At least 70 people were killed when the paramilitary RSF struck a mosque in Sudan’s el-Fasher in Darfur. The attack came the same day the UN warned of deepening ethnic violence in Sudan’s civil war, which has already killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.
Published On 19 Sep 202519 Sep 2025
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Report says ethnic violence has risen as the civil war passed two-year anniversary in the first half of 2025.
Civilians are bearing the brunt as Sudan‘s vicious civil war extends and intensifies, the United Nations has warned.
The UN’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said in a report released on Friday that civilian deaths and ethnic violence rose significantly as the war passed its two-year anniversary during the first half of 2025. The same day, reports said that dozens were killed by paramilitaries in an attack on a mosque in Darfur.
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The rate of civilian deaths across Sudan has increased, the report says, with 3,384 civilians dying in the first six months of the year, a figure equalling 80 percent of the 4,238 civilian deaths throughout the whole of 2024.
“Sudan’s conflict is a forgotten one, and I hope that my office’s report puts the spotlight on this disastrous situation where atrocity crimes, including war crimes, are being committed,” OHCHR chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
#Sudan crisis deepens amid rising civilian casualties, worsening ethnic violence & humanitarian situation, finds @UNHumanRights report.
States must face grim reality of what has now evolved into a wider protection crisis & use their influence to end this conflict.
Many more… pic.twitter.com/c7OOcLUgdH
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) September 19, 2025
“Several trends remained consistent during the first half of 2025: a continued pervasiveness of sexual violence, indiscriminate attacks, and the widespread use of retaliatory violence against civilians, particularly on an ethnic basis, targeting individuals accused of ‘collaboration’ with opposing parties,” said the report.
New trends include the use of drones, including in attacks on civilian sites and in Sudan’s north and east, which until now have been largely spared by the war, it said.
“The increasing ethnicisation of the conflict, which builds on longstanding discrimination and inequalities, poses grave risks for longer-term stability and social cohesion within the country,” said Turk.
“Many more lives will be lost without urgent action to protect civilians and without the rapid and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a brutal war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced some 12 million people. The UN has described it as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine prevalent in parts of Darfur and southern Sudan.
The war has, in effect, split the country, with the army holding the north, east and centre, while the RSF dominates parts of the south and nearly all of the western Darfur region.
Efforts by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to broker a ceasefire between the warring parties have so far failed.
The RSF killed 43 civilians in a drone strike on a mosque early on Friday in the besieged city of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the Sudan Doctors’ Network NGO said in a social media post.
The NGO labelled the attack a “heinous crime” against unarmed civilians that showed the group’s “blatant disregard for humanitarian and religious values and international law”.
The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher, a group comprised of local citizens from the community that includes human rights activists, who track abuses, posted a video reportedly showing parts of the mosque reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered on the site, now filled with debris.
The same group reported on Thursday that the RSF had targeted several unarmed civilians, including women and older adults, in displacement shelters in the city.
A day earlier, it said that heavy artillery by the RSF had continuously targeted residential neighbourhoods.
Fatma Ali and her children find hope after reuniting with husband and father Shamoun Idris amid Sudan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.
A Sudanese father who had lost contact with his wife for 18 months has been reunited with his family after recognising them in an Al Jazeera news report.
Shamoun Idris lived with his wife, Fatma Ali, and their children in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, until the city became a battleground between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in August 2023, a few months after the war in Sudan started.
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As the war intensified and shelling increased near their home, the couple decided that Fatma would try to escape Khartoum with their children. Shamoun would stay behind and protect the house as RSF forces advanced, looting homes and attacking civilians.
“I decided that they should leave,” Shamoun told Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who reported on the initial story featuring Fatma and their children. “I stayed behind to guard the house. We thought the war would end soon and they would be able to return.”
But soon after, and with the violence in the capital increasing, Idris was also forced to flee. In the process, both Shamoun and Fatma lost their phones and were unable to contact each other, with no knowledge of where the other was.
The couple became two of the 7,700 Sudanese people searching for missing relatives, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“I kept telling the children he was somewhere, just unable to reach us, but, in fact, I was completely at a loss, and I was wondering what really happened to him. I couldn’t focus on the children or on him being missing,” said Fatma.
Fatma and the children eventually reached Sennar, south of Khartoum, where they sheltered in a school.
Meanwhile, Shamoun searched for them in vain, until he eventually saw an Al Jazeera news report from February about missing relatives.
In the report was his wife, Fatma.
“I said, ‘Man, this is my family!’ I said, ‘I swear, it’s my family.’ It was such a huge surprise,” Shamoun said.
As Fatma listened to her husband tell the story of their recent reunion, she began to cry, overwhelmed with the emotion of Shamoun’s absence.
She said her hope now is for the family to rebuild their lives. “I hope we can go back and return to our previous life. I knew my children would be OK as long as I was with them, but for their father to be gone, that was a real problem.”
“Our children went to school and were very happy. Not one of our children was out of school; they even went to private schools, not public ones,” she said. “Now, it’s been more than two years since they saw the inside of a classroom, except as somewhere to shelter.”
Since being reunited, Shamound has found a small plot of land in Sennar, where he has built a little shack for the family.
It has no door to keep out rain, wind or sun, but thousands of other displaced people in Sudan do not have any shelter at all.
For now, Shamoun and Fatma are grateful for the little privacy and freedom it provides, and for being together.
Much of the affected region has become mostly inaccessible to the UN and aid groups, with Doctors Without Borders describing the area as a ‘black hole’ in Sudan’s humanitarian response.
Published On 3 Sep 20253 Sep 2025
Sudan has appealed for international aid after a landslide destroyed an entire village in the western Darfur region, killing more than 1,000 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent history in the country beset by a brutal civil war.
The village of Tarasin was “completely levelled to the ground,” the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the rebel group that controls the area, said as it appealed to the United Nations and international aid groups for help to recover the bodies on Tuesday.
The tragedy happened on Sunday in the village, located in Central Darfur’s Marrah Mountains, after days of heavy rainfall.
“Initial information indicates the death of all village residents, estimated to be more than 1,000 people,” the rebel group said in a statement. “Only one person survived,” it added.
The ruling Sovereign Council in Khartoum said it mourned “the death of hundreds of innocent residents” in the Marrah Mountains landslide. In a statement, it said “all possible capabilities” have been mobilised to support the area.
Luca Renda, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said he was “deeply saddened” by the reported landslide, adding that the UN and its partners were mobilising to support affected communities at the scene.
A local emergency network, which has been providing support to communities across Sudan during the war, said its teams recovered the bodies of at least nine people on Tuesday. Search teams were facing challenges to reach the area because of bad weather and a lack of resources, it added.
Mohamed Abdel-Rahman al-Nair, a SLM/A spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency that the village where the landslide took place is remote and accessible only by foot or donkeys.
Tarasin is located in the central Marrah Mountains, a volcanic area with a height of more than 3,000 metres (9,840 feet) at its summit. A World Heritage Site, the mountain chain is known for its lower temperatures and higher rainfall than surrounding areas, according to UNICEF. It is located more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) west of the capital, Khartoum.
Sunday’s landslide was one of the deadliest natural disasters in Sudan’s recent history. Hundreds of people die every year in seasonal rains that run from July to October. Last year’s heavy rainfall caused the collapse of a dam in the eastern Red Sea State, killing at least 30 people, according to the UN.
News of the disaster came as Sudan’s continuing war – now in its third year – plunges the country further into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine already declared in parts of Darfur.
People fleeing clashes between the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Darfur state had sought shelter in the Marra Mountains, and food and medication were in short supply, the Reuters news agency reported.
Much of the region has become mostly inaccessible for the UN and aid groups, with Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) describing the area as a “black hole” in Sudan’s humanitarian response.
The International Organization for Migration on Tuesday called for safe access and the scaling-up of support to the area.
Factions of the SLM/A have pledged to fight alongside the SAF against the RSF.
Fighting has escalated in Darfur, especially in el-Fasher, since the army took control of Khartoum from the RSF in March.
El-Fasher has been under RSF siege for more than a year, as the paramilitary force is seeking to capture the strategic city, the last major population centre held by the army in the Darfur region.
The paramilitaries, who lost much of central Sudan, including Khartoum, earlier this year, are attempting to consolidate power in the west and establish a rival government.
Sudan’s civil war saw a number of developments on the battlefield as well as in diplomacy and the humanitarian crisis.
Published On 31 Aug 202531 Aug 2025
Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary has produced the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.
Estimates suggested tens of thousands of people have died from combat and thousands more have perished from disease and hunger brought on by the war, now well into its third year.
There have been many significant military and political developments this month. Here are the key updates:
A global roundup of some of last week’s events.
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US, Saudi Arabia, UAE and others urge warring sides to halt fighting and allow aid into Sudan, including famine-struck areas.
United States-led mediators have said they are “appalled” by the continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sudan, where a brutal civil war is raging into its third year, and called for urgent action by the warring parties to protect civilians.
The mediators, known as the Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan (ALPS) Group, include the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
“The ALPS group urgently reiterates that international humanitarian law must be fully respected. This includes the obligations to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel, their premises and assets, as well as to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need,” the ALPS Group said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group said it was also appalled by “the growing number of people in situations of severe malnutrition and famine, and by the wide range of access impediments that are delaying or blocking the response in key areas”.
It added that the situation was especially urgent in the North Darfur and Kordofan regions.
“Civilians continue to pay the highest price for this war,” it said.
Sudan has been ravaged by violence and hunger since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went to war in April 2023.
The country in effect is split in two, with the army controlling the north, east and centre of Sudan and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Nearly 25 million people in Sudan face dire hunger, with millions cut off from lifesaving aid, according to the United Nations.
The UAE has been accused of championing the RSF, including by sending weapons, something it strongly denies.
The plea for Sudan comes as the US faces global criticism for its support of Israel in the genocidal war on Gaza, which is also facing an Israeli-induced famine.
Thousands at risk as foreign aid cuts hit humanitarian efforts.
Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years is spreading in a country ravaged by conflict.
Health and aid workers are battling desperately to stop it from escalating and crossing into neighbouring countries.
What’s driving the outbreak – and how serious is it?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Mathilde Vu – Advocacy manager for Sudan at the Norwegian Refugee Council
Simon Mane – Sudan national director at the humanitarian organisation, World Vision International
Mitch Rhyner – Deputy head of mission at Doctors Without Borders, Sudan
People in Sudan’s North Darfur region are forced to eat animal fodder to survive as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to lay siege to el-Fasher – the last urban centre in the region under army control.
“We are suffering, world. We need humanitarian aid – food and medicine – whether by airdrop or by opening ground routes. We cannot survive in this condition,” Othman Angaro, from a displacement camp in el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera.
Angaro described how he and his family rely on livestock fodder known as ambaz, a type of animal feed made out of peanut shells.
Another woman, veterinarian Zulfa Al-Nour, told Al Jazeera that her family relies daily on a charity kitchen called “Matbakh Al-Khair” for a single meal, amid a total lack of external aid.
She called for urgent international intervention, including airdrops of humanitarian supplies, warning that even the ambaz fodder is nearly depleted.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last week warned about starvation in the el-Fasher region. Starvation has reached the most severe level on the United Nations-backed food security scale – ‘IPC Phase 5’, indicating full-blown famine – it said on Friday.
The two-month siege of el-Fasher has complicated aid efforts.
The RSF has blocked food supplies, and aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked, locals said. Prices for the goods smuggled into the region cost more than five times the national average.
An outbreak of cholera in the North Darfur state, of which el-Fasher is the capital, has further added to the misery.
Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, which has witnessed months of fighting between Sudan’s army and the RSF, according to a government official.
At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in the North Darfur state, the spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, Adam Rijal, said in a statement on Monday.
Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and the Otash camps, Rijal added, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
Some 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
In recent months, more than half a million people have taken shelter in Tawila, some 60km (37 miles) west of el-Fasher, the state capital, which has been under two months of siege by the RSF rebels. Most of the Darfur region is under the rebel control except for el-Fasher.
Meanwhile, with Sudan in the throes of the rainy season, along with poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation, the outbreak of cholera is only worsening, warn aid groups.
Cholera was first identified in early June in Tawila and has since spread to numerous refugee camps, according to NGO Avaaz.
Nearly 40 people have died due to cholera in the Jebel Marra area, a district of West Darfur state.
Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is operating two cholera treatment facilities in Tawila housing 146 beds – coordinating nearly the entire medical response to the outbreak.
Last month, it warned that “much more” needs to be done to improve “access to water, hygiene, and medical care to curb the spread of the outbreak in the midst of the rainy season”.
Samir, a former teacher displaced to el-Fasher with his family, told Avaaz last week that the situation was “catastrophic” and that the cholera outbreak was being exacerbated by widespread hunger.
“People are dying because they are too weak to survive,” he told the NGO.
“Their immune systems are compromised from severe malnutrition. People are starving in the displacement camps.”
مدينة الفاشر في ولاية شمال دارفور غرب السودان بتعيش مجاعة قاتلة بسبب فرض الحصار عليها من قبل قوات الدعم السريع المدعومة من الامارات
المجاعة دخلت المرحلة الخامسة يعني مجاعة كاملة ووضع كارثي
اتكلموا عنهم#الفاشر_تموت_جوعاََ pic.twitter.com/1aNfuGY9nH— Ahmed Elhadary (@Ahmed_hadary77) August 2, 2025
Translation: “The city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state, western Sudan, is experiencing a deadly famine due to the siege imposed on it by the Rapid Support Forces backed by the Emirates. The famine has reached the fifth stage, meaning a full-scale famine and a catastrophic situation. Speak about them.”
Meanwhile, fighting continues.
“The RSF’s artillery and drones are shelling el-Fasher morning and night,” one resident told the Reuters news agency.
“The number of people dying has increased every day, and the cemeteries are expanding,” he said.
On Monday, Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group, said at least 14 people fleeing el-Fasher were killed and dozens were injured when they were attacked in a village along the route.
The UN called for a humanitarian pause to fighting in el-Fasher last month as the rainy season began, but the RSF rejected the call.
Fighting between the two groups first erupted in the capital Khartoum in April 2023. It has since spread to several regions of the country as the army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, jostles for power with RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to UN estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The Tasis Alliance, a coalition of Sudanese armed groups formed in February, has unveiled a parallel ”transitional peace” government to rival Sudan’s wartime government in Port Sudan.
Tasis is based on a partnership between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a powerful armed group that controls swaths of South Kordofan and Blue Nile states in southern Sudan.
SPLM-N has been fighting a rebellion against the central government and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for 40 years – a conflict rooted in aggressive land grabs by central elites.
The RSF and SAF are former allies, yet a power struggle triggered an all-out civil war in April 2023.
Analysts have told Al Jazeera that Tasis aims to challenge SAF for legitimacy and power after more than two years of conflict.
“The Tasis government is the RSF’s latest desperate attempt to rebrand itself as a state authority rather than a militia,” said Anette Hoffmann, an expert on Sudan at the Clingendale Institute think-tank in the Netherlands.
“Yet all their actions have continued to prove the opposite. While announcing their government … RSF forces and their allies were besieging entire state capitals and starving innocent civilians,” she told Al Jazeera.
Tasis announced its government just three days before a new round of Sudan peace talks is set to begin on July 29 in the United States.
The talks will bring together representatives from the Sudan Quartet – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US. Neither SAF nor the RSF will be included in this round, according to Africa Intelligence.
Regardless, the RSF has long been wary of being dismissed as a mere “armed group” in ceasefire negotiations and left out of the circles of power and influence in a post-war Sudan due to a lack of international legitimacy.
By forming its own government, the Tasis Alliance aims to garner recognition from some friendly states and boost its bargaining position in future negotiations, said Kholood Khair, an expert on Sudan and the founder of the Confluence Advisory think-tank.
“What’s interesting is that there has been so little disclosed about these new talks, yet it has started a fury across Sudan and catalysed the formation of these two governments,” Khair told Al Jazeera.
She added that the army adopted a similar ploy in May when it appointed Kamel Idris as prime minister in Port Sudan, a strategic city on the Red Sea Coast.
Idris recently appointed five new ministers to round out his new government, just a day after Tasis announced its parallel administration.
Like Port Sudan, the RSF-backed government is run by a council of military elites and civilian loyalists.
The RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, heads the Tasis’s 15-member Presidential Council. SPLM-N leader Abdelaziz al-Hilu serves as his deputy.
A reported 47 percent of posts in the new administration went to RSF-aligned armed commanders and civil servants, while SPLM-N was given about one-third of the posts.
The rest were handed out to smaller armed groups and political parties who advantageously joined Tasis to boost their relevance, as previously reported by Al Jazeera.
Post appointees include Suleiman Sandal from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – a rebel group that emerged out of the Darfur wars and splintered in the current war – who was made interior minister.
Al-Tahir Hajar, from the Sudan Liberation Forces Gathering (SLFG), which also emerged from the Darfur wars, is a prominent member of the Tasis leadership council.
The prime minister of the Tasis government is Mohamed Hassan al-Ta’aishi, a politician from Darfur and a former member of the transitional Sovereign Council that led Sudan shortly after former President Omar al-Bashir was toppled in 2019.
The Sovereign Council was headed by SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Hemedti. The two were supposed to step down from power in 2021, yet they orchestrated a coup to dismiss the then-civilian cabinet and dash hopes for democracy.
Since SAF recaptured the capital Khartoum from the RSF in March, the former has been in control of the east and centre of the country, while the RSF has attempted to consolidate its control over the western and southern regions.
The Tasis government may have ended up cementing that division more than helping it gain an advantage at the negotiating table, said Alan Boswell, an expert on Sudan with International Crisis Group.
“The RSF aims to be legitimate as a national actor,” he said. “Yet [this government] makes de facto partition all the more likely, even if that is not the strategic intent.”
Khair added that the creation of a second government further incentivises armed groups to accumulate power in hopes of scoring a post in one of the two administrations.
“This [new government] really catalyses the proliferation of different armed groups,” she said. “More armed groups will mobilise … to win a position [in one of the two governments] during wartime.”
“This is a reality that really entrenches war dynamics.”
In Shambat al-Aradi, a tight-knit neighbourhood in Khartoum North once known for its vibrant community gatherings and spirited music festivals, two childhood friends have suffered through confinement and injustice at the hands of one of Sudan’s warring sides.
Khalid al-Sadiq, a 43-year-old family doctor, and one of his best friends, a 40-year-old musician who once lit up the stage of the nearby Khedr Bashir Theatre, were inseparable before the war.
But when the civil war broke out in April 2023 and fighting tore through their city, both men, born and raised near that beloved theatre, were swept into a campaign of arbitrary arrests conducted by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The friends were detained separately and tortured in different ways, but their experiences nonetheless mirrored one another – until they emerged, physically altered, emotionally broken and forever bound by survival.
Al-Sadiq’s ordeal began in August 2023 when RSF forces raided Shambat and arbitrarily arrested him and countless other men.
He was crowded into a bathroom in a house that the RSF had looted along with seven other people and was kept there for days.
“We were only let out to eat, then forced back in,” he explained.
During his first days of interrogation, al-Sadiq was tortured repeatedly by the RSF to pressure him for a ransom.
They crushed his fingers, one at a time, using pliers. At one point, to scare him, they fired at the ground near him, sending shrapnel flying into his abdomen and causing heavy bleeding.
After three days, the men were lined up by their captors.
“They tried to negotiate with us, demanding 3 million Sudanese pounds [about $1,000] per person,” al-Sadiq recalled.
Three men were released after handing over everything they had, including a rickshaw and all their cash. Al-Sadiq and the other remaining prisoners were moved to a smaller cell – an even more cramped toilet tucked beneath a staircase.
“There was no ventilation. There were insects everywhere,” he said. They had to alternate sleeping – two could just about lie down while two stood.
A few kilometres away, al-Sadiq’s friend, the musician, who asked to remain anonymous, had also been arrested and held at the Paratrooper Military Camp in Khartoum North, which the RSF captured in the first months of the war with Sudan’s military.
That would not be the only time the musician was taken because the RSF had been told that his family were distantly related to former President Omar al-Bashir.
“They said I’m a ‘remnant of the regime’ because of that relation to him even though I was never part of the regime. I was against it,” he said, adding that he had protested against al-Bashir.
Months into the war, his family’s Shambat home was raided by the RSF and his younger brother was shot in the leg. To keep everybody safe, the musician quickly evacuated his family to Umm al-Qura in Gezira state, then went home to collect their belongings. That was when he was arrested.
During his time at the military camp, he told Al Jazeera, the RSF fighters would tie him and other prisoners up and lay them facedown on the ground in the yard. Then they would beat them with a “sout al-anag” whip, a Sudanese leather whip traditionally made of hippo skin.
The flogging lasted a long time, he added, and it was not an isolated incident. It happened to him several times.
In interrogations, RSF personnel fixated on his alleged affiliation with al-Bashir, branding him with slurs like “Koz”, meaning a political Islamist remnant of al-Bashir’s regime, and subjecting him to verbal and physical abuse.
He was held for about a month, then released to return to a home that had been looted.
He would be detained at least five more times.
“Most of the detentions were based on people informing on each other, sometimes for personal benefit, sometimes under torture,” al-Sadiq said.
“RSF commanders even brag about having a list of Bashir regime or SAF [Sudan armed forces] supporters for every area.”
While he was held by the RSF, the musician told Al Jazeera, he and others were forced to perform manual labour that the fighters did not want to do.
“They used to take us out in the morning to dig graves,” he said. “I dug over 30 graves myself.”
The graves were around the detention camp and seemed to be for the prisoners who died from torture, illness or starvation.
While he could not estimate how many people were buried in those pits, he described the site where he was forced to dig, saying it already had many pits that had been used before.
Meanwhile, al-Sadiq was blindfolded, bound and bundled into a van and taken to an RSF detention facility in the al-Riyadh neighbourhood.
The compound had five zones: a mosque repurposed into a prison, a section for women, an area holding army soldiers captured in battle, another for those who surrendered and an underground chamber called “Guantanamo” – the site of systematic torture.
Al-Sadiq tried to help the people he was imprisoned with, treating them with whatever they could scavenge and appealing to the RSF to take the dangerously sick prisoners to a hospital.
But the RSF usually ignored the pleas, and al-Sadiq still remembers one patient, Saber, whom the fighters kept shackled even as his health faded fast.
“I kept asking that he be transferred to a hospital,” al-Sadiq said. “He died.”
Some prisoners did receive treatment, though, and the RSF kept a group of imprisoned doctors in a separate room furnished with beds and medical equipment.
There, they were told to treat injured RSF fighters or prisoners the RSF wanted to keep alive, either to keep torturing them for information or because they thought they could get big ransoms for them.
Al-Sadiq chose not to go with the other doctors and decided to cooperate less with the RSF, keeping to himself and staying with the other prisoners.
Conditions were inhumane in the cell he chose to remain in.
“The total water we received daily – for drinking, ablution, everything – was six small cups,” al-Sadiq said, adding that food was scarce and “insects, rats and lice lived with us. I lost 35kg [77lb].”
Their captors did give him some medical supplies, however, when they needed him to treat someone, and they were a lifeline for everyone around him.
The prisoners were so desperate that he sometimes shared IV glucose drips he got from the RSF so detainees could drink them for some hydration.
The only other sources of food were the small “payments” of sugar, milk or dates that the RSF would give to prisoners who they forced to do manual labour like loading or unloading trucks.
Al-Sadiq did not speak of having been forced to dig graves for fellow prisoners or of having heard of other prisoners doing that.
For the musician, however, graves became a constant reality, even during the periods when he was able to go back home to Shambat.
He helped bury about 20 neighbours who died either from crossfire or starvation and had to be buried anywhere but in the cemeteries.
The RSF blocked access to the cemeteries without explaining why to the people who wanted to lay their loved ones to rest.
In fact at first, the RSF prohibited all burials, then relented and allowed some burials as long as they were not in the cemeteries.
So the musician and others would dig graves for people in Shambat Stadium’s Rabta Field and near the Khedr Bashir Theatre.
He said many people who were afraid to leave their homes at all ended up burying their loved ones in their yards or in any nearby plots they could furtively access.
The friends’ ordeals lasted into the winter when al-Sadiq found himself released and the RSF stopped coming around to arrest the musician.
Neither man knows why.
Both al-Sadiq and the musician told Al Jazeera they remain haunted by what they endured.
The torment, they said, didn’t end with their release; it followed them, embedding itself in their thoughts, a shadow they fear will darken the rest of their lives.
On March 26, the SAF announced it had recaptured Khartoum. Now, the two men have returned to their neighbourhood, where they feel a greater sense of safety.
Having been detained and tortured by the RSF, they believe they’re unlikely to be viewed by the SAF as collaborators – offering them, at least, a fragile sense of safety.
As violence and rights abuses rage on, the coalition pledges to pursue a ‘secular, democratic’ and decentralised Sudan.
A Sudanese coalition led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has announced it is establishing an alternative government in a challenge to the military-led authorities in the capital Khartoum, with the northeastern African country’s brutal civil war in its third year.
The group, which calls itself the Leadership Council of the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS), said RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo will chair the 15-member presidential council of the government, which includes regional governors.
Sudanese politician Mohammed Hassan Osman al-Ta’ishi will serve as prime minister, TASIS said.
“On the occasion of this historic achievement, the leadership council extends its greetings and congratulations to the Sudanese people who have endured the flames of devastating wars for decades,” the coalition said in a statement.
“It also renews TASIS’s commitment to building an inclusive homeland, and a new secular, democratic, decentralized, and voluntarily unified Sudan, founded on the principles of freedom, justice and equality.”
The new self-proclaimed government could deepen divisions and lead to competing institutions as the war rages on between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
In May, the Sudanese army said it had completely driven the RSF out of the capital, Khartoum.
The fighting since April 2023 has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to United Nations estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
In recent months, the violence has been intensifying in the western region of Darfur, where the RSF has been besieging the city of el-Fasher, compounding hunger in the area.
Rights groups have accused both the RSF and SAF of rights abuses. Earlier this year, Amnesty International said RSF fighters were inflicting “widespread sexual violence” on women and girls to “assert control and displace communities across the country”.
Earlier this year, the US imposed sanctions on Hemedti, accusing the RSF of committing “serious human rights abuses” under his leadership, including executing civilians and blocking humanitarian aid.
Sudan has seen growing instability since longtime President Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in 2019 after months of antigovernment protests.
In October 2021, the Sudanese military staged a coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, leading to his resignation in early 2022.
Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Hemedti had shared power after the coup, but then began fighting for control of the state and its resources in April 2023.
Although the rivalry between al-Burhan and Hemedti does not appear to be ideological, numerous attempts to reach a peaceful resolution to the crisis have failed.
Emergency Lawyers says paramilitary force set fire to villages, killing dozens, including children and pregnant women.
A group of human rights lawyers in Sudan have accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raiding and setting fire to villages in the state of North Kordofan and killing nearly 300 people, including children and pregnant women.
The statement by Emergency Lawyers late on Monday came as fighting rages between the RSF and the Sudanese army in the western areas of the country.
The two sides have been locked in a civil war since 2023, and the army has taken firm control of the centre and east of the country, while the RSF is trying to consolidate its control of the western regions, including North Kordofan and Darfur.
Emergency Lawyers said the RSF had attacked several villages on Saturday around the city of Bara, which the paramilitary force controls.
In one village, Shag Alnom, more than 200 people were killed in a “terrible massacre”, the group said. The victims were either “burned inside their homes” or shot. In the neighbouring villages, 38 other civilians were also killed and dozens more have been forcibly disappeared.
The next day, the RSF carried out “another massacre” in the village of Hilat Hamid, killing at least 46 people, including pregnant women and children, the group added.
“It has been proven that these targeted villages were completely empty of any military objectives, which makes clear the criminal nature of these crimes carried out in complete disregard of international humanitarian law,” Emergency Lawyers said, placing the responsibility with the RSF leadership.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Sunday that intensified fighting in the region forced more than 3,000 people to flee the villages of Shag Alnom and al-Kordi.
Many have sought refuge in the surrounding parts of Bara, according to the UN agency.
The United States and human rights groups have accused the RSF of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Its soldiers have carried out a series of violent looting raids in territory it has taken control of across the country.
The RSF leadership says it will bring those found responsible for such acts to justice.
Sudan’s civil war has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, driving more than half the population into hunger and spreading disease, including cholera, across the country.
At least 40,000 people have been killed, while 13 million have been displaced.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has launched a new probe into war crimes in the western Darfur region, and on Thursday, senior prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that her office has “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed there.
Khan said her office has focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, and interviewed victims who have fled to neighbouring Chad.
She said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.
“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.
The Hague court’s Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan warns civil war ‘has reached an intolerable state’.
A senior International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan’s western Darfur region.
ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan presented her assessment before the United Nations Security Council on Thursday of the devastating conflict, which has raged since 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing 13 million others.
Khan said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.
She said it was “difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur”.
“On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur,” she said.
The prosecutor’s office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighbouring Chad.
She detailed an “intolerable” humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that “famine is escalating” as aid is unable to reach “those in dire need”.
“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.
In June, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan warned that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and weaponised humanitarian relief, amid the devastating consequences of the civil war.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both parties may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in the region, while the administration of then-US President Joe Biden determined that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide.
The Security Council had previously referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.
In 2023, the ICC opened a new probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the SAF and RSF.
The RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.
ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.
“I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population – they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past,” said Khan.
“But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court,” added Khan.
Millions of Sudanese who have fled to neighbouring countries face the risk of hunger.
The World Food Programme has sounded an alarm, saying it may have to reduce its aid operations for Sudanese refugees because of cutbacks in its funding.
Four million refugees are in countries neighbouring Sudan after fleeing from the ongoing civil war, and most of them rely on aid.
But that was put in jeopardy after United States President Donald Trump’s administration slashed overseas aid budgets this year.
The European Union, the United Kingdom and Germany have also cut their foreign aid as some nations switch funding to invest in defence.
So who else can step in to fill the gap?
And what will happen to the people who depend on aid to survive?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests
Seven workers were injured in the collapse, which occurred in an area controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces.
The partial collapse of a traditional gold mine in Sudan’s northeast has killed 11 miners and wounded seven others, according to the state mining company, as a brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is in its third year.
Since the war erupted in April 2023, both sides’ war chests have been largely funded by Sudan’s gold industry.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) said that the collapse occurred in an “artisanal shaft in the Kirsh al-Fil mine” over the weekend in the remote desert area of Howeid, located between the SAF-controlled cities of Atbara and Haiya in Sudan’s northeastern Red Sea state.
Another seven workers were injured and transferred to a hospital, the SMRC said.
The company added that it had previously suspended work in the mine and “warned against its continuing activity due to its posing great risk to life”.
According to official and NGO sources, nearly all of the gold trade is funnelled through the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused of arming the RSF. The UAE denies it does so.
The war has shattered Sudan’s already fragile economy. The army-backed government, nevertheless, announced record gold production of 64 tonnes in 2024.
Africa’s third-largest country is one of the continent’s top gold producers, but artisanal and small-scale gold mining accounts for the majority of gold extracted.
In contrast to larger industrial facilities, these mines lack safety measures and use hazardous chemicals that often cause widespread diseases in nearby areas.
Mining collapses are also common. Similar incidents in recent years include a 2023 collapse that killed 14 miners and another in 2021 that claimed 38 lives.
Before the war, which has pushed 25 million people into dire food insecurity, artisanal mining employed more than two million people, according to mining industry sources and experts.
Today, according to those sources, much of the gold produced by both sides is smuggled to Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, before reaching the UAE, the world’s second-largest gold exporter.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Sudan, where more than 13 million people are currently displaced in the world’s largest displacement crisis.
More than four million have fled across borders.
Currently, the SAF dominates the north and east of the country – including the smallest state by area, but most populous, Khartoum – along with some central areas. The RSF, meanwhile, holds most of western Sudan, including most of Darfur.
A UN official and a Sudanese refugee talk to Al Jazeera from Chad, where aid is vanishing and camps face a growing catastrophe.
As Sudan’s war effects spill into Chad, the country faces the world’s most underfunded refugee crisis. Nearly a million Sudanese, mostly women and children, have fled, but aid is vanishing, disease is looming, and the system is on the verge of collapse. In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, Ahmed Idris speaks to a United Nations lead official in Chad and to a Sudanese refugee activist who fled the same forces now threatening his people. As the world looks away, they warn that the cost of inaction may soon be counted in lives.
The crisis in Sudan has become ‘a grave human rights and protection emergency’, the United Nations mission says.
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan has warned that both sides in the country’s civil war have escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas while weaponising humanitarian relief, amid devastating consequences for civilians.
“Let us be clear: the conflict in Sudan is far from over,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission, which presented its latest findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The scale of human suffering continues to deepen. The fragmentation of governance, the militarisation of society, and the involvement of foreign actors are fuelling an ever-deadlier crisis.”
The brutal conflict, now in its third year, erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced more than 13 million Sudanese, according to United Nations data.
The UN has previously said that Sudan is experiencing the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis”.
The mission found that both sides escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas. In May, an RSF drone strike on Obeid International Hospital in North Kordofan killed six civilians, while earlier this month, an SAF bombing in Al Koma killed at least 15 civilians.
Aid was also being weaponised by the SAF, which imposed bureaucratic restrictions, as well as by the RSF, which looted convoys and blocked aid, the group said.
The mission also documented a sharp rise in sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape, abduction, sexual slavery, and forced marriage, mostly in RSF-controlled displacement camps.
Member of the Fact-Finding Mission Mona Rishmawi said what began as a political and security crisis has become “a grave human rights and protection emergency, marked by international crimes that stain all involved”.
“It is unconscionable that this devastating war is entering its third year with no sign of resolution,” she said.
Sudan has seen growing instability since longtime President Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in 2019 after months of anti-government protests.
In October 2021, the Sudanese military staged a coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, leading to his resignation in early 2022.
Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the RSF, had shared power after the coup but then started fighting for control of the state and its resources in April 2023.
Last week, the Sudanese Army accused the forces of eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar of attacking Sudanese border posts, the first time it has charged its northwestern neighbour with direct involvement in the civil war.
Egypt, which has also backed Haftar, has long supported the Sudanese Army. Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the RSF, which it denies.
‘Brutal funding cuts leave brutal choices,’ says aid chief, as humanitarian appeal slashes and priorities refocused.
The United Nations has announced sweeping cuts to its global humanitarian operations, blaming what it described as the “deepest funding cuts ever” for a drastic scaling back of its aid ambitions.
In a statement released on Monday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was now appealing for $29bn in aid – down sharply from the $44bn it had requested in December – and would refocus on the most critical emergencies under a “hyper-prioritised” plan.
The move follows a steep decline in funding from key donors, with the United States – historically the largest contributor – having slashed foreign aid under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Other donors have since followed suit, citing global economic uncertainty. So far this year, the UN has received only $5.6bn, a mere 13 percent of what it initially sought.
This comes as humanitarian needs soar in conflict zones, including Sudan, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Myanmar.
“Brutal funding cuts leave us with brutal choices,” said undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Tom Fletcher.
“All we ask is 1 percent of what you spent last year on war. But this isn’t just an appeal for money – it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering,” he added.
OCHA said remaining aid efforts would be redirected towards the most urgent crises and aligned with planning already under way for 2025 to ensure maximum impact with limited funds.
“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” Fletcher said. “The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”
Severe levels of ‘hunger, destitution and desperation’ found in the town of Jabal Awliya, south of Khartoum.
The risk of famine in Sudan has extended close to the capital Khartoum, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned as the country’s brutal civil war grinds on into its third year.
The agency has discovered “severe” levels of hunger in the town of Jabal Awliya, some 40km (25 miles) south of Khartoum, the WFP’s Sudan representative Laurent Bukera said on Tuesday.
Speaking upon his return from a visit to Khartoum state, Bukera described “widespread destruction” in the town and other areas around Khartoum, and called for urgent international action to prevent famine.
“The needs are immense,” Bukera said from Port Sudan, describing “limited access to water, healthcare and electricity”, as well as a cholera outbreak.
“Several areas in the south of the city are at high risk of famine,” he added. “The international community must act now – by stepping up funding to stop famine in the hardest-hit areas and to invest in Sudan’s recovery.”
The WFP, which says it is assisting four million people across the country, has had to reduce food rations in areas at risk of famine to 70 percent due to a major funding shortfall.
The government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023. The army took control of Khartoum in March and declared the city “completely free of rebels” in late May.
Now that WFP has access to the area and is able to make regular aid deliveries, the agency said it was doing everything it could to bring the local population back from the brink of famine.
Bukera said “the level of hunger, destitution and desperation” found in Jabal Awliya was “severe, and basically confirmed the risk of famine”.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises. Over four million have fled the country and some 10.5 million are internally displaced, according to United Nations estimates.
Bukera said that with people expected to return to heavily damaged areas like Khartoum, the pressure on already overstretched resources would intensify.
“WFP is deeply concerned, and meeting basic needs – especially food – is critical and urgent,” he said.
Famine has already been declared in five areas across Sudan, including three displacement camps near el-Fasher in the southwest.
It has been all but confirmed in el-Fasher itself, where aid agencies say a lack of access to data has prevented an official famine declaration.
Across the country, nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity.