Since the Sudanese town of El Fasher fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on October 26, 2025, the capital of North Darfur has been the site of mass graves and RSF-run detention centers. Locals say kidnappings for ransom are common, as is sexual violence against women and girls held in displacement camps.
An investigation by the Sudan Tribune revealed that the RSF has detained most of the city’s male population, sparing only a small number of the elderly, women and children.
Sources said key RSF detention sites include student dormitories, government buildings and a mosque. There are also reports of bodies being transported from the city to be burned or buried at night near the Zamzam displacement camp to avoid detection.
“These areas are controlled by the RSF,” an anonymous man who survived the siege on El Fasher told the Sudan Tribune. “They block anyone from passing through and threaten those who try. People have fled these neighborhoods in total terror. The accounts are harrowing. Some say these are mass graves in giant trenches; others claim the RSF burns the bodies before burial or even buries the wounded alive.”
Survivors said that younger detainees are often moved to crowded facilities such as the Shala Prison, which in mid-January held about 3,000 men and 500 women, many of them charged with supporting the Sudanese Army. The RSF has also reportedly converted the Children’s Hospital in eastern El Fasher into a makeshift prison, where its 2,000 detainees include North Darfur Health Minister Khadija Moussa, dozens of medical professionals, civil servants and educators.
In the aftermath of El Fasher’s fall, health facilities were repeatedly attacked, medication ran out, pregnant women delivered babies without skilled assistance and rape survivors were left without medical care, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reported.
Zainab, 26, and Rania, 22, were both pregnant when El Fasher was attacked. They were among the 107,000 people, mostly women and children, who fled the city after the RSF claimed control. Rania recalled the relentless onslaught.
“We dug trenches to hide and sheltered inside them,” she told U.N. officials. “There was shelling every day.”
Rania collapsed from exhaustion while traveling to the overcrowded Al Affad displacement site and saw women giving birth on the roadside.
“It was heartbreaking and frightening,” said Rania, who eventually delivered her baby at a maternity hospital in nearby Al Dabbah by Caesarean section. Zainab said she gave birth at the camp “before I could get a tent.”
The year leading up to El Fasher’s fall was harrowing for midwife Madina Bashir, who was confined with 65 women inside a mosque in the city.
“For many days, we had no food or water,” Bashir told the UNFPA. “We survived by drinking rainwater and eating plants growing in the courtyard. When the mosque was stormed, they took all the men away and forced the women out barefoot. Some of the women were pregnant — one gave birth on the road because we couldn’t reach care in time.”
Families from El Fasher also spoke of “digital kidnapping,” in which RSF members send voice messages or photos of detainees to relatives, demanding ransoms for their release. In several cases, families paid the requested amounts only to have the RSF demand more money without releasing the prisoners.
“I know of a relative who had to pay 2 billion pounds in ransom just to be allowed to leave the city,” the anonymous man told the Sudan Tribune. “Thank God we made it out together. We hid among the women for protection and took the road toward Garni until we reached Tawila. It is a blessing to be alive after the horrors we witnessed.”
