More than 6,000 people were killed during a three-day offensive by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Darfur city of El-Fasher in late October, the United Nations said in a report released Friday.
The UN Human Rights Office described the assault as a wave of violence “shocking in its scale and brutality,” citing widespread killings, executions, sexual violence, abductions, torture and enforced disappearances that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
According to the report, RSF fighters and allied Arab militias overran El-Fasher — the Sudanese army’s last major stronghold in Darfur — on Oct. 26 after an 18-month siege. At least 4,400 people were killed inside the city between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27, while more than 1,600 others died as they tried to flee.
The findings were based on interviews with 140 victims and witnesses, supported by satellite imagery and video analysis. The report warned the actual toll was likely “significantly higher.”
It said around 500 people were killed when heavy weapons were fired at civilians sheltering in a university dormitory, while about 600 others — including dozens of children — were executed in university facilities on the same day.
The report also cited separate attacks, including the killing of at least 460 people when RSF fighters stormed a maternity hospital on Oct. 28, and about 300 deaths in shelling and drone strikes on a displaced persons’ camp earlier that week.
Sexual violence was described as widespread, with women and girls from non-Arab communities particularly targeted. Survivors told investigators that rape and gang rape were systematically used as a weapon of war.
Thousands were reportedly abducted or detained in facilities run by the RSF, including a children’s hospital converted into a detention center, with many people still missing.
UN rights chief Volker Türk called for accountability, warning that continued impunity risks fueling further cycles of violence in Sudan’s ongoing conflict, which began in April 2023 and has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.