Yale report points to ethnic cleansing, war crimes in Sudan’s El-Fasher

October 28, 2025 (KHARTOUM) – A report by Yale University researchers alleges that the actions of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the recently captured city of El-Fasher may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and a “systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing.”

The report, released Monday by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), used satellite imagery and open-source data to analyze the aftermath of the North Darfur capital’s fall to the paramilitary group. It said the RSF’s actions could potentially rise to the level of genocide.

Researchers identified evidence consistent with targeted killings, including house-to-house clearance operations in a residential neighbourhood where civilians were sheltering. The analysis pointed to “objects consistent with the size of human bodies on the ground near RSF vehicles” and multiple instances of “reddish earth discoloration.”

The report explicitly named the Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities as targets of “forced displacement and summary execution.” These findings were supported by evidence of bodies near the city’s outer perimeter, consistent with reports of people being killed as they attempted to flee.

“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing,” the report stated, calling for immediate international pressure on the RSF and its backers, specifically naming the United Arab Emirates, “to end the killing now.”

Yale’s HRL said it had documented the nearly year-and-a-half-long siege of the city in detail, providing regular updates and having privately warned the United Nations Security Council in July 2023 that El-Fasher would likely come under siege.

“The nations of the world might be able to say that they could not have stopped it,” the report concluded, “but they cannot reasonably say that they did not know.”