Survivors say fear and hunger persist in el-Fasher one year after RSF takeover

One year after the Rapid Support Forces captured el-Fasher, survivors report that violence, hunger, and detentions continue inside the North Darfur capital. A woman identified as Hala returned from the Tawila refugee camp three weeks ago to retrieve her birth certificate and ID. Upon arrival, RSF fighters questioned her and issued a handwritten entry permit with her name, a signature, and the date.

Hala told the campaign group Avaaz that fighters spoke to her abusively in the street the day after her arrival. She said she was not physically attacked only because other civilians were nearby. "There is no security in el-Fasher at all," Hala said. She added that women face sexual violence and that anyone refusing RSF demands risks beating or torture. She has returned to Tawila and says she will not go back.

The RSF launched its final offensive on October 26, 2025, following a siege of more than 500 days. Researchers at Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab described the scale of the killing as comparable to the Rwandan genocide. About 260,000 people were inside the city when the assault began, and monitoring groups counted at least 6,000 dead in the first 72 hours using satellite imagery.

In the North Kordofan town of Bara, volunteers recovered more than 600 bodies from 200 mass graves this week. Witnesses say most of the victims were civilians killed during the same October offensive. Yale researchers identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains between late October and late November 2025. Twenty of those sites showed signs of burning, and 57 vanished within four weeks.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, announced an investigation into violations by his soldiers. A UN team that entered the city under close supervision in December called el-Fasher a crime scene. One in six people screened had severe acute malnutrition. A doctor who worked in an el-Fasher hospital for two years said generators ran only two hours a night and emergency surgery was performed by phone flashlight.

The Tawila camp now hosts around 800,000 people, most from el-Fasher. Survivors say the RSF still detains fleeing men and demands ransoms of up to $3,000. Khadijah, an elderly woman from el-Geneina, said she lives under a tree on a farm with little food and no shelter. Mudathir Mohammed Diqourni of an el-Fasher resistance committee said RSF militias are destroying farms and killing farmers in South and Central Darfur.