Sudan: City Under Siege, Children Under Fire: Rapid Support Forces’ Crimes Against Humanity in North Darfur

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during its campaign to seize El Fasher in North Darfur state in Sudan, Amnesty International concluded in a major new report. The organization is now calling for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan, and for the urgent deployment of an international force to protect civilians.

City Under Siege, Children Under Fire: Rapid Support Forces’ Crimes Against Humanity in North Darfur documents how civilians in and around El Fasher were killed, injured, beaten, tortured and detained between early 2024 and October 2025 as the RSF fought the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied Joint Forces in a war that devastated North Darfur. The RSF’s crimes included murder, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, other forms of sexual violence, enslavement, extermination and persecution.

Hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced, many of them repeatedly risking death and injury during attacks or while fleeing. Countless have been orphaned. People with disabilities and older people have faced acute risks, including targeted attacks, abandonment, and exclusion from essential assistance.

Throughout assaults on North Darfur, the RSF routinely used terms like falangay, indicating slavery or servitude, during attacks on civilians of non-Arab ethnicity.

The world was warned of the horrors that civilians in El Fasher confronted as the RSF laid siege to the city.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

“The war in Sudan is a war on civilians. The world was warned of the horrors that civilians in El Fasher confronted as the RSF laid siege to the city. It is a stain on the conscience of humanity,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Children were not collateral damage of this violence – often, they were deliberately targeted and have suffered immensely. They have been killed, injured, raped, abducted, and forcibly recruited on a massive scale.

“A nationwide ceasefire is immediately needed. An independent and adequately resourced international force must be deployed to Sudan to protect civilians against crimes by all parties to the conflict. Without urgent action from the international community, attacks on civilians – and the immense suffering and trauma being inflicted on children – will continue unhindered.”

Amnesty International interviewed 247 people for the report, including 208 survivors (169 adults and 39 children) who experienced or witnessed conflict-related abuses. The report also contains open-source analysis, including 89 videos and extensive analysis of satellite imagery from North Darfur.

On 10th June 2026, Amnesty International sent a letter to General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the RSF, documenting the report’s findings. At the time of publication, no response had been received.

Analysis of evidence gathered within the geographic and temporal scope under examination in this report allows for the conclusion – without qualification – of persecution based on ethnic identity. Amnesty International believes that acts documented in this report, as well as other suspected crimes under parallel investigation, may be relevant to the crime of genocide. Its investigation into this conduct is ongoing at the time of publication.

By November 2023, the RSF controlled four out of five state capitals in Darfur. El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, was the lone holdout. Beginning in 2024, the RSF systematically attacked the villages, towns, and displacement camps surrounding El Fasher, targeting residents with violence and pillaging, and burning civilian infrastructure.

Many of these communities were predominantly from the Zaghawa ethnic group. During attacks, RSF fighters burned civilian homes long after residents had fled, suggesting an intent to render the areas uninhabitable. These actions, combined with the RSF’s continued control of these areas, preventing displaced populations from returning, are consistent with the ethnic cleansing of the Zaghawa people from areas near El Fasher.

Yagoub*, a 17-year-old Zaghawa boy, was at his family farm near Abu Zerega, a town 35km south of El Fasher, when the RSF attacked in December 2024. He tried to flee but was captured by the RSF. He told Amnesty International: “They tied me up and beat me with sticks and the back of an AK-47. Then one of them approached on a camel and said, ‘This is the child of a falangay’… And he just shot me in the leg.”

Yagoub now uses crutches to walk. Eight of his cousins, including four boys aged between 11 and 17, were killed in the same attack.

On 26 October 2025, the RSF waged its final offensive on El Fasher. When civilians attempted to flee, they encountered a 57km network of berms. A massacre followed: hundreds were executed, and many others were tortured or detained.

Amnesty International interviewed 70 survivors, almost all of whom witnessed executions, rape, other torture or hostage-taking. One 58-year-old woman estimated she saw more than 1,000 dead bodies: “The people who were shot were thrown inside the berm… [The RSF] said they would fill in the berm with the bodies.”

Many children were among those killed at the berm. Taiseer, a 68-year-old Zaghawa woman fleeing with her five grandchildren, saw the RSF shoot and kill a 12-year-old boy who was accompanying them.

Zubeida, a 15-year-old girl, survived a massacre of approximately 25 people at the berm only because she identified herself as half Arab and falsely claimed that her father was in the RSF. She witnessed the execution of men and boys, the killing of women who resisted rape, and the shooting of young children. She said: “I am the only survivor.”

