U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
| Photo Credit: AP

Only a few thousand Sudanese have reached the nearest camp for displaced in the days since Sudan’s paramilitary forces seized el-Fasher city, raising fears over tens of thousands who might still be trapped as survivors described killings and other atrocities, an aid group said on Sunday (November 2, 2025).

The Rapid Support Forces took control of the western Darfur region last week, after ousting the rival Sudanese Army from the city that was besieged for 18 months.

Since then, reports and videos have circulated of RSF atrocities against civilians including beatings, killings and sexual assaults, according to testimonies by civilians and aid workers. The dead included at least 460 killed in the hospital, according to the World Health Organisation.

Tens of thousands are believed to have fled el-Fasher, according to the UN migration agency. However, less than 6,000 have made it to the nearest camp in Tawila, 65 kilometres away, said Shashwat Saraf, Sudan director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs the camp.

Almost 1,000 people arrived in the last three days, he said.

“The numbers are still very few. We are not seeing the hundreds of thousands that we were expecting. If people are still in el-Fasher, it will be very difficult for them to survive,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Tawila.

Survivors describe dodging gunmen as they fled el-Fasher

The fall of el-Fasher marked a new turning point in the war between the RSF and Sudan’s armed forces, which erupted in April 2023. More than 40,000 people have been killed, according to UN figures, but aid groups say the true number could be many times higher.

The war has also displaced more than 14 million people and unleashed outbreaks of diseases, killing thousands.

“We feel that a lot of people are stuck in locations from where it is not safe for them to move, and they need to pay to move and they don’t have money to pay,” Mr. Saraf said.

Survivors who made the journey on foot have shared harrowing details of having to dodge gunmen shooting at them as they fled.

“People arriving in the camp are mostly disoriented and dehydrated with bruises all over. Sometimes they do not even remember their names, they have to be taken to the hospital and have IV fluids,” Mr. Saraf said.

Mr. Saraf also said that around 170 unaccompanied children, some of whom as young as 3 years old, trekked to Tawila without knowing where their family members were. They came along with older children or adults who were not their relatives.

Sudan’s official accuses UAE of backing a “terrorist organisation”

In a news conference on Sunday, Sudan’s ambassador in Cairo, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, accused the RSF of carrying out war crimes in el-Fasher.

Mr. Adawi said that his government would not negotiate with the RSF, urging the international community to designate the group as a terrorist organisation.

“The government of Sudan is calling on the international community to act immediately and effectively rather than just make statements of condemnation,” Mr. Adawi said.

Mr. Adawi renewed his government’s accusations that the United Arab Emirates has been arming the RSF, insisting that the Gulf state should not be involved in any mediation efforts.

The UAE has backed the RSF and opposed the Sudanese military, pointing to the Army’s ties to Islamic forces that Abu Dhabi has long opposed. The UAE has denied the accusations despite evidence to the contrary.

When asked earlier on Sunday about his country’s support for the RSF, senior UAE diplomat Anwar Gargash did not directly answer the question while attending the annual Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain.

He said that the international community made a “critical mistake” in supporting both the military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and his rival, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, when the Army ousted a Western-backed power-sharing government in 2021.

“We all made the mistake when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrew the civilian government,” Mr. Gargash said. “That was, in my opinion, looking backwards was a critical mistake. We should have put our foot down — all of us collectively.”

The UAE supports a three-month humanitarian ceasefire, with the two parties negotiating and a civilian transitional government formed in nine months, he said.

There are mounting fears that the RSF may expand its military campaign toward the country’s centre once again, buoyed by its seizure of the entire Darfur region.

Twelve people were killed, including at least five children, in RSF attacks on two camps sheltering displaced people in the central Kordofan region, the Sudan Doctor Network, a medical group tracking the war, said on Saturday.

Published – November 03, 2025 02:26 am IST

The RSF had taken the two cities in a lightning offensive in June that saw nearly 726,000 civilians flee, according to UN figures. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Sudanese army said Saturday it had retaken a key state capital south of Khartoum from rival paramilitaries who had held it for the past five months.

The Sennar state capital of Sinja is a strategic prize in the 19-month-old war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as it lies on a key road linking army-controlled areas of eastern and central Sudan.

The army said that Sinja had been “liberated… from the terrorist militia”.

It posted footage on social media that it said had been filmed inside the main base in the city.

“Sinja has returned to the embrace of the nation,” the information minister of the army-backed government, Khaled al-Aiser, said in a statement.

Aiser’s office said armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had travelled to the city of Sennar, 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the north, on Saturday to “inspect the operation and celebrate the liberation of Sinja”.

The RSF had taken the two cities in a lightning offensive in June that saw nearly 726,000 civilians flee, according to UN figures.

Human rights groups have said that those who were unwilling or unable to leave have faced months of arbitrary violence by RSF fighters.

Sinja teacher Abdullah al-Hassan spoke of his “indescribable joy” at seeing the army enter the city after “months of terror”.

“At any moment, you were waiting for militia fighters to barge in and beat you or loot you,” the 53-year-old told AFP by telephone.

Both sides in the Sudanese conflict have been accused of war crimes, including indiscriminately shelling homes, markets and hospitals.

The RSF has also been accused of summary executions, systematic sexual violence and rampant looting.

The paramilitaries control nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur as well as large swathes of Kordofan in the south. They also hold much of the capital Khartoum and the key farming state of Al-Jazira to its south.

Since April 2023, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 11 million — creating what the UN says is the world’s largest displacement crisis.

From the eastern state of Gedaref — where more than 1.1 million displaced people have sought refuge — Asia Khedr, 46, said she hoped her family’s ordeal might soon be at an end.

“We’ll finally go home and say goodbye to this life of displacement and suffering,” she told AFP.