GENEVA, Switzerland — A United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces carried out mass killings, systematic abductions of women and girls, mass gang rapes, and forced starvation as part of an intentional policy amounting to genocide during their siege and capture of a major city last year.
The Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group currently locked in a brutal civil war against the Sudanese armed forces, committed these atrocities in al-Fashir, located in North Darfur, following a prolonged military blockade. In harrowing testimonies compiled by international investigators, survivors described being subjected to sexual violence in rooms where the bodies of recently executed civilians, including members of their own families, were left on the ground.
According to the comprehensive report, the paramilitary group and its allied militias deliberately weaponized starvation by enforcing a strict siege on the urban center, blocking critical humanitarian relief supplies, and systematically shelling domestic food production infrastructure. Throughout the conflict, leadership of the paramilitary organization has repeatedly denied allegations of systemic abuse, dismissing the documented accounts as fabricated propaganda manufactured by their political and military adversaries.
The United Nations human rights chief issued a stark warning alongside the report, stating that a remarkably similar humanitarian catastrophe is now unfolding around another major urban hub, al-Obeid, which serves as the capital of North Kordofan state. The human rights office has already documented rising patterns of summary executions, forced disappearances, torture, and targeted sexual violence in the communities surrounding the city. In response, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council formally condemned the escalating violence and voted to establish an urgent inquiry to investigate the emerging abuses.
International observers have intensified their warnings regarding an imminent risk of large-scale atrocities as the paramilitary group masses its forces around al-Obeid. The vulnerable city currently shelters approximately half a million residents, a population that includes more than 83,000 internally displaced persons who previously fled violence in other parts of the country.
The independent fact-finding mission had previously noted that the targeted killings of non-Arab ethnic communities during the fall of al-Fashir bore the undeniable hallmarks of genocide. This latest update provides deeper evidence confirming that the widespread, systematic operations—encompassing mass executions, large-scale sexual assault, and calculated starvation—were part of a deliberate, pre-planned institutional policy. Investigators urged the international community to heed the warnings of the al-Fashir offensive, noting that the tactics of total encirclement, infrastructure destruction, and humanitarian blockades are being repeated with devastating predictability.
