Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces destroyed and concealed evidence of mass killings they committed after overrunning the Darfur city of El-Fasher, a new report has found.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which has used satellite imagery to monitor atrocities since the RSF’s war with the army began, said on Tuesday the group “destroyed and concealed evidence of its widespread mass killings” in the North Darfur state capital.
The RSF’s violent takeover of the army’s last holdout position in the Darfur region in October led to international outrage over reports of summary executions, systematic rape and mass detention.
The HRL said that in the aftermath of the takeover, it had identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains.
Dozens were consistent with reports of execution-style killings, and dozens more with reports of the RSF killing civilians as they fled.
Within a month, nearly 60 of those clusters were no longer visible, while eight earth disturbances appeared near the sites of mass killing, the HRL said.
It said the disturbances were not consistent with civilian burial practices.
“Largescale and systematic mass killing and body disposal has occurred,” the report determined, estimating the death toll in the city to be in the tens of thousands.
Aid groups and the United Nations have repeatedly demanded safe access to El-Fasher, where communications remain cut and an estimated tens of thousands of survivors are trapped, many detained by the RSF.
– Army allies –
The UN has called the Sudan conflict a “a war of atrocities”.
Although the RSF has become notorious for ethnic massacres, civilians have also been ethnically targeted by the army and its allies.
An investigation by CNN and media non-profit Lighthouse Reports, released on Tuesday, documented 59 ethnically motivated attacks committed by the army and allied militias in its recapture of the central state of Al-Jazira this year.
The Kanabi communities — traditionally seasonal agriculture workers from the Darfur and Kordofan regions — were targeted by Sudanese soldiers and fighters from two militias: the Sudan Shield Forces and the Baraa ibn Malik Brigade.
They were accused of collaborating with the RSF, and according to whistleblowers and satellite imagery, killed en masse and their bodies dumped into canals.
Sudan Shield Forces commander Abu Aqla Kaykal has been accused of atrocities committed on behalf of both sides.
He was the RSF’s Al-Jazira commander when it besieged entire villages, and then defected to the army’s side in October 2024, helping its counteroffensive through central Sudan to recapture Khartoum.
There is no confirmed death toll from the Sudan war which began in April 2023, with estimates at more than 150,000.
The fighting has also displaced millions of people, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
Efforts to end the war have repeatedly faltered.
Hopes for a breakthrough in talks were rekindled last month when US President Donald Trump said he would help end the conflict after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged him to intervene during a visit to Washington.
But movement since has been slow, with the United Nations saying last week it was working to bring the two sides to “technical-level talks”.
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© Agence France-Presse
