Sudan: RSF drone strike kills 75 people in displacement camp
A drone strike by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed at least 75 people close to the besieged city of El-Fasher, according to France24 via AFP and Reuters on September 19th.
The drone strike, which was launched on September 19th, hit a mosque inside the Abu-Shouk displacement camp, which is situated near El-Fasher.
The Emergency Response Room, a local volunteer group coordinating humanitarian relief in Abu-Shouk camp, stated that “the bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the mosque.” El-Fasher and the surrounding displacement camps have frequently been targets of large-scale assaults by the paramilitary group.
El-Fasher is the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state and has been under siege by the RSF since May 2024. It is the final remaining major urban centre in the western region of Darfur that is still under the control of Sudan’s Military, who have been at war with the RSF since April 2023.
Many concerned experts and observers warn of the risk of Sudan’s partition if the RSF, which recently established a government to rival the military-backed administration, is successful in securing total territorial control over Darfur by seizing El-Fasher.
The United Nations human rights office revealed on September 19th that the first half of 2025 saw a significant rise in civilian killings amid increasing ethnic violence in Sudan. Li Fung of the OHCHR Sudan told reporters that “every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground.”
A new UN report revealed that over 3,384 civilians were killed in Sudan from January to June, mostly in the Darfur region. According to UN figures, the RSF attacked the Abu-Shouk camp at least 16 times in the same period, killing at least 212 people and injuring another 111.
According to Al-Arabiya, an RSF official who spoke to AFP claimed that the paramilitary group recently made significant territorial advances into Abu-Shouk, alongside gaining “full control of the UNAMID base”, a fortified compound in western El-Fasher formerly used by a defunct joint UN-African Union mission.
These major strategic gains place the RSF just three kilometres (1.9 miles) north of the El-Fasher airport, which is being used as the military’s de facto base of operations. The army’s 6th Division headquarters is only five kilometres east of the UNAMID base. Both strongholds are now in direct RSF firing range.
France24 via AFP and Reuters, Maghrebi.org, United Nations, Al-Arabiya
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