Those who remained in El Fasher witnessed horrific violations. Amnesty International interviewed 18 people who were present at Saudi Maternity Hospital, including staff, patients and relatives of patients, who saw the RSF kill scores of people there. Attacking the Saudi Maternity Hospital, a protected object under international law, is a war crime.

The RSF raped and committed other forms of sexual violence on a massive scale across many settings. Amnesty International interviewed 26 survivors of sexual violence, including 20 female survivors of rape, among them three girls under the age of 18 and one young woman raped when she was 17. Survivors described being subjected to severe humiliation and abuse that left lasting physical and psychological harm.

Tasneem, a 13-year-old Zaghawa girl, was abducted in early April 2025 when RSF fighters attacked her village west of El Fasher. Tasneem was herding the family’s livestock with her father when RSF fighters approached. Tasneem watched the RSF shoot her father dead, before she was abducted and transported to El Daein, approximately 350km away.

She told Amnesty International: “[The first time I was raped] it was three people. I was blindfolded… They held me down… They said this is happening to you because your boys fought us, boys of the falangayat.”

The RSF also unlawfully detained civilians and held many of them hostage for ransom, often in horrific conditions. Amnesty International interviewed 45 people who were unlawfully detained by the RSF, including eight children, between July 2024 and January 2026.

Detention conditions were abusive and degrading. Interviewees, including boys as young as 13, said they were beaten and verbally abused with ethnic slurs by RSF soldiers while in captivity. They were denied adequate food and water, and kept in sweltering, overcrowded rooms. Illness spread: many detainees witnessed dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of people dying from dehydration or disease.

Amnesty International interviewed nine men who were held in Mina al-Bari detention centre, on the eastern outskirts of El Fasher, for periods of up to five months between mid-2024 and early 2026. They said they were detained in shipping containers, which were kept closed most of the time. The stifling heat and minimal air circulation made it difficult to breathe.

One man who was held there said: “You cannot stretch your legs… You cannot sleep long… [The RSF] told me, ‘We don’t care if you die’.”

Another man who was held at Mina al-Bari described being deprived of food and water: “My body was [drying out] completely, other people as well as myself lost consciousness. [The RSF] thought we had died so they just threw us out of the container. After a while, they realized we were still alive. They tortured us again and took us [back] inside the container.”

Amnesty International also documented widespread RSF recruitment and use of boys, either from aligned Arab ethnic groups or abducted from non-Arab groups during attacks on villages and displacement camps. They performed different roles for the group, including fighting, gathering intelligence, and herding livestock.

Rashid was abducted by the RSF from his village around July 2024, aged approximately 17. For nearly nine months, he was kept in a rural area and forced to herd goats. He was guarded by three armed boys, themselves RSF recruits, who subjected him and other detainees to humiliation and beatings, and deprived him of food and water. He said: “They would watch me, and if I tried to rest, they would open fire on me… They beat me all over my body.”

Amnesty International identified RSF commanders responsible for serious violations of international law.

RSF members filmed and publicly shared videos of mass executions. Amnesty International collected and verified 19 videos documenting one large massacre near the berm, about 12km north-west of El Fasher. Nine of these videos show RSF commander Al-Fateh Abdullah Idris, more widely known as ‘Abu Lulu’, executing captives who are wearing civilian clothing.

Senior RSF commanders at the Mina al-Bari detention facility included Major General Gedo Hamdan Ahmed Mohamed (‘Abu Shouk’), who directed interrogations and participated in torture, and Lieutenant Colonel Abbas Khater Bakhit, who was seen ordering the torture of prisoners and facilitating payments.

These violations happened repeatedly and on a large scale, suggesting that those in positions of authority knew, or should have known, what was occurring, and failed to stop it or hold anyone accountable.

“The international community must move beyond statements of concern and take concrete steps to protect civilians, breaking the cycle of impunity,” said Agnès Callamard.

The international community must move beyond statements of concern and take concrete steps to protect civilians

Agnès Callamard

“Sudan has been reeling from the impact of humanitarian funding cuts, which deepened an already catastrophic human rights crisis for communities that have lost everything. All of Sudan’s international partners must ensure that adequate aid reaches refugees and displaced persons, including child-focused services, to help quell the crisis.

“It also requires strengthening accountability by ensuring sufficient support for all existing accountability mechanisms for Sudan, including the International Criminal Court, and UN and African Union-backed fact-finding missions. Commanders identified in this report should be investigated and, where there is sufficient admissible evidence, prosecuted.”

All countries must immediately stop providing arms and ammunition to all parties of the Sudan conflict. In particular, all countries must stop providing the UAE – the RSF’s chief backer – with any arms until it can be brought into compliance with the UN embargo. The UN Security Council must also expand the existing arms embargo on Darfur to the rest of the country.