An 18-month siege and mass killings carried out by Sudanese rebels during their seizure of a city in Darfur bore the hallmarks of genocide, UN experts have said.
The Rapid Support Force paramilitaries are said to have committed atrocities and human rights abuses in el-Fasher during a campaign that started in 2023 and ended with they overran the territory in October 2024.
The conflict also saw Arab militias try to completely destroy non-Arab communities, with more than half the population slaughtered in the bloodbath, according to the independent fact-finding mission.
Mona Rishmawi, one of the authors of the report, wrote: “Starvation, denial of assistance, mass killings, rape, torture and enforced disappearance…leaves only one reasonable inference – these are the hallmarks of genocide”.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has called for “urgent action” from the international community, including criminal investigations “to ensure accountability for vile perpetrators, justice for victims, and to break the cycle of bloodshed”.
Rebel commanders “calculated to bring about the physical destruction” of non-Arab areas, in particular the Zaghawa and the Fur communities, according to the report released on Thursday.
UN officials said several thousand civilians were killed when the RSF and fellow paramilitary groups took over el-Fasher, which had been the Sudanese army’s only remaining stronghold in Darfur.
Only 40% of the city’s 260,000 residents were able to flee the assault alive, thousands of whom were wounded, the officials said. The fate of the rest remains unknown.
The report went on to say: “Thousands of persons, particularly the Zaghawa, were killed, raped or disappeared during three days of absolute horror.
“The wanton violations that were perpetrated by the RSF and allied Arab militia in the final offensive on el-Fasher underscore that persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence.”
One witness was quoted as saying that he saw bodies thrown into the air, “like a scene out of a horror movie”, according to the report.
Ms Cooper said: “The world is still failing the people of Sudan. When the stories started to emerge about the horrors of el-Fasher it should have been a turning point, but the violence is continuing.
“It is time to listen to the women of Sudan, not the military men who have been prosecuting this war. We need action for justice, accountability and peace.”
Ms Cooper is expected to raise the report at a UN Security Council meeting in New York today.
Sudan was plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-running tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders erupted in the capital Khartoum and spread to other regions, including Darfur.
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The war has seen more than 40,000 people killed, according to UN figures, but aid groups say the true number could be many times higher.
The RSF and their allied Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, overran el-Fasher on 26 October and stormed the city.
Widespread atrocities were committed during the offensive that included mass killings and summary executions, sexual violence, torture, and abductions for ransom, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
More than 6,000 people were killed between 25 October and 27 October in the city, the office said.
Ahead of the assault, the rebels ran riot in the Abu Shouk displacement camp, just outside of the city, and killed at least 300 people over two days, it said.
The group’s commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously acknowledged abuses by his forces, but disputed the scale of atrocities.
An international convention known colloquially as the “Genocide Convention” – adopted in 1948 – sets out five criteria to assess whether genocide has taken place.
They include killing members of a group, causing its members serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures aimed to prevent births in the group, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the “physical destruction” of the group, and forcibly transferring its children to another group.
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The fact-finding team, which doesn’t have the final say on whether a genocide has been committed, said it found at least three of those five factors were met in the RSF’s actions.
Under the convention, a genocide determination could be made even if only one of the five were met.
The RSF acts in el-Fasher included killing members of a protected ethnic group; causing serious mental and bodily harm; and deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part – all key elements of the crime of genocide under international law, according to the fact-finding team.
The fact-finding mission pointed to mass killings, widespread rape, sexual violence, torture and cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, extortion, and enforced disappearances during RSF’s takeover of el-Fasher in late October.
