When Sudanese paramilitary forces finally seized El Fasher in October, after an 18-month siege, they completed what one UN inquiry had already described as bearing the "hallmarks of genocide." Now, a detailed report from Amnesty International has given that warning a grimmer texture, alleging that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during their campaign to capture the North Darfur city — the last major stronghold of Sudan's national army in the entire Darfur region. The report, released on Wednesday, is based on interviews with 247 people, 208 of whom survived the fighting in and around El Fasher. Amnesty's researchers also analysed satellite imagery, documentary evidence, and video material gathered across North Darfur.

Their findings cover a period from mid-2024 to late 2025, during which the RSF is alleged to have carried out murder, torture, rape, enslavement, and sexual slavery as part of a systematic assault on civilians. Crucially, the organisation concluded that RSF fighters repeatedly used dehumanising language while targeting non-Arab communities, and that the destruction of towns such as Abu Zerega between December 2024 and March 2025 was consistent with ethnic cleansing. Three RSF commanders were named in the report as bearing responsibility for the abuses. The scale of harm to children is particularly striking.

The report found that the RSF deliberately targeted minors during attacks, leaving countless children orphaned and displacing hundreds of thousands more, many of whom faced death or injury either during the violence or while attempting to flee. The pattern, Amnesty argues, amounts to the crime against humanity of persecution on the basis of ethnicity.