Rights group concludes RSF committed war crimes during siege and capture of Sudan city News
RomanDeckert, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rights group concludes RSF committed war crimes during siege and capture of Sudan city

Amnesty International on Wednesday released a new report concluding that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during their siege and capture of El Fasher in North Darfur state in Sudan.

The report titled, City Under Siege, Children Under Fire: Rapid Support Forces’ Crimes Against Humanity in North Darfur, documents the slow and violent takeover of El Fasher by the RSF. Amnesty alleges that the abuses committed by the RSF between April 2023 and the capture of El Fasher by the RSF in October 2025 amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. In particular, the report highlights how civilians in North Darfur were unlawfully detained, tortured, and killed on a massive scale. Women and girls were raped and forced into sexual slavery, while children were often deliberately targeted by the militants.

Amnesty concludes that the RSF committed the following crimes against humanity: persecution on the basis of ethnic identity, for the use of derogatory and dehumanizing language during the RSF’s attacks on civilians; forcible transfer, for destroying villages around El Fasher and for restricting the entry of food into El Fasher during their siege; imprisonment, for the mass detention of civilians, some of whom were raped or subjected to forced labour; torture, for the acts of rape and sexual violence against those abducted during raids, and for beatings inflicted on detained civilians; and, extermination, through the imposition of life-threatening conditions during the siege of El-Fasher and the deliberate killing of civilians during their takeover.

In February of this year, an independent United Nations fact-finding mission found that the mass killings and related atrocities committed by the RSF during the October 2025 takeover of El Fasher showed “hallmarks of genocide” against ethnic minority communities. The UN fact-finding mission found evidence that the RSF committed three acts of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also released a report detailing human rights violations committed by the RSF during the takeover of El Fasher, which they allege amounts to war crimes.

The UAE has come under fire for supporting the RSF in their war against the Sudanese government. The conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF.

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