The Sudanese paramilitary Speedy Help Forces (RSF) carried out struggle crimes and a attainable crime towards humanity in its takeover of Sudan’s western metropolis of el-Fasher final 12 months, the United Nations human rights workplace has mentioned.
In a report (PDF) launched on Friday, the Workplace of the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned “there are affordable grounds to consider” the RSF and allied armed teams dedicated acts amounting to struggle crimes.
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These acts embrace homicide, intentional assaults towards civilians, sexual violence comparable to rape, torture, and using hunger as a weapon of struggle, the report discovered.
“If dedicated as a part of a widespread or systematic assault directed towards any civilian inhabitants, these acts can also quantity to against the law towards humanity,” it mentioned.
The RSF seized control of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on October 26, 2025, after the withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which have been preventing the paramilitary group for management of Sudan since April 2023.
The takeover got here after an 18-month siege that minimize el-Fasher off from meals, medication and different crucial provides and prompted warnings of mass hunger.
Tens of 1000’s of residents fled town after the RSF took management, in response to UN figures, with many describing widespread violence on their journeys out of el-Fasher. Human rights advocates and other experts also warned that mass killings had taken place.
‘Like a horror film’
Friday’s report, which the UN mentioned was based mostly on interviews with greater than 140 victims and witnesses, described the mass killing of lots of of individuals at an El Fasher College dormitory referred to as Al-Rashid.
In response to survivors of the assault, RSF fighters besieged the constructing, which had been sheltering about 1,000 civilians, and opened hearth with “heavy weapons”, the report discovered. About 500 folks had been killed, and plenty of others had been wounded.
“One witness described how our bodies had been thrown into the air by the drive of the assault, ‘like a scene out of a horror film’,” the UN rights workplace mentioned.
The report additionally documented a number of cases of abstract executions, with survivors and witnesses describing how the RSF killed civilians accused of collaborating with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied teams.
In a single case, on October 26, a witness reported seeing RSF fighters spherical up about 300 younger males in el-Fasher’s Daraja Oula neighbourhood earlier than dividing them into teams of 30.
“The RSF fighters then opened hearth on every group till there was now not any motion, lobbed grenades at some teams, and deployed a gasoline burner towards others, systematically executing all of those who had been detained,” the report mentioned.
The RSF and its supporters initially tried to downplay the atrocities dedicated in el-Fasher, accusing allied armed teams of being accountable. The group’s chief, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often known as Hemedti, has additionally promised an investigation.
UN requires probe
Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, on Friday referred to as for “credible and neutral investigations” into what occurred in el-Fasher.
“These should result in significant accountability for perpetrators of exceptionally severe crimes, by way of all out there means,” mentioned Turk, together with in Sudanese courts, third states, or on the Worldwide Felony Court docket or different mechanisms.
Turk additionally referred to as on all events to the battle in Sudan to finish human rights violations and on third nations “with affect” to take motion to forestall additional atrocities.
“This consists of respecting the arms embargo already in place, and ending the availability, sale or switch of arms or navy materials to the events,” he mentioned.
Lethal violence has continued in a number of areas of Sudan, with a Sudanese docs’ group saying this week that at least two children had been killed in an RSF drone assault on a mosque in North Kordofan state.
Sudan has accused the United Arab Emirates of offering navy and monetary assist to the RSF, an allegation that Abu Dhabi has vehemently denied.
