Sudan: RSF kills seven people in besieged city of El-Fasher
Seven people were killed and 71 others were wounded after Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces shelled the besieged city of El-Fasher, according to Middle East Monitor via Anadolu on August 31st.
El-Fasher is the last major city in the vast western Darfur region that is still under the control of the Sudanese military, making it the most violent front in the Sudanese civil war since it erupted in April 2023 between the RSF and the military.
The Sudanese Doctors Network condemned the fierce assault, which occurred on August 30th, as a “massacre” of innocent civilians. It cautioned that the RSF are executing “an integrated genocide, involving bombardment, siege, and systematic starvation of residents.”
In June 2025, a top United Nations official warned of genocide occurring in Darfur, as the RSF “continue to conduct ethnically motivated attacks against the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur groups”, all of whom live in the region.
The Sudan Doctors Network held the RSF responsible for the attack and urged local authorities and the international community to take “urgent and immediate action to halt the shelling and open safe humanitarian corridors.”
In reaction to a separate RSF attack which killed 24 people in El-Fasher on August 27th, the Network reprimanded the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, and the wider international community “for their silence and failure to confront these crimes.”
El-Fasher was placed under siege in May 2024 by the RSF, who have recently escalated the frequency and intensity of assaults on the city in an effort to wrest full control of Darfur from the military after losing the capital Khartoum in May 2025.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) revealed on August 28th that the RSF has constructed 31 kilometres (19 miles) of berms – raised earth barriers – that surround El-Fasher. The report said these barriers have turned the city into “a literal kill box”, according to France24 via AFP on August 31st.
The HRL report also states that the RSF has “determined the tactical conditions necessary” to fully defeat the military division in El-Fasher, according to the BBC on August 30th. Such a scenario would grant the paramilitary group total control of the entire Darfur region.
Analysts warn that this would almost certainly lead to the partitioning of Sudan as both the RSF and military have established and appointed competing governments.
Middle East Monitor via Anadolu, Maghrebi.org, France24 via AFP, BBC
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