Sudan: RSF claims capture of El-Fasher
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) claim to have taken control of the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, according to a BBC News report on October 26th.
In a social media post, the paramilitary rebel group said that El-Fasher had been captured “from the grip of mercenaries and militias allied with the terrorist army.”
El-Fasher is the state capital of Sudan’s western Darfur region, and has been under an RSF-imposed siege since May 2024. The city is home to the 6th Infantry Division headquarters, which is regarded as the military’s last line of defence against paramilitary forces.
Since the civil war between the UAE-backed RSF and the Sudanese military began in April 2023, El-Fasher has been one of the last cities still under military control. An estimated 24,000 people have been killed since the war started, while a further 13 million have been displaced.
On October 23rd, four UN agencies — the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), UNICEF, and the World Food Programme (WFP) — released a joint statement identifying more than 30 million people in Sudan needed urgent humanitarian aid.
The report said that “Sudan is facing one of the world’s most severe emergencies, with more than 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, including over 9.6 million internally displaced people and nearly 15 million children.”
Community kitchens in El-Fasher were forced to close on October 5th amid severe food shortages, worsened by the RSF blocking all humanitarian corridors leading to the besieged city.
The RSF has been accused of imprisoning the residents of El-Fasher in what researchers at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) have described as a “literal killbox” after reports on August 28th revealed that the group had constructed walls around the city to prevent anyone from leaving the enclave.
Escalating violence, including drone strikes targeting shelters for displaced persons, has forced inhabitants to flee to increasingly isolated refugee camps where access to food, clean water and medical care is extremely limited.
On June 23rd, a UN official warned that the risk of genocide occurring in Sudan was “very high”, as the RSF is accused of committing ethnically-motivated violence.
BBC News, Maghrebi.org
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