The city of El Fasher in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region lies in ruin. Once a bustling provincial capital, it fell last week to the paramilitary force Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after an 18-month siege that left its people starving, cut off and terrorised.
Those who escaped tell harrowing stories. A man named Adam Yahya fled with four children after his wife was killed in a drone strike. He said the streets were strewn with bodies and that RSF fighters manned sand barriers, shooting at men, women and children alike, reports Al Jazeera.
RSF fighters forced a woman into a house and assaulted her, ignoring her desperate pleas that she was old enough to be their mother. When they finally let her go, she ran for her life, leaving her sons behind. She later recalled how she and others fled through streets littered with bodies until they crossed a barrier and reached a small village outside El Fasher.
From satellite images, the horror is visible: smoke billowing from the airport, streets soaked with blood and mass graves reported in hospitals. According to The Guardian, one maternity hospital alone saw nearly 500 patients and family members killed.
The Sudanese government now accuses the RSF of war crimes, even genocide, and blames the United Arab Emirates for arming and supporting the militia. The RSF denied the claims, but the scale of suffering continues to grow.
As the city fell, often with its army garrison besieged, tens of thousands were displaced. The United Nations has reported over 36,000 people fleeing nearby North Kordofan in the days after El Fasher’s collapse.
For many in El Fasher, the siege meant starvation, the collapse of essential services, and the constant presence of death. When the walls finally came down, the bloodshed erupted.
Now the survivors cluster in camps, in darkness, stripped of homes, loved ones, futures. The sky above Darfur is heavy with the smoke of destruction; the earth beneath bears the footprints of atrocity.
UN Women warns that for more than 500 days, women and girls in El Fasher have been trapped under siege, enduring bombardment, starvation and horrific sexual violence, including killings, rape, gang-rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage.
They estimate that around 3,00,000 women and girls are still trapped. They have been surviving on animal feed and leaves, facing acute hunger and insecurity. The agency is calling for immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access, safe passage for women and girls.
But the question remains: will the world act before the number of nameless bodies becomes uncountable?
