EL-FASHER, Sudan — The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces didn't just kill civilians in el-Fasher. They targeted them by ethnicity, systematically, over months. That's ethnic cleansing. That's what Amnesty International says in a blistering report released today, pointing fingers at the RSF for what it calls 'crimes against humanity' in and around the North Darfur capital.
Blood in the Streets
The report covers attacks from April through June 2026. Witnesses describe something far worse than battlefield chaos. Fighters on pickup trucks and horseback swept through neighborhoods like Al Salam and Al Wahda. They didn't ask for names. They didn't check ID cards. They just opened fire on anyone who looked like a Zaghawa or Masalit, the two non-Arab African tribes that have long been RSF targets.
“I watched them drag my neighbor from his shop,” a survivor told Amnesty investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They shot him in the head. Then they set the shop on fire. He was Zaghawa.”
“This isn't war. This is extermination by identity.” — Amnesty International report
Amnesty documented at least 347 deaths in el-Fasher and surrounding villages. But the real number, they admit, is likely far higher. Bodies were dumped in mass graves. Families were forced to flee without their dead. The RSF denied access to aid groups for weeks, leaving the wounded to die from infections that could have been treated with basic antibiotics.
The Pattern of Purge
This isn't the first time the RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing. In 2023, they were implicated in similar attacks in West Darfur. But this time, the scale is different. Amnesty's evidence includes satellite imagery showing entire villages razed, testimonies from 86 witnesses, and leaked internal RSF communications that mention 'cleansing operations.'
The report zeroes in on three villages — Tawila, Shangil Tobaya, and Damra — where survivors describe a chilling pattern. First, the RSF cut off roads and phone lines. Then they swept through, killing men on sight, raping women, and looting everything. Those who survived were driven into the desert with nothing.
“They told us to go to Chad or die,” a woman from Tawila told reporters. “We walked for three days. My children drank muddy water. We are not animals, but they treated us like vermin.”
International Silence
The timing of the report is no accident. The UN Security Council is set to debate a new resolution on Sudan next week. Amnesty wants that resolution to include an arms embargo on the RSF and referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court.
But here's the ugly truth: the world has been here before. In 2004, the US called Darfur a genocide. In 2023, the ICC opened investigations. And still, the RSF buys weapons. Still, they kill. The Sudanese government — which has lost effective control over large parts of Darfur — has done little beyond issuing statements of concern. The RSF, for its part, dismissed the Amnesty report as 'biased and politically motivated.'
“This is a smear campaign against forces that are protecting Sudan from rebels,” RSF spokesman Ahmed Haroun said in a televised rebuttal. He offered no evidence to counter the specific allegations.
“The RSF's denials ring hollow when the satellite images show burned villages and the mass graves are still fresh.”
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic. Over 800,000 people have been displaced in North Darfur since April, according to the UN. Cholera has broken out in camps. Children are dying of malnutrition at rates that haven't been seen since the famine of 1998.
The Verdict
Amnesty's report is not a legal judgment. But it's as close as we'll get while the RSF still controls the streets of el-Fasher. The question now is whether the international community will do anything. History suggests no. But the report's authors hope that the sheer weight of evidence — the satellite photos, the survivor testimonies, the leaked documents — might finally break through the indifference.
Because if this isn't ethnic cleansing, what is? If targeting civilians by their ethnicity, killing them en masse, and driving survivors into the desert isn't a crime against humanity, then the term has lost all meaning.
The survivors in el-Fasher don't need fancy legal definitions. They know what happened. They lived it. And they're waiting for the world to act.
