UN says RSF committed genocide in El-Fasher takeover
February 19, 2026 (GENEVA) – An independent United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded that mass atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El-Fasher meet the core criteria of genocide, according to a 19-page report released on Tuesday.
The mission, established by the Human Rights Council, stated that the RSF and its allied militias carried out a coordinated campaign intended to destroy the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic communities in whole or in part.
Investigators identified three material crimes of genocide: killing members of the protected groups, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
The legal findings are based on what the mission described as a “cumulative factual matrix” of mass killings, widespread rape, and exterminatory rhetoric recorded during and after the city’s fall in late 2025.
The report details a harrowing array of atrocities characterized by ethnic and gender-based targeting against the Zaghawa and Fur communities.
During and after the takeover on October 26, 2025, the RSF conducted mass executions at hospitals, universities, and exit points, often leaving hundreds of unburied corpses along escape routes.
Widespread and systematic sexual violence served as a central tool of terror, with women and girls as young as seven subjected to mass and gang rape. These assaults often occurred publicly or in rooms filled with the corpses of the victims’ relatives, intended to maximize humiliation and psychological harm.
The eventual takeover followed an 18-month siege during which the RSF “steadily squeezed the life out of El-Fasher,” according to the report. Starting in mid-2024, paramilitary forces encircled the city, cutting off food, water, and medical supplies.
Civilians were trapped behind a 31-km (19-mile) network of earthen berms and trenches designed to prevent escape. During this period, the mission documented the use of starvation as a weapon of war, with residents forced to eat livestock fodder, tree leaves, and animal skins to survive.
Medical facilities were repeatedly shelled, leaving only one hospital operational by the time the final offensive began.
The security situation collapsed rapidly in late October 2025.
On October 24, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) received orders to withdraw from the city, handing over the defence to the Joint Forces and locally mobilized civilian units.
On October 26, the RSF consolidated control over the city, deploying large numbers of vehicles and using sophisticated jamming equipment to break the defenders’ command and control. What followed were “three days of horror” marked by point-blank executions in homes and streets.
The report details massacres at El-Fasher University and El-Saudi Hospital, where hundreds of patients, medical staff, and displaced persons were killed.
Investigators also found that women and girls were systematically targeted for gang rape and abduction, with perpetrators often using ethnic slurs and telling victims they were being “exterminated” like the Masalit community in West Darfur.
The mission emphasized that these acts were not isolated incidents but part of a planned operation endorsed by the senior RSF leadership.