Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its support for Sudan’s territorial unity and integrity, denouncing “criminal attacks” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North and South Kordofan states that have killed dozens of people, including women and children.
In a statement on Saturday, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned “foreign interference” by “some parties” in Sudan, including the “continued influx of illegal weapons, mercenaries and foreign fighters” for the continuation of the nearly three-year-old war.
The statement did not specify the parties, though.
It came a day after the Sudan Doctors Network, a humanitarian group, said a drone attack by the RSF on a vehicle transporting displaced families in North Kordofan killed at least 24 people, including eight children.
The attack followed a series of drone raids on humanitarian aid convoys and fuel trucks across North Kordofan, including an assault on a World Food Programme convoy on Friday that killed at least one person.
Fighting between the RSF and Sudan’s army has intensified across Kordofan in recent months following the fall of el-Fasher to the paramilitary group in October. The nearly three-year-long conflict has killed an estimated 40,000 people and pushed more than 21 million — almost half of Sudan’s population — into acute food shortages.
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday the deadly RSF attacks “are completely unjustifiable and constitute flagrant violations of all humanitarian norms and relevant international agreements”.
The ministry demanded that “RSF immediately cease these violations and adhere to its moral and humanitarian obligation to ensure the delivery of relief aid to those in need in accordance with international humanitarian law” and a ceasefire deal agreed by the warring parties in Jeddah in 2023.
It added that “some parties” were fuelling the conflict by sending in weapons and fighters, despite “these parties’ claim of supporting a political solution” in Sudan.
The statement comes amid allegations by the Sudanese government that the United Arab Emirates has been arming and funding the RSF. Sudan filed a case against the UAE at the International Court of Justice last year, accusing it of “complicity in genocide” committed by the RSF against the Masalit community in West Darfur state.
The UAE has denied the allegations.
Separately, Saudi Arabia has also accused the UAE of backing the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen. The STC, initially part of the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government of Yemen, launched a major offensive last December in the country’s Hadramout and al-Mahra provinces, seeking to establish a separate state.
The offensive resulted in a split in Yemen’s internationally-backed government, and prompted Saudi Arabia to launch deadly raids targeting the STC.
The UAE pulled out its troops from Yemen following the Saudi allegation, saying it supports Saudi Arabia’s security.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE were members of the Arab military coalition, formed to confront the Houthis, who took full control of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in 2015.
CAIRO, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he valued an offer by U.S. President Donald Trump to mediate a dispute over Nile River waters between Egypt and Ethiopia.
In a post on X, Sisi said on Saturday that he addressed Trump’s letter by affirming Egypt’s position and concerns about the country’s water security in regards to Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din and Muhammad Al Gebaly; Editing by Toby Chopra)
A drone strike hit a United Nations facility in war-torn Sudan on Saturday, killing six peacekeepers, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
The strike hit the peacekeeping logistics base in the city of Kadugli, in the central region of Kordofan, Guterres said in a statement.
Eight other peacekeepers were wounded in the strike. All the victims are Bangladeshi nationals, serving in the U.N. Interim Security Force for Abyei, UNISFA.
“Attacks targeting United Nations peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law,” said Guterres, who called for those responsible for the “unjustifiable” attack to be held accountable.
The Sudanese military blamed the attack on the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, a notorious paramilitary group at war with the army for control of the country for more than two years. There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
The attack “clearly reveals the subversive approach of the rebel militia and those behind it,” the military said in a statement. The military posted a video on social media showing plumes of dense black smoke over what it said was the U.N. facility.
The oil-rich Abyei is a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan, and the U.N. mission has been deployed there since 2011 when South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan.
Guterres also called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan to allow “a comprehensive, inclusive and Sudanese-owned political process” to settle the conflict in the northeast African country.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country. The conflict has killed over 40,000 people – a figure rights groups consider a significant undercount.
The fighting has recently centered on Kodrofan, particularly since the RSF took control of el-Fasher, the military’s last stronghold in the western region of Darfur.
The war has wrecked urban areas and has been marked by atrocities, including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings which the U.N. and rights groups have said amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur.
The war has also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and pushed parts of the country into famine.
Sudan is a country with a long memory: Our history stretches back to the biblical Kingdom of Kush, one of Africa’s greatest civilizations. The war now waged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia is unlike anything we’ve ever faced. It is tearing the fabric of our society, uprooting millions, and placing the entire region at risk. Even so, Sudanese look to allies in the region and in Washington with hope. Sudan is fighting not only for its survival, but for a just peace that can only be achieved with the support of partners who recognize the truth of how the war began and what is required to end it.
The war in Sudan is one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of our time, yet it rarely receives the accuracy it deserves. For many, the conflict feels abstract, if they know anything about it at all. Sudan has endured repeated cycles of political collapse and violence since the 1950s, including two civil wars, multiple internal conflicts and an ongoing war between rival military factions. This crisis did not appear out of nowhere, nor was it triggered by a single outside actor. It is the result of decades of fractured institutions, violent armed groups and a state that has consistently struggled to build lasting national cohesion.
The scale of human suffering is staggering: families with nowhere safe to go, cities emptied and generations robbed of stability. When discussing external involvement, including the role of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we owe it to the Sudanese to be precise, not performative. We owe them accuracy, not convenient narratives.
Yet public conversation around the UAE’s activities has hardened into a social media-driven assault: the UAE as destabilizer or hidden hand steering Sudan’s collapse. Most accusations stem from political rivalries and hidden agendas. That is not surprising in international affairs, but these claims flatten a complex, painful reality into a slogan.
If we genuinely care about the people suffering on the ground, that is unacceptable.
The UAE’s role, open to debate like any country’s, is shaped by three broad motivations rooted in Sudan’s reality.
Start with the humanitarian dimension. Whether critics like it or not, the UAE has provided substantial support: food, medical supplies, emergency relief and logistics. In many areas, external aid has been the only thing standing between families and starvation. Dismissing the UAE’s impact ignores real human suffering.
Next is diplomacy. In a conflict dominated by multiple armed groups and shifting alliances, engaging complex or unsavory actors is not endorsement; it is a necessity. If you want leverage that might eventually push parties toward a potential solution, you cannot limit yourself to only the most agreeable interlocutors. Real diplomacy in real wars is rarely, if ever, clean.
Equally important is regional stability. Sudan’s collapse threatens migration routes, maritime security and the economic arteries of the Red Sea. It is not “self-serving” for the UAE, or any state, to seek stability in a region that directly affects its own security and economy. Stability is not an abstraction; it is critical for every successful nation.
Sudan also has a long history of foreign interference, so skepticism toward outside actors is understandable. Many fear that engagement could shape Sudan’s future in ways the Sudanese did not choose. Those concerns deserve discussion, especially if genuine alternatives exist. But for now, that remains a very big “if.”
Much of the criticism of the UAE goes far beyond caution and reflects manipulation, oversimplification and wishful thinking. It assumes motives that are unproven, ignores Sudan’s long-standing internal fractures and trades complexity for narrative convenience.
This brings me to a truth most people avoid saying out loud.
Before the UAE became involved, Sudan had already collapsed, multiple times. The country has endured civil wars, coups, economic breakdowns and revolutions. Its institutions were hollowed out long before any recent foreign role. Blaming the UAE for “causing” Sudan’s unraveling ignores decades of internal governance failures, competing militarized elites and the near-total absence of a functioning state. Sudan’s tragedy is primarily Sudanese in origin, even if outsiders have played supporting roles.
Here is another hard reality: No war-torn state, especially one with Sudan’s history, recovers without responsible, significant external support—financial, humanitarian and diplomatic. Countries do not rebuild themselves in isolation. They need partners. And yes, those partners, whether the UAE or anyone else, will always have interests alongside their intentions to help. That is not scandalous or wrong; it is how international relations work and why nations spend resources to assist others. Whether anyone likes it or not, that is how the real world functions. And honestly, which nation’s actions in conflict are ever beyond critique? None.
The tragedy in Sudan today is immense. A country with enormous promise is fighting to survive. Reducing this catastrophe to the actions of a single external actor is not analysis; it is avoidance, distortion and political gamesmanship. It distracts from the failures, complexities and difficult choices that must be confronted if Sudan is ever to rebuild.
My bottom line is simple: Sudan’s status quo demands nuance, honesty and an understanding rooted in its history. The UAE’s role in the conflict may not be perfect, but no nation’s role in such crises ever is. If we want Sudan to emerge from this nightmare, we need a conversation grounded in facts and humility, not the comforting simplicity of false blame and easy, uninformed accusations.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The E3 countries, European Union leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, Japan and Canada will discuss Washington’s proposed peace plan for Ukraine on Saturday afternoon on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, sources familiar with the matter said.
The E3 is an informal security alliance of France, Britain and Germany.
(Reporting by Julia Payne; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
In 2021, Sudan’s military, in coördination with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), launched a coup. But the alliance between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the R.S.F., led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, quickly crumbled, and by April of 2023, the two sides were openly at war. For two and a half years, that conflict has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with an estimated death toll in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as four hundred thousand. More than ten million have been internally and externally displaced.
The Sudanese military still controls much of the north and east of the country, and is backed principally by Egypt; the R.S.F., which was accused of genocide by the Biden Administration in January, is backed by the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). It operates in the west, where it has recently taken control of the city of El Fasher, after a five-hundred-day siege. Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director at Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which has reported on the siege using satellite imagery and other open-source material, recently said that the death toll in El Fasher in late October and early November alone may have exceeded the number of fatalities in the entire war in Gaza.
To talk about the conflict in Sudan, and the role that outside actors have played in it, I recently spoke by phone with Kholood Khair, the founding director of the Confluence Advisory, which focusses on issues of governance and security in Sudan. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why the U.A.E. has gone to such lengths to back the R.S.F., how the war has scrambled alliances in the region, and how the war’s leaders turned the conflict into an ethnic struggle.
How much do you see what’s happening now in Sudan as a civil war, and how much do you see it as a proxy war driven by outside intervention?
I think at the outset it was a domestic conflict, and as far as we could tell the international community didn’t want to see a war in Sudan, and that included Sudan’s Arab neighbors. They felt that a war would be too destabilizing for the region, and that there were other ways to achieve their foreign-policy objectives. But the enmity between different countries that support either one side or the other has definitely increased. The U.A.E. is in direct competition with so many of the countries around Sudan. It has positioned itself with Ethiopia but very much against Egypt when it comes to Nile issues. It has positioned itself very much against Saudi Arabia and Turkey in relation to Red Sea access. It is in direct confrontation with the Houthis in Yemen. And because this war has become a battle between the politics of the Nile and the politics of the Red Sea, we’re seeing many different actors being sucked in.
This is still very much a domestic conflict in that bringing it to an end depends on a Sudanese resolution. I wouldn’t call it a civil war, although increasingly it’s taking on civil war-like qualities. I would call it an all-out war within the Sudanese security state, the largest part of which are the military and the R.S.F. And there are increasingly significant proxy elements, precisely because nations around Sudan have started to see that the only way that they can achieve their foreign-policy and commercial interests is through backing one side or the other.
When you talk about the politics of the Red Sea and the politics of the Nile, and how that’s sucked in neighbors and other actors in the broader region, what specifically do you mean?
When it comes to the Nile, the Egyptians have been very worried about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the GERD, which was inaugurated in September. Egypt has been trying to get Trump to back it against Ethiopia since his first term. If you remember, Trump said two things related to this back then. One, that Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was his favorite dictator. Two, that Egypt might have to blow up the dam, which it saw as a threat to its existence. And Egypt has framed the GERD as just that—a threat to its existence rather than as a development that could result in, for example, some of its share of the Nile water being somewhat diminished. Nile-based countries recently got together and signed a deal without Egypt because pretty much all the other countries in the Nile-based regions have realized that there needs to be much more equitable use of the Nile.
Under colonial agreements, particularly those signed by and put together by the British government, Egypt got the lion’s share of the Nile’s water, and other countries, including Sudan, got much, much less. Egypt wants to maintain as much as possible of that very favorable proportion of Nile water that it is legally entitled to under those agreements. And, of course, other countries, now very much coming into their own and developing their own use of the Nile’s water, do not want that. Ethiopia says that it has created the GERD not just for itself but for irrigation in Sudan, for controlling water levels, and for hydroelectric energy.
And so Sudan’s natural inclination is actually to support the GERD because Sudan needs regular electricity. It needs to be able to control irrigation so it can support its agricultural sector, and the dam can help regulate water levels during flooding season. But the political relationship between the SAF and the Egyptian military regime in Cairo is such that Sudan is effectively forced to act against its interest and support Egypt’s position on the dam, and the Nile in general. So what we’re seeing here is the serious, and almost paranoid, anxiety that the Egyptians have over their diminishing Nile-water entitlements. It’s causing a huge rift in the region, in particular between Egypt and Ethiopia.
The way this is now shaping up is that Egypt has formed an alliance with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s rival, and Somalia, also Ethiopia’s rival. And that alliance is supportive of the SAF. And, in opposition to that, the R.S.F. in Sudan has forged a relationship very much underpinned by the U.A.E. and Ethiopia. The concern now isn’t just what’s going to happen with the Nile’s water and the conflicts around that; it’s what happens if Ethiopia does go to war with Eritrea.
GENEVA (Reuters) -A special session on the situation in al-Fashir, Sudan, opened on Friday at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva following grave concerns about mass killings during the fall of the city to paramilitary forces.
States will consider a draft resolution which requests a U.N. fact-finding mission to conduct an urgent inquiry into recent violations allegedly committed by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies in al-Fashir, as well as identifying the perpetrators.
In an opening address to delegates, U.N. human rights chief urged the international community to act.
“There has been too much pretence and performance, and too little action. It must stand up against these atrocities – a display of naked cruelty used to subjugate and control an entire population,” said the High Commissioner for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Turk.
The fall of al-Fashir on October 26 to the RSF cemented their control of the Darfur region in the more than 2-1/2-year civil war with the Sudanese army.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, additional reporting by Emme Farge; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
Tens of thousands of Sudanese have fled to overcrowded camps to escape reported atrocities by a paramilitary force since it captured el-Fasher in the western Darfur region, an aid group said Saturday. The U.N.’s human rights chief warned that many others are still trapped.
Those who reach shelter in Tawila, about 43 miles from el-Fasher, find themselves stranded in a barren area with barely enough tents, many of them improvised from patched tarps and sheets, according to a video posted by the group Sudan’s IDPs and Refugee Camps. It shows children running across the area as a few adults carry a large pot of food, hoping it will be enough to feed the growing crowds of displaced.
Since the Rapid Support Forces seized el-Fasher from the rival military Oct. 26, more than 16,200 people have fled to the camps in Tawila, said Adam Rojal, spokesperson for the aid group. The International Organization for Migration estimates that around 82,000 people had fled the city and surrounding areas as of Nov. 4, heading to safe spots including Tawila, an area already overcrowded with the displaced from previous attacks, with some making the journey on foot.
The RSF and the Sudanese army have been at war since April 2023, following simmering tensions over control of Africa’s third-largest nation. At least 40,000 people have been killed, according to the World Health Organization, though the actual toll might be many times higher. Some 12 million people have been displaced, and nearly half the population is facing acute food insecurity.
Last week, the RSF seized el-Fasher after an 18-month siege. The paramilitary rampaged through the Saudi Hospital in the city, killing over 450 people, according to the WHO, and went house to house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults. The RSF has denied killing anyone at the Saudi hospital, but testimonies from those fleeing, online videos and satellite images offer an apocalyptic vision of the attack.
This photo released by The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), shows displaced women and children from el-Fasher at a camp where they sought refuge from fighting between government forces and the RSF.
AP
The aid group Doctors Without Borders said Friday that 300 people arrived in Tawila on Thursday alone after fleeing el-Fasher. MSF teams reported “extremely high levels of malnutrition among children and adults.”
The displaced in Tawila are in urgent need of food, medicine, shelter materials and psychosocial support, Rojal told The Associated Press. He said that families often survive on just two meals a day — and sometimes only one.
U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned that those left behind in el-Fasher are at risk.
“Today, traumatized civilians are still trapped inside el-Fasher and are being prevented from leaving,” he said Friday in Geneva.
“I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing within the city,” he added. “And for those who manage to flee, the violence does not end, as the exit routes themselves have been the scenes of unimaginable cruelty.”
On Thursday, the RSF said it has agreed to a humanitarian truce proposed by a U.S.-led mediator group known as the Quad. Meanwhile, the army said it welcomes the Quad’s proposal, but will only agree to it if RSF withdraw from civilian areas and give up their weapons.
The fighting has spread across Darfur and to the neighboring Kordofan region, with both emerging as the epicenter of Sudan’s war over the past months. Early this week, a drone attack in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan province, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens more.
A military official told the AP on Saturday that the army intercepted two Chinese-made drones that targeted el-Obeid on Saturday morning. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Jalale Getachew Birru, an analyst for East Africa with Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, said in a statement Friday that the fall of el-Fasher and rising violence in North Kordofan mark a strategic victory for the RSF, but exacerbate human suffering. He estimated that at least 2,000 people were killed across Sudan in a single week between Oct. 26 and Nov. 1.
“These events not only deepen Sudan’s humanitarian crisis but also signal the RSF’s growing capacity to expand toward central Sudan, threatening to reverse the success of the Sudanese armed forces and returning the violence to the relatively calm central Sudan,” said Birru.
On October 27th, a video went out over social media that showed at least nine men sitting slumped in a row beside a dirt track in the city of El Fasher, in Sudan’s Darfur region. Their thin wrists dangle over their knees. They are exhausted and defeated, held prisoner by long-haired militiamen in camouflage slacks, one of whom brandishes a whip over his head. Another, Alfateh Abdullah Idris, who goes by the nickname Abu Lulu, casually begins firing a Kalashnikov rifle down the row of prisoners. The final man, in a last-second protective reflex, bows his head and crosses his hands over it, but bullets send him flying backward, and the other militiamen join in, firing repeatedly at the dead bodies. Abu Lulu posted the video.
Abu Lulu holds the rank of brigadier general in the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that broke away from and, since April of 2023, has fought against the Sudanese Armed Forces for control of Sudan, a gold-rich country in northeast Africa. The day the videos were posted, Abu Lulu and the other fighters were celebrating their capture of the city. The siege had lasted five hundred days, more than three times as long as the siege of Stalingrad. The R.S.F. used drones and artillery provided by the United Arab Emirates. In early May, the militia began building a thirty-five-mile-long berm around the city, to prevent food and humanitarian aid from entering; people have survived on grass and animal feed since. There were a million people living in El Fasher when the R.S.F. arrived. It was still home to two hundred and sixty thousand people in late October, when the last members of the government forces began to flee the city, leaving it open to the R.S.F. The group distanced itself from Abu Lulu after the fall of the city, and said that it had arrested him. Al Jazeera reported that he has since been released; he has continued to post on social media.
“The world hasn’t caught up to what a big deal El Fasher is,” Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, told me. Raymond’s team has been tracking atrocities in Sudan using satellite imagery from NASA and commercial sources. The team’s analysis indicates that, since El Fasher fell, the R.S.F. has been conducting mass killings. “In some cases, if someone is shot when they’re running, and you take a picture of it with a satellite, it looks like a ‘C’ or a ‘J,’ because they drop and hit the ground on their knees or on their side in the fetal position,” Raymond told me. The satellite images show a proliferation of “C”s and “J”s, with bloodstains visible from space. “It’s simple math here,” he said. “We are talking tens upon tens of thousands of potential dead in five days.” And the berm built to keep aid out of El Fasher has now made it difficult to escape the city; only thirty-five thousand people are known to have done so. Raymond’s team now refers to El Fasher as the Killbox.
Many of El Fasher’s residents were members of non-Arab Sudanese ethnic minorities, which the R.S.F., whose core is made up of nomadic Arabs, has targeted throughout the war. The Fur and the Zaghawa, who are Black Sudanese, have been first in the R.S.F.’s firing line, though the militia has attacked members of other non-Arab groups, such as the Berti, as well. Speaking on the phone from Cairo, Altahir Hashim, a Sudanese human-rights activist who helped organize a soup kitchen in El Fasher and aid distribution throughout Darfur, told me, “They’re ethnically cleansing. They’re killing, they’re destroying.”
All through the beginning of the last week of October, R.S.F. fighters posted videos of the killings. In one, they shout “God is great” over corpses, flashing victory signs and lofting rifles. In another, they force men to dig their own graves. The R.S.F. is, in many ways, continuing a tradition of mass atrocities. In the early two-thousands, its predecessor organization, a militia known as the Janjaweed, perpetrated a genocide in Darfur that killed some three hundred thousand people. Hashim and his family, who are members of the Zaghawa, were forced to flee to El Fasher. Two of his brothers were killed. “After almost twenty-three years, genocide never ended,” he told me. “The world has just stood there watching, not taking any concrete action.”
AL-DABBA, Sudan (Reuters) -Civilians in al-Fashir were shot in the streets, targeted in drone strikes and crushed by trucks, witnesses to the first days of the RSF’s takeover described to Reuters, providing a glimpse into the violent capture of one of Sudan’s largest cities.
The fall of al-Fashir on October 26 has cemented the Rapid Support Forces’ control of the Darfur region in its two-and-a-half-year war with the Sudanese army. Videos of soldiers killing civilians on the outskirts of the city and reports of attacks on those escaping have raised international alarm.
But less is known about what happened inside al-Fashir, which has been cut off from telecommunications since the start of the RSF offensive. Reuters spoke to three people who fled to the city of al-Dabba, more than 1,000 km away in northern Sudan, and one person who fled to the nearby town of Tawila.
One witness said he was in a group trying to flee intense shelling when RSF trucks surrounded them, and sprayed civilians with machine-gun fire and crushed them with their vehicles.
“Young people, elderly, children, they ran them over,” said the witness, who did not want to give his name for fear of retribution, speaking by phone from Tawila. Some civilians were abducted by RSF fighters, he said.
Asked for comment, an RSF leader told Reuters investigations were underway and anyone proven to have committed abuses would be held accountable, but that reports of violations in al-Fashir had been exaggerated by the army and its allies.
‘FIFTY OR SIXTY KILLED IN A SINGLE STREET’
The killings continued on the second day of the RSF offensive, said another witness named Mubarak, now in al-Dabba. RSF fighters raided homes in residential areas having captured the army’s base the day before, he said.
“Fifty or sixty people in a single street… they kill them bang, bang, bang. Then they would go to the next street, and again bang, bang, bang. That’s the massacre I saw in front of me,” Mubarak said. Many people, often injured or elderly, didn’t leave the city and were killed in their homes, he said.
Local resistance fighters, largely armed young men, were in the streets fighting the offensive, with army soldiers and allied fighters in bases or retreating.
“They were the ones who died more,” he said.
Anyone out in the street was “targeted by the drones and a lot of bullets,” Mubarak said. Al-Fashir residents have reported drones following civilians and targeting any gatherings in recent months.
Another eyewitness, Abdallah, who spoke to Reuters in al-Dabba, said he also saw fleeing civilians targeted by drones. He said he saw 40 dead bodies on the ground in one location in al-Fashir.
Reuters could not independently verify their accounts, though they broadly correspond to reports from aid officials, the United Nations and verified social media videos.
Satellite imagery reported by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab last week showed objects consistent with dead bodies in several parts of al-Fashir. Further images showed earth disturbances that suggested mass graves and the disappearance of objects and presence of large vehicles that suggested the movement of bodies, people, or looting, it said this week.
Imagery also indicated the RSF had closed off a main exit point from the city, leading to the town of Garney.
Traumatised civilians are still trapped inside al-Fashir, said U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk on Friday. “I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing,” he said.
On Thursday, the RSF said it had agreed to a proposal from the United States and Arab powers for a humanitarian ceasefire and said it was open to talks on a cessation of hostilities. On Friday morning, the paramilitary force launched drone attacks on the capital Khartoum and the city of Atbara, eyewitnesses said.
Both the RSF and the Sudanese army have agreed to various ceasefire proposals during their war, which has created widening pockets of famine, including in al-Fashir. None have succeeded.
Those who managed to leave al-Fashir have reported treacherous journeys with violent RSF searches, the disappearance of men, and kidnappings for ransom.
Umm Jumaa made it to al-Dabba with four of her grandchildren, but hasn’t been able to find her two sons, both army soldiers, or her daughter. Before she fled al-Fashir she witnessed RSF fighters beating civilians to death, she said.
“Those who didn’t die, they would say, ‘finish them off, finish them off, this one isn’t dead, finish him off.'”
(Reporting by Eltayeb Siddig in al-Dabba, Nafisa Eltahir, and Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Ros Russell)
A Google Earth image shows dozens of human bodies lying in blood in Kumia, Sudan.
Rating:
Rating: Miscaptioned
Context:
The satellite image does appear on Google Earth, but it shows animals gathered around a watering hole, not human bodies. While this specific photo was miscaptioned, verified satellite imagery has documented genuine atrocities elsewhere in Sudan.
In early November 2025, a Google Earth image began circulating on social media, allegedly showing piles of human bodies lying in pools of blood in Kumia, Sudan.
One post (archived) with the photograph, viewed millions of times on X, was captioned: “this is the most disturbing google earth image ever… SPEAK ON THE GENOCIDE OF SUDAN.”
(X user @undsupermegahot)
The image circulated on numerous social media platforms, such as Reddit, Facebook and Threads, often framed as proof of ongoing atrocities in Sudan’s civil war.
In short, the image was indeed available on Google Earth, but the claim about what it depicted was inaccurate. The satellite photo, which shows an area in Kumia, Sudan, actually portrays livestock gathered around a watering hole — not victims of a massacre.
As such, we rated this claim as miscaptioned.
While this particular photo was misinterpreted, other verified satellite images have documented real atrocities elsewhere in Sudan.
What we know about the image
The image circulating online showed dozens of small, indistinct shapes clustered around a circular patch of ground that appeared darker than the surrounding soil. Below is the location (coordinates 10°57’39″N, 26°24’52″E) visible on Google Maps, with the image dating back to March 2024:
Therefore, the image does not represent new evidence that emerged in 2025. As of this writing, no more recent satellite imagery of the location is available on Google Earth or Google Maps.
However, earlier Google Earth imagery from March 2022 depicts the same site with comparable soil markings and a visible fence, confirming the scene was not newly discovered (see image below).
(Google Earth)
The same area is also visible on Apple Maps, though the platform does not indicate when the image was taken. In that version, the figures are clearly identifiable as animals rather than human bodies.
(Apple Maps)
Below is a comparison between Google Maps and Apple Maps images of the exact same location in Kumia, Sudan:
(Google Maps, Apple Maps)
We were unable to independently confirm what specific animals appear in the satellite image. However, the available evidence strongly indicates that they are livestock gathered near a watering site.
The BBC’s verification team reached the same conclusion after analyzing the image, describing it as “wrongly claiming to be evidence of mass killings in Sudan” and explaining it “actually shows cows or other animals at a watering hole.” The article added that the small objects visible on the ground cast shadows in the same direction as nearby structures, indicating that the figures are standing upright on four legs, not lying flat like human bodies. This shadow pattern, together with the consistent appearance of the site across historical satellite imagery, reinforced the conclusion that the scene depicted animals. Speaking to the BBC, Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, also confirmed that the image showed cows, not people.
Benjamin Strick, OSINT analyst and Director of Investigations at the Centre for Information Resilience, also commented on the claim, underscoring that while genuine satellite evidence of atrocities in Sudan exists, this particular image was being misrepresented: “There are a lot of horrific images, videos and even satellite images you can use to show the horrors that are happening in Sudan. But this is a watering hole and those are animals. Note it was also there in March 2022.”
(X user @BenDoBrown)
Strick, speaking to France24, further explained: “We do not draw our conclusions solely from satellite images,” underscoring the need to be able to recontextualize these images with other factual elements (we translated the quotes using Google Translate):
Have there been media reports from local journalists or sources on the ground that have confirmed that an abuse did indeed take place and that satellite images captured it? Have there been video sequences that can corroborate this information? It is important to consider what is revealing in satellite images, and what can be inferred from them. We cannot truly distinguish a genocide from satellite images alone, and therefore a multitude of factors must be taken into account
In a similar tone, Nathan Ruser, analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, wrote: “The scale of murder and massacre by the UAE-backed RSF is unimaginable. But these are cow pens full of cows. The key thing when it comes to interpreting satellite imagery is knowing a ‘normal’ baseline,” adding that “the imagery on Google Maps isn’t close to live.”
Real satellite evidence of atrocities in Sudan
In late October 2025, after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in Sudan, international observers warned of widespread abuses against civilians. The United Nations condemned what was described as “atrocities” committed during and after the city’s capture on Oct. 26, 2025, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it was monitoring events for possible “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
One of the most detailed open source analyses came from the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health, which on Oct. 28, 2025, published a report titled “Day Two of RSF Control: Mass Killings Continue in El-Fasher.” The HRL analysis, based on satellite imagery, identified “evidence of mass killings including door-to-door clearance operations and objects consistent with reported bodies on berm entrapping El-Fasher.”
According to the HRL report, satellite images from late October showed “lines of dark-colored objects consistent with groups of people stretching from the building to the gate of the compound and a group of people near the same gate.” The report further explained, “this activity may be consistent with large groups of people being present on 27 October 2025, subsequently killed, and their bodies visible in satellite imagery on 28 October 2025.”
All in all, independent analyses demonstrate that, unlike the wildly spread Google Earth image from Kumia, real satellite imagery provides evidence of atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region.
For further reading, we have also investigated a Google Maps image supposedly captured a furtive corpse disposal.
(Reuters) -Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces agreed to a proposal from the United States for a humanitarian ceasefire, they said on Thursday in a statement.
The war erupted in April 2023 when the Sudanese army and the RSF, then partners in power, clashed over plans to integrate their forces.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Nafisa Eltahir; Writing by Enas Alashray; Editing by Alex Richardson)
(Reuters) -A global hunger monitor on Monday confirmed famine conditions in al-Fashir, the Sudanese city taken by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after a lengthy siege, as well as Kadugli, another besieged city in Sudan’s south.
The finding is the first time the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has determined that the cities are in famine, though in December it had confirmed famine in camps for displaced people in al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur.
A war that began two-and-a-half years ago between the RSF and the Sudanese army has caused severe hunger and malnutrition to spread across Sudan, as well as displacing millions of people and triggering waves of ethnically charged violence in Darfur.
The IPC is the internationally recognised standard for measuring the severity of hunger crises, and its findings have provoked criticism from Sudan’s government, which is backed by the army.
FOOD SUPPLIES CUT OFF DURING SIEGE
The IPC’s first determination of famine during the conflict was for the Zamzam displacement camp south of al-Fashir in August 2024.
Al-Fashir was subject to RSF assaults and besieged for about 18 months before it fell late last month, deepening a geographical split in Sudan. During the siege, residents said food supplies were cut off, forcing people to eat animal feed and sometimes animal hides. Places where people gathered for community kitchen meals were targeted by drone attacks, they told Reuters.
As a result, all children arriving in the nearby town of Tawila after fleeing al-Fashir were malnourished, MSF project coordinator Sylvain Pennicaud told Reuters on Monday, while adults arrived emaciated.
International Criminal Court prosecutors said on Monday they were collecting evidence of alleged mass killings and rapes after al-Fashir’s fall. The head of the Red Cross said history was repeating itself in Darfur.
Monday’s IPC report, based on analysis for September 2025, said Tawila, as well as Mellit and Tawisha, two other destinations for people fleeing al-Fashir, were at risk of famine.
The IPC said the overall number of Sudanese facing acute food insecurity declined by 6% to 21.2 million people – or 45% of the total population – due to gradual stabilisation and improved access in central Sudan, where the Sudanese army took control at the start of the year.
However, the situation deteriorated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions as fighting concentrated there, depriving people of livelihoods, increasing prices, and driving displacement, IPC said.
Global aid cuts and bureaucratic impediments hobbling the ability of the United Nations and other aid agencies to provide food and other services have increased the humanitarian challenge in Sudan.
KORDOFAN ANOTHER FOCAL POINT OF WAR
Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan state, has been under siege by the RSF-allied SPLM-N armed group, though hunger has been spreading there since the start of the war.
The wider Kordofan region has increasingly become a focus of the war as it lies between RSF-dominated Darfur and the rest of the country, where the army holds sway. The IPC said the nearby city al-Dalanj could also be in famine, but a lack of data prevented a determination.
On Monday, a Red Crescent official said three volunteers in a city in North Kordofan state that was taken over by the RSF, who were shown being beaten in a video clip, were later killed.
The RSF has denied responsibility for alleged summary executions.
(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
GENEVA (Reuters) -A Sudan Red Crescent official said on Monday that three of its volunteers shown in a video being beaten by a man in military fatigues were among those later killed, saying the incident highlighted the need for humanitarian workers to be respected.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said last week that five of its workers distributing food in the city of Bara in the central state of North Kordofan were killed during the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces’ takeover of the strategic location last week.
The U.N. human rights office has said it is treating the deaths as possible summary executions, amid reports of serious violations in the area and other places captured by the RSF in recent weeks.
A video on social media showed a man interrogating the volunteers wearing red vests and striking them repeatedly with sticks, accusing one of being a soldier. Reuters was not able to independently verify the video.
The Secretary General of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society Aida Elsayed confirmed to Reuters that three of those shown were among five who were later killed.
They were among a larger group of volunteers taken hostage, she said, although some had managed to escape including two from a moving vehicle who were still missing.
“We are here in Sudan to help the Sudanese people with this tragic conflict. So we wish that everyone would respect the Sudanese Red Crescent,” she said in an interview from Port Sudan. The aid group has lost 21 aid workers so far in the two-and-a-half-year civil war.
She did not attribute blame and declined to comment on whether the latest victims were executed.
The RSF has denied allegations of summary executions, previously calling accounts of killings “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters.
Elsayed said its teams from the formerly-besieged city of al-Fashir in western Darfur, which was taken over by the RSF in late October, had arrived safely in Mellit and Tawila. But she voiced concern for thousands of other displaced civilians.
“If they flee the way of the desert, they will die from hunger and thirst,” she said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Editing by William Maclean)
RIYADH (Reuters) -The head of the Red Cross says history is repeating itself in Sudan’s Darfur region after reports of mass killings during the fall of the city of al-Fashir to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary last week.
The RSF’s capture of al-Fashir – the Sudanese army’s last holdout in Darfur – marked a milestone in Sudan’s civil war, giving the paramilitary force de facto control of more than a quarter of the country’s territory.
Hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been killed during the city’s fall, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday. Witnesses have described RSF fighters separating men from women and children, with gunshots ringing out afterwards. The RSF denies harming civilians.
CIVILIANS TRAPPED WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER
The situation in Sudan is “horrific,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric told Reuters in a weekend interview during a visit to Riyadh.
She said tens of thousands of people had fled al-Fashir after the RSF seized the city and it was likely that tens of thousands more were trapped there without access to food, water or medical assistance.
“It’s history repeating, and it becomes worse every time a place is taken over by the other party,” she said.
A crackdown on Darfur rebels in the 2000s led to years of ethnically driven violence that killed hundreds of thousands in what was widely labelled genocide. The RSF has its roots in the “Janjaweed” militias mobilised by the government at the time.
Spoljaric also said the ICRC was “extremely concerned” about reports of a suspected massacre at the Saudi Hospital, the last-known functioning medical facility in al-Fashir, although it could not yet substantiate what happened there.
ICRC staff in the nearby town of Tawila had heard reports that people fleeing were “sometimes collapsing and even dying out of exhaustion or because of their wounds,” Spoljaric said, calling the situation “absolutely beyond what we can consider acceptable.”
The United States has said the RSF had committed genocide in the Darfur city of Geneina during an earlier stage of the two-and-a-half-year civil war, which the group denies. Rights groups and U.S. officials have also accused the RSF and allied militias of ethnic cleansing in the region.
APPEAL FOR RESTRAINT AND PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS
Asked about her messaging to alleged foreign backers of parties to the conflict, Spoljaric said: “Especially those states that have an influence on parties to conflict are under responsibility to do the necessary to restrain them and to make sure that they protect civilian populations.”
The United Arab Emirates has been accused of sending the RSF substantial military support but has repeatedly denied doing so. The rival Port Sudan-based authorities have foreign backers including Egypt and deployed Iranian-made drones to try to turn the tide of the conflict last year.
More than 70,000 people have fled al-Fashir since October 26, according to the International Organisation for Migration, but little is known about the fate of almost 200,000 others thought to have remained there during the 18-month RSF assault and siege of the city.
Spoljaric said the world was living through a “decade of war,” with armed conflicts doubling in the past 15 years to approximately 130, and urged parties to conflicts from the Gaza Strip to Ukraine to uphold the rules of war.
She said the proliferation of conflicts was being accelerated by rapidly evolving military technology, particularly drones, which “create an environment where nowhere is safe anymore.”
In the lead-up to the RSF’s takeover of al-Fashir, residents told Reuters they had been taking refuge in underground bunkers to try to protect themselves from drones and shells after intensifying attacks on displacement shelters, clinics and mosques.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari in Riyadh; Editing by Alex Dziadosz and Timothy Heritage)
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Leo on Sunday appealed for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors in Sudan, saying he was following with “great sorrow” reports of terrible brutality in the city of Al-Fashir in Darfur.
“Indiscriminate violence against women and children, attacks on defenceless civilians and serious obstacles to humanitarian action are causing unacceptable suffering,” the pope said during his weekly Angelus address to crowds in St. Peter’s Square.
He called on the international community to act “decisively and generously” to support relief efforts.
The U.N. human rights office said on Friday that hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been killed late last month when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured Al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last major holdout in Darfur.
The city fell a week ago after an 18-month siege, prompting tens of thousands to flee.
Pope Leo also addressed the situation in Tanzania on Sunday, saying there had been clashes with numerous casualties after recent national elections. He urged all sides to avoid violence and “walk the path of dialogue”.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jan Harvey)
Shaken, scratched and left with just the clothes he is wearing, Ezzeldin Hassan Musa describes the brutality of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in the wake of the paramilitary group taking control of el-Fasher city in the Darfur region. He says its fighters tortured and murdered men trying to flee. The BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher reports.
Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population.
Humanitarian groups say the violence has been escalating since the militia seized control of El Fasher, the largest city in the region. Videos shared online by the Sudan Doctors Network and other local rights groups appear to show militia members shooting unarmed civilians at point-blank range in the city on the fringes of the Sahara. In the streets, dead bodies are scattered alongside burned-out vehicles. At the only functioning hospital, the World Health Organization reported that the rebels killed all 460 people inside the main ward, including patients, caregivers and health workers.
