Fears are growing for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El Fasher, Sudan, after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said it had captured the city, which it has been besieging for more than a year in the country’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 second anniversary of the start 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.
Videos showed RSF fighters celebrating in front of the El Fasher garrison, which had been abandoned by the army. Others circulating online, which could not be independently verified, appeared to show the RSF berating a group of men seated on the ground, accusing them of being soldiers, and RSF vehicles chasing people fleeing.
A telecommunications blackout and Starlink satellite internet outages are severely limiting access to independent information from El Fasher. However, according to people who had managed to leave the city who spoke to Sky News, some people who tried to flee were killed by the RSF.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate expressed concern over the arrest of Muammar Ibrahim, noting that videos showing the reporter surrounded by RSF fighters had gone viral on social media and demanding his “immediate and unconditional release”.
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.
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.
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This month, RSF drone and artillery strikes killed at least 60 people in a displacement shelter in the city.
Sudan’s military government has accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying arms to the RSF, which the Emiratis have denied. In April, a leaked UN experts report found “multiple” flights from the UAE where transport planes made apparently deliberate attempts to avoid detection as they flew into bases in Chad, where arms smuggling across the border into Darfur has been monitored.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Monday that there was “more and more an external interference” that was undermining the path to a ceasefire and political solution to Sudan’s civil war.
“It’s high time for the international community to talk clearly, to all countries that are interfering in this war, and that are providing weapons to the parties to the war, to stop doing that,” Guterres told a press conference on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Kuala Lumpur.
He added: “It is clear that … it is not only a Sudanese problem, with the army and Rapid Support Forces fighting each other.”
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
