Sudan's El Fasher Faces Humanitarian Crisis Amid Ongoing Violence

The Sudanese city of El Fasher resembles a massive crime scene, with large piles of bodies heaped throughout its streets as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, work to destroy evidence of their massacre.

Six weeks after the RSF seized the city, corpses have been gathered in scores of piles to await burial in mass graves or cremated in huge pits. British MPs have been briefed that at least 60,000 have been murdered in El Fasher, with Sarah Champion, chair of the Commons international development select committee, stating that a low estimate is 60,000 people killed in the last three weeks alone.

As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell on October twenty-sixth, and no expert has been able to explain the whereabouts of these missing individuals. Analysis from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab indicates that the once-bustling markets of El Fasher are now desolate, with livestock removed and areas becoming overgrown.

RSF officials had pledged to allow the UN into El Fasher to deliver aid and investigate atrocities, but the city remains out of bounds for humanitarian organizations and UN officials. Aid convoys are on standby in nearby towns, but the RSF has refused to provide safety guarantees.

A UN source stated that there needs to be a security assessment before aid can be planned, as there is currently no guarantee of safe passage for civilians or humanitarian workers. Despite the uncertainty regarding the number of residents alive in El Fasher, the need for assistance is critical, with staggering levels of malnutrition reported among those who have escaped.

Experts have declared the city to be in famine conditions, with Nathaniel Raymond noting that some residents had contacted his team alleging that up to 10,000 people had been killed shortly after the attack.

Human rights experts now believe El Fasher to be the site of the worst war crime in the Sudanese civil war, which has already seen mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing. The ongoing conflict has resulted in the deaths of approximately 400,000 people and displaced nearly 13 million.

Additionally, renewed calls for an investigation into an RSF attack on the Zamzam displacement camp have emerged, with Amnesty International documenting that the RSF targeted civilians and destroyed key community structures during a large-scale attack six months earlier.