Inside El-Fasher: The Medieval Siege Unfolding in 2025

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Video originally published on October 3, 2025.

In 2025, a Sudanese city has endured over 500 days cut off from the outside world—surrounded by hostile forces that bombard residential zones, refuse to allow food or medicine, and kill, kidnap, or sexually assault those attempting to escape. Unicef's Sheldon Yett described it as "a medieval siege; something you'd expect in the middle ages." This is El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the last remaining city in the region not under control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group locked in a brutal civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). What unfolds there represents what experts call suffering "unmatched anywhere in the world today except potentially Gaza," occurring within the context of a wider conflict that has displaced 12 million people, pushed 25 million into extreme hunger, and may have already claimed 400,000 lives.

Key Takeaways

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, has been under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for over 500 days, making it the last Darfuri city not under RSF control.

Between 260,000 and 750,000 civilians—mostly from Black African tribes historically persecuted by the RSF—remain trapped inside the city with severely limited escape options.

Famine was officially declared in areas around El-Fasher in July 2024, with 38 percent of children under five acutely malnourished and food prices rendering basic staples unaffordable for most residents.

The RSF is constructing 31 kilometers of earthen berms around the city, creating what Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab calls 'a literal kill box' designed to prevent escape and facilitate potential mass killing.

Daily bombardments target civilian infrastructure, including a hospital bombed over thirty times; drones supplied by the UAE are used to randomly kill civilians.

A single 50-meter exit remains under RSF control, where men and boys attempting escape face execution and women face sexual assault.

The Strategic Importance of El-Fasher

El-Fasher's significance extends far beyond its status as North Darfur's capital. The city represents the last holdout against complete RSF domination of Darfur—a region nearly the size of Spain. While the overall civil war has been trending against the RSF since they lost control of Khartoum in March 2025, their grip on western Sudan has only strengthened. The paramilitaries have been moving deeper into El-Fasher's central neighborhoods since establishing a foothold in northeastern districts.

Military sources quoted by Middle East Eye indicate the SAF controls a mere ten square kilometers around the airport. The Sudan War Monitor reports RSF fighters are within just a few hundred meters of the 6th Division's headquarters, separated in some places only by minefields. Recent weeks have seen the paramilitaries make major advances, though the SAF base remains so heavily fortified that questions persist about whether the RSF possesses the technical capacity to breach its perimeter.

The Joint Forces—a collection of Darfuri militias that have allied with the army despite historical enmity—maintain the ability to mount a mobile defense and move around the city at will. Yet these defensive capabilities offer mere crumbs of comfort beside the overwhelming misery of daily civilian life. For the RSF, capturing El-Fasher has become their key strategic goal. As the BBC notes, taking the city would ease their access to southern Libya, allowing more fuel and weapons to flow in. It would also provide a base for launching attacks eastward into the Kordofan regions, where the paramilitaries are currently trying to blunt an SAF advance. Most significantly, El-Fasher's fall would mean the entirety of Darfur belongs to the RSF—a development that would increase the likelihood of Sudan being partitioned along an east-west axis, especially given the paramilitaries have already announced a parallel government.

The Trapped Population and Escape Routes

The civilian population trapped in El-Fasher ranges anywhere from 260,000 to almost three-quarters of a million, depending on the source. Most belong to Black African tribes like the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa—the same peoples who have long been persecuted by the nomadic Arab fighters forming the core of the RSF. These are the communities targeted two decades ago during the Darfur genocide carried out by the RSF's forerunners, the Janjaweed.

The trapped civilians come from varied circumstances. Some have lived in El-Fasher since the earlier genocide. Others arrived seeking refuge in late 2023 as the RSF swept across Darfur. Still others only came earlier in 2024, after the paramilitaries attacked and destroyed the giant Zamzam refugee camp previously located outside the city. What unites them all is their imprisonment within El-Fasher's shrinking perimeter.

The UN reports that a single 50-meter-wide exit remains, controlled by RSF fighters. While recent social media videos show those fighters smiling and waving through civilians who want to leave, less propagandistic reports paint a darker picture. The paramilitaries often execute men and boys attempting escape, while women and girls face sexual assault. This doesn't mean no one has ever escaped—hundreds of thousands have fled at various points during the siege, heading west to the refugee camp at Tawila.

The problem is that the 65-kilometer journey to Tawila has become increasingly deadly. When Zamzam fell, RSF fighters stalked refugees along the road, killing at random. Others attempted escape through the desert, only to die of exposure. Aid workers described the journey to the New York Times in harrowing terms: "The road is lined with hastily dug graves and abandoned bodies... Rape is commonplace." The choice between staying in El-Fasher and attempting escape has become a calculation between different forms of death and suffering.

Famine and Starvation Conditions

Since July 2024, when famine was officially declared in Zamzam and other areas around the city, hunger and starvation have become defining features of life in El-Fasher. The statistics are staggering: 38 percent of all children under the age of five are thought to be acutely malnourished. The last functioning hospital admits up to forty starving children daily. Aid workers told the Financial Times they had never witnessed conditions as bad.

Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, whose team has been monitoring the siege via satellite, described conditions at the end of August as suffering "unmatched anywhere in the world today except potentially Gaza." This assessment carries particular weight given the context of Sudan's wider civil war—a conflict that has displaced 12 million people, pushed 25 million into extreme hunger, and seen whole cities sacked and burned. A war in which there are credible accusations of genocide in Darfur, and in which, according to former U.S. special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello, the overall death toll may have already passed 400,000.

Food is not entirely absent from El-Fasher, but what exists is functionally inaccessible to most residents. A handful of market stalls continue selling, but their prices are unaffordable for all but the very wealthiest. The Guardian reports a kilo of flour selling for the equivalent of eighty dollars in a city where the average prewar monthly salary was seventy dollars. Four volunteer-run kitchens still operate, offering one small meal a day, but they've frequently been shelled, making visits dangerous. Many in the city have been reduced to eating animal fodder to stay alive—a desperate measure that speaks to the complete breakdown of normal food systems and the population's descent into survival mode.

Daily Bombardment and Targeting of Civilians

The constant bombardment of El-Fasher has added an extra layer of misery to the siege. Each day brings attacks that start at dawn and continue through nightfall, usually targeting civilian areas and infrastructure. The one functioning hospital has been bombed over thirty times, including a strike in January 2025 that killed seventy patients and staff. Other targets include homes and meeting places—the essential fabric of civilian life systematically destroyed.

In this case, the RSF aren't the only perpetrators. The SAF has also been accused of airstrikes on civilian districts, both in El-Fasher and across the wider war. In fact, indiscriminately bombing civilian areas has become practically the SAF's signature move. While the SAF are Islamist-aligned war criminals, the RSF is the only group both credibly accused of genocide and seemingly taking sadistic delight in its crimes.

The latest torture inflicted on El-Fasher comes from the distant buzz of drones. Supplied to the paramilitaries by the United Arab Emirates, drones have become a constant presence in the skies over the city. While some are there for surveillance, others are used to randomly kill whoever catches the operator's eye. In mid-September, a drone strike on a mosque is thought to have killed around eighty people.

None of this is accidental. None of it results from careless aiming or mistaking civilian buildings for military installations. Rather, it all appears to be part of a deliberate strategy by the RSF to wipe out Darfur's non-Arab communities. When the West Darfuri city of El-Geneina fell in 2023, the paramilitaries conducted house-to-house massacres targeting members of the Massalit tribe, killing perhaps 15,000. When they stormed Zamzam, their fighters machinegunned crowds of fleeing civilians. Amnesty International has documented RSF members keeping women in sexual slavery, while Unicef has reported children as young as one being raped. The evidence is there for anyone with the stomach to sift through the reports—evidence that the RSF are trying to finish the genocide their forerunners in the Janjaweed began a generation ago, carrying it out with theatrical cruelty.

The Construction of the Kill Box

The RSF's latest instrument of control consists of earthen berms being constructed around El-Fasher. Running for 31 kilometers, these earth walls are beginning to encircle the city. Built by the RSF, they are intended to create what the Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab has dubbed "a literal kill box."

It was the HRL that alerted the world to their construction, watching via distant satellites as the civilians of El-Fasher were walled inside. Most of the west, north, and east are now cut off, with more berms potentially under construction. According to the HRL, they serve two purposes. First, they make it even harder for food or medicine to be smuggled into the city, or people to be smuggled out. Second, they prepare the RSF for what could become one of the worst massacres in modern military history.

The HRL report states explicitly: "In the event of mass civilian exodus, including scaling [the berms] in desperation, RSF can easily kill civilians." The berms transform El-Fasher from a besieged city into a controlled killing ground, where any attempt at mass escape can be met with concentrated fire. The construction represents a chilling evolution in siege warfare—not merely surrounding a city to starve it into submission, but actively preparing the infrastructure for systematic slaughter should the population attempt to flee. The medieval comparison invoked by Unicef's Sheldon Yett becomes even more apt, recalling historical sieges where walls were built not just to contain but to facilitate massacre.

International Politics and Inaction

The question of why the international community isn't doing more to address El-Fasher's crisis has a depressingly familiar answer: politics has gotten in the way. Specifically, outside actors believe their goals on the global stage aren't helped by saving Sudanese lives.

On the UN Security Council, Russia has sworn to veto a proposed UK resolution on the situation in El-Fasher—not because Moscow has any vested interest in the RSF taking the city (after switching sides a year ago, the Kremlin now mostly backs the SAF), but because blocking anything the UK, France, or the US proposes has become standard Russian practice since the invasion of Ukraine. The siege of El-Fasher has become collateral damage in great power competition.

Then there's the role of the United Arab Emirates. Although Abu Dhabi denies it, multiple reports by official bodies and investigations by dedicated journalists have demonstrated that the UAE is clandestinely funneling weapons to the RSF. The reasons are complicated, but the summary version is that the UAE perceives itself to be in a Great Game for influence in Africa, where ceding ground would gift rivals like Iran a dangerous advantage. Just as the US once funded unsavory characters in Latin America to keep Communism at bay, the UAE today arms the RSF for its own wider geopolitical ambitions—the innocent people of El-Fasher be damned.

This isn't to say no one is working behind the scenes to help. The US has been pressing Abu Dhabi to rein the RSF in, at least long enough to allow aid into the starving city. This pressure may have worked. President Trump's top Africa envoy, Massad Boulos, told the Financial Times on September 26th that an agreement had been reached to allow a food convoy in. According to subsequent reporting in the New York Times, it will comprise about 45 UN trucks and could set out as soon as October 6th.

If true, that will be the first bit of good news El-Fasher has had in over 500 days. But even if it happens, questions linger over how effective it will be. It remains unclear if the RSF will allow the food to reach the parts of the city still under control of the SAF and Joint Forces. Should the paramilitaries limit aid distribution to neighborhoods already under their control, it's unlikely to make much difference to civilian suffering.

Airdrops and Supply Lines

During the first year of the siege, the SAF would often airdrop supplies from its Antonov aircraft—both weapons for the encircled 6th Division and food for civilians. These airdrops represented a crucial lifeline, maintaining some connection between the besieged city and the outside world.

These airdrops halted in April 2025, after the RSF acquired surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns. The loss of this supply route marked a significant deterioration in El-Fasher's situation, cutting off one of the few remaining means of getting supplies into the city. The skies, once a corridor for relief, became too dangerous to traverse.

Then on September 29th, the SAF pulled off another successful airdