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Fears are growing for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said it had captured the city, which it has been besieging for more than a year in Sudan’s civil war.
The group said on Sunday that it had seized control of the army’s main base in the city in Darfur, where famine was declared in a displacement camp last year. It then released a statement saying it had “extended control over the city of El Fasher from the grip of mercenaries and militias”.
The Popular Resistance, a local pro-army militia, responded on Sunday that the army was in “more fortified positions” and that residents were still “resisting in the face of terrorist militias”.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said he was “deeply alarmed” by reports of fighters pushing further into the city and cutting off escape routes, calling for an immediate ceasefire, access for humanitarian aid and safe passage for civilians who wanted to leave.
However, the RSF said it was committed to providing “safe corridors for all those who wish to move to other locations, as well as the necessary protection for all those in the city”.
Sudan has been torn apart by civil war since April 2023, when a power struggle between the military and the RSF descended into open warfare in the capital, Khartoum, and spread rapidly across the country.
On the two-year anniversary of the conflict, more than 13 million people had been displaced and half the 51 million population needed food aid.
Although Sudan’s army recaptured Khartoum in March 2025, enabling many residents to return, fighting has continued to rage in the country’s south and west. In May 2024, the RSF laid siege to El Fasher, in the western Darfur region.
In August, the UN said more than 600,000 people had been displaced from the city, while 260,000 still trapped there were cut off from aid.
A telecommunications blackout and Starlink satellite internet outages are preventing access to independent information from El Fasher.
If the RSF’s capture of the city is confirmed, it would mean the militia – led by the warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – controls all five of Darfur’s states. Analysts have warned that this could herald the effective partition of Sudan.
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Dagalo was sworn in as head of the RSF’s parallel government in August, in the city of Nyala. The militia also increased the intensity of the siege of El Fasher.
This month, RSF drone and artillery strikes killed at least 60 people in a displacement shelter in the city.
Sudan’s army and the RSF have been accused of committing war crimes in the civil war. The RSF and allied militias have attacked non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, with fighters saying they would force women to have “Arab babies”, according to a UN report published in November 2024.
The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed Arab militias, which were accused of committing genocide under the orders of former president Omar al-Bashir in Darfur in 2003.
In January, the US government formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide.
Agence France Presse contributed to this report.
