UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday of a “terrible escalation” of violence in el-Fasher in the Darfur region, as paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighting the Sudanese army have taken complete control of the city.
The capture of el-Fasher, which gives the RSF control over all five state capitals in Darfur, is being seen as a potential turning point in Sudan’s civil war, which has been ongoing since April 2023.
“We have agreed to withdraw the army from el-Fasher to a safer location,” Sudan’s de facto ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a televised speech after the RSF announced victory on Sunday.
Burhan also vowed to fight “until this land is purified.”
What do we know about the situation in el-Fasher?
According to UN estimates, some 300,000 people are living in dire conditions in el-Fasher, which has been cut off for more than a year amid an RSF siege.
The current fighting has exacerbated an already desperate situation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Sunday.
“With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified — shelled, starving and without access to food, health care, or safety,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher.
Fletcher said he was “deeply alarmed by reports of civilian casualties and forced displacement,” calling for “an immediate ceasefire in el-Fasher, across Darfur and throughout Sudan.”
“Civilians must be allowed safe passage and be able to access aid. Those fleeing to safer areas must be allowed to do so safely and in dignity. Those who stay — including local responders — must be protected. Attacks on civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations must stop immediately,” he added.
Guterres says foreign actors should stop fueling conflict
At a press conference in Malaysia, Guterres said the seizure of el-Fasher “represents a terrible escalation in the conflict,” adding that “the level of suffering that we are witnessing in Sudan is unbearable.”
Guterres went on to say that the involvement of outside forces had made the conflict worse.
“It’s high time for the international community to tell 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,” he said.
“It is clear that … it is not only a Sudanese problem, with the army and Rapid Support Forces fighting each other,” he added. “We have more and more an external interference, that undermines the possibility to a ceasefire and to a political solution.”
Massive humanitarian crisis in Sudan
The UN has described the civil war in Sudan as creating the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with more than 12 million people displaced and 24.6 million suffering from acute hunger.
The civil war has its roots in a power dispute between the country’s de facto ruler, Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, which erupted into violence in April 2023.
Both sides have been accused of committing serious human rights violations.
Darfur already suffered a major humanitarian crisis in the early 2000s, when dictator Omar al-Bashir responded to a rebellion by employing the Janjaweed militias to attack non-Arab communities in the region.
Some of the RSF’s key leaders were members of the Janjaweed, who were notorious for attacking villages at dawn mounted on camels and massacring their residents.
Edited by: Kieran Burke
