UN Mission Finds Sudan’s RSF Offensive in El Fasher Bears “Hallmarks of Genocide”

An independent United Nations fact-finding mission on Sudan said in a report released on Thursday that actions carried out by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El Fasher bear the “hallmarks of genocide” against the Zaghawa and Fur communities.

The report said the offensive carried out last October inflicted “three days of absolute horror” and warned of an ongoing risk of further atrocities, signalling a continued threat to civilians.

Among the atrocities documented were “killing members of a protected ethnic group,” “causing serious bodily and mental harm,” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the UN fact-finding mission, said the scale, coordination and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war.

He added that they formed part of a planned and organised operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.

The report was released in the same week that drone strikes reportedly killed dozens across Sudan’s Kordofan region, where the UN has repeatedly warned of similar atrocities unfolding.

At least 15 children were killed in a drone strike on a displacement camp in West Kordofan this week, according to UNICEF, while local rights defenders said another strike on a market killed 28 people in North Kordofan.

The mission also raised alarm over the continued killing of civilians and called for their urgent protection. It described Kordofan as a flashpoint of fighting since the RSF’s capture of El Fasher, marked by ethnic massacres, sexual violence and arbitrary detention.

Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan’s army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and forced around 11 million to flee their homes. The war has triggered what the UN describes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.