people. El-Fasher fell to the RSF after more than 18 months of siege warfare. This means that the group now have control of every state capital in the large Darfur region. Horrific videos released by local activists show a fighter known for executing civilians in these RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range. Other unverified footage shared by pro-democracy activists also showed dozens of people lying dead on the ground alongside burnt-out vehicles.

Joint Forces, a military group fighting alongside the army, said on Tuesday (October 28) that the RSF “committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of El-Fasher”. 

It claimed that more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were “executed and killed” on October 26 and 27, with most of them being “women, children and the elderly”.

Aid workers and doctors reported scenes of carnage and panic, recalling the fall of El-Geneina, in West Darfur, in 2023, when some 15,000 were killed, The Times reported.

Various human rights groups, including Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, have raised concerns over what they have said is a “systematic and intentional process” of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution. The Yale lab, which has been monitoring the war using open-source intelligence and satellite imagery, said it had found evidence consistent with mass killings by the RSF. 

This included what appeared to be “door-to-door clearance operations” in the city, it said.

Also on Tuesday, the EU said it was “deeply concerned” by intensified violence in El-Fasher and urged “all warring parties to de-escalate”.

“We are closely monitoring the situation with our partners and ensuring that all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are documented,” foreign affairs spokesman Anouar El Anouni said. “There can be no impunity”.

The siege warfare in El-Fasher has become so extreme that the UN labelled it among the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with displacement camps outside the city officially declared to be in famine, while people inside it turned to animal fodder for food. The UN warned before the city’s fall that 260,000 people remained trapped there without aid, half of them being children.