EL FASHER, SUDAN – Shocking new footage from the war-torn Sudanese city of El Fasher has sparked worldwide condemnation after scenes emerged of mass killings allegedly carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful Sudanese paramilitary group.
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One particularly disturbing video, verified by Prime Africa News, shows dozens of bodies strewn across a dirt road beside burning vehicles. Amid the carnage, a single wounded man pleads for mercy. Standing over him, a commander identified as Abu Lulu listens briefly before executing the man with a gunshot and walking away.
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The footage, among several verified by international investigators and human rights monitors, paints a grim picture of atrocities following the RSF’s capture of El Fasher last weekend. Witnesses describe trenches filled with bodies, door-to-door executions, and civilians hunted down as they tried to flee.
The escalation has reignited fears that Darfur — once synonymous with genocide and mass displacement two decades ago — may again be descending into ethnic slaughter.
At the United Nations, senior officials expressed frustration over the international community’s failure to halt Sudan’s slide into catastrophe.
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“I have found the limits of my ability and the U.N.’s authority,” lamented Tom Fletcher, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official, during an emergency Security Council meeting. He urged member states to “stop arming” the RSF’s campaign — a pointed rebuke aimed, implicitly, at the United Arab Emirates, widely accused of backing the paramilitary group with weapons and funds.
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In Washington, lawmakers renewed calls to suspend U.S. arms sales to the Emirates pending a full investigation into its alleged support for the RSF. In London, the government faced pressure over reports that British-made military equipment may have been used in the El Fasher assault.
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The UAE, however, has repeatedly denied supporting either side in Sudan’s civil war.
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Amid the mounting outrage, RSF leader Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, acknowledged in a social media statement that “some abuses” had occurred and promised to punish “any soldier or officer who committed a crime.”
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The RSF later announced the arrest of commander Abu Lulu, whose execution video triggered global outrage.
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However, the group strongly denied allegations from the World Health Organization (WHO) that 460 people were killed inside a hospital in El Fasher earlier this week — killings that occurred just days after the RSF seized the city.
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In a statement, the RSF dismissed the WHO’s claim as “baseless propaganda” and released its own video showing a disheveled hospital building with few visible patients.
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Sudan’s war, now entering its third year, has created what the U.N. calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Over 12 million people have been displaced, 400,000 killed by some estimates, and famine has spread across large parts of the country.
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The fall of El Fasher — the last major city in Darfur held by Sudan’s regular army — has worsened the situation dramatically. Aid groups say at least 260,000 civilians were trapped when RSF troops stormed the city on Sunday.
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Thousands have since attempted to flee, but only a small number — about 5,000 people, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council — have reached relative safety in the nearby town of Tawila, some 40 miles west.
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“People who arrived talk about dead bodies on the road and being stopped multiple times before reaching,” said Mathilde Vu of the NRC. “Men are being separated and detained.”
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The NRC warned that the escape routes are rife with “extortion, arbitrary arrests, detention, looting, sexual violence, and harassment.”
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Those who manage to survive the journey find themselves in overcrowded refugee camps where disease and hunger are rampant.
“They are safe from shelling and attacks,” Ms. Vu said, “but not from the suffering.”
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With communications still largely cut off from El Fasher, independent verification remains difficult. Yet the flood of videos uploaded by RSF fighters themselves — and authenticated by international organizations such as the Centre for Information Resilience — offers a chilling window into what many fear could become a new chapter of genocide in Darfur.
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As the world watches in horror, Sudan’s war continues to rage, leaving a nation shattered — and millions of civilians caught in a nightmare with no end in sight.
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