WED 15 OCT – Shelters housing scores of displaced civilians in El Fasher are being repeatedly targeted in strikes by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), satellite images suggest.
It follows reports that at least 80 people, including a newborn baby, have been killed in strikes over the last week as the group continues its push to secure control of the city amid a long-running siege.
Images taken between 8 and 12 October show at least six impact points at the Dar Al-Arqam Shelter in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood, according to the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).
Damage could be seen to at least four buildings as well as a cluster of smaller structures “consistent with temporary shelters for internally displaced persons”.
On Saturday, the El-Fasher Resistance Committee (ERC) said more than 60 people had been killed in strikes on the site. The Sudan Doctors Network (SDN) said 17 children and 22 women were among the dead, while 21 people had been injured.
Witnesses told Sudan War Monitor that the shelter was first hit by a drone strike, collapsing a number of buildings, and then by incendiary munitions, sparking fires across the compound.
The El-Fasher Resistance Committee (ERC) shared graphic images from the aftermath of the attack and said some of those killed had been burned inside metal caravans at the shelter.
Further imagery collected on 12 October showed impact points and damage to a mosque in the Abu Shouk camp, situated in the north of El Fasher, as well as to the Saudi Hospital, the last medical facility operating in the city.
On Thursday, the UN said at least 20 civilians had been killed across the two attacks.
Abu Shouk was the largest displacement camp in El Fasher until it fell to the RSF last month, forcing most civilians to flee towards areas like Daraja Oula in the west or to try to escape the city altogether.
Satellite images from 8 and 12 October show damage to buildings at the Dar Al-Arqam Shelter in El Fasher. © 2025, Planet Labs PBC
Abu Shouk was the largest displacement camp in El Fasher until it fell to the RSF last month, forcing most civilians to flee towards areas like Daraja Oula in the west or to try to escape the city altogether.
Yale HRL said it was clear the RSF was “intentionally targeting the remaining locations inside El-Fasher where civilians are sheltering with multiple targeted strikes.”
It added that RSF strikes over the last month were believed to have killed at least 174 people and wounded at least 123, demonstrating that the group had “operationalized a concerted campaign of specific attacks on civilians and their places of last refuge”.
Images published in a separate Yale HRL report last week showed a pattern of arson attacks that suggested the RSF was also conducting house-to-house clearances in Daraja Oula.
Setting civilian homes alight - often with people still inside or after they have been forced inside - is a tactic that has been used by the RSF throughout the war, most notably during the razing of the Zamzam camp in April as well as in attacks on scores of villages across Darfur.
Many of the civilians still in the areas being targeted in El Fasher belong to non-Arab ethnic groups, such as the Zaghawa, that have historically been targeted by the RSF.
The reports suggest that the ethnically-targeted attacks it has long been feared would follow the RSF's capture of the city have already begun.
On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk accused the RSF of having an “endless and wanton disregard for civilian life”.
“Despite repeated calls, including my own, for specific care to be taken to protect civilians, they continue instead to kill, injure, and displace civilians, and to attack civilian objects, including IDP shelters, hospitals and mosques, with total disregard for international law. This must end,” he said.
In a statement on Telegram on Sunday, the RSF criticised what it called a “rush to condemn us based on one-sided information” and claimed that El Fasher was “devoid of civilians”.
The humanitarian situation inside the city remains catastrophic as a result of the siege.
The RSF has over recent months built an earthen wall that now completely encircles El Fasher, allowing the group to control the flow of people and food to and from the city.
In a recent survey of people who had escaped El Fasher, three-quarters said they had “never or rarely” had access to food while in the city, while half said the same about water.
One doctor who has remained in the city for the entire duration of the war told Avaaz on Tuesday that she had finally decided to try to escape.
“There is no food or water left in El Fasher. We have to leave,” she said.
The same day, the ERC said in a statement that even ambaz, an animal food made of peanut shells that many had been eating to survive, was now unavailable.
“There is nothing left to eat. Today all the food is gone,” it said. “We write and scream and plead but words seem to fall into a void.
“No aid planes…, no real international movement, no wild movement to lift the siege.
“Only time passes and hunger increases and death takes lives. Hunger will kill us before the ammunition.”
The weekly dispatch features the latest developments, first-hand testimony, footage, photos, stats and analysis on Sudan. We can connect you with voices from the ground, experts and survivors of the war. I am available at +44 7514 796 678 / sudan@avaaz.org
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The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is building an earthen wall around El Fasher to create a “kill box” and prevent civilians fleeing the besieged city, satellite imagery suggests.
People caught trying to smuggle food into the besieged city of El Fasher are being “executed on sight” by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to one civilian.
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