Doctors' group says thousands held by RSF in Sudan's el-Fasher amid 'dire' abuses

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are holding thousands of people in detention in the Darfur city of el-Fasher, a local medical group has reported, describing conditions as dire and alleging widespread abuses including field executions and ethnically motivated killings.

The Sudan Doctors Network said more than 1,470 civilians were being held alongside over 900 military personnel and at least 20 doctors. Among those detained were 370 women and 426 children, the group said, with people confined in a prison, a children's hospital and cargo containers in conditions that medical staff described as inhumane.

The figures, which could not be independently verified given severe restrictions on access to the city, add to a growing body of accounts pointing to grave violations following the RSF's capture of el-Fasher. Communications blackouts and the expulsion of aid workers have made it extremely difficult for outside observers to establish the full scale of what is happening inside.

Disease and a long siege

The network reported a cholera outbreak in the city since early February, compounded by poor sanitation, a lack of clean water and malnutrition. Cholera spreads rapidly in conditions of overcrowding and broken water systems, and is often fatal without prompt treatment, a particular danger where the health system has collapsed and detainees are denied medical care.

The RSF seized el-Fasher in late October 2025 after an 18-month siege that cut the city off from food, medicine and other supplies and prompted warnings of mass starvation. The city had been the last major urban centre in Darfur held by Sudan's armed forces, making its fall a significant strategic and symbolic blow and leaving its civilian population at the mercy of the victorious paramilitaries.

“The detentions involved severe violations, including killings during torture and interrogation.”

— Sudan Doctors Network

Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that famine conditions had taken hold in and around el-Fasher during the siege, with displaced people in nearby camps among the most acutely affected. The disruption of harvests, markets and supply routes across Darfur has pushed large parts of the population toward catastrophic levels of hunger.

Allegations of ethnic violence

UN-backed investigators have previously concluded that the RSF's conduct in el-Fasher bears the hallmarks of genocide against non-Arab communities, echoing patterns documented in Darfur two decades earlier. Rights groups have collected testimony alleging that detainees and displaced people have been targeted on the basis of their ethnicity, with some communities singled out for particularly brutal treatment.

Human rights monitors have catalogued a range of alleged abuses associated with the fall of the city, including:

• Field executions and killings during interrogation
• Ethnically motivated targeting of non-Arab residents
• Detention of civilians, including hundreds of women and children
• Denial of medical care amid a cholera outbreak
• Obstruction of humanitarian access and the expulsion of aid workers

There was no immediate response from the RSF to the doctors' report. The paramilitary group has previously denied responsibility for atrocities and accused its opponents of carrying out abuses, while pledging to investigate alleged crimes by its fighters, though rights organisations say such commitments have rarely been followed by accountability.

Background: Sudan's devastating war

The war between the RSF and Sudan's armed forces has raged since April 2023, when a power struggle between the two former allies erupted into open conflict in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread across the country. The fighting has triggered one of the world's largest displacement and hunger crises, uprooting millions of people internally and forcing many more to flee across Sudan's borders.

Darfur has been a particular focus of the violence, reviving memories of the conflict that engulfed the region in the early 2000s and led to international war crimes charges. The RSF traces its origins to militias active in that earlier conflict, and the recurrence of ethnically charged violence has alarmed humanitarian organisations and foreign governments alike.

Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that the longer access remains blocked, the harder it becomes to deliver the food, clean water and medicine needed to stave off further deaths from hunger and disease. The combination of a cholera outbreak, mass detention and severe malnutrition represents a compounding emergency in which each crisis worsens the others.

What it means

The reported mass detentions in el-Fasher highlight the deepening humanitarian emergency in Darfur and the near-total breakdown of protection for civilians in areas changing hands during the war. With access for aid agencies and independent investigators heavily restricted, the international community faces persistent difficulty in documenting abuses, let alone preventing them. Pressure is likely to grow for renewed diplomatic efforts, expanded humanitarian access and accountability mechanisms, but with the conflict showing no sign of ending, the immediate outlook for those held in the city remains grave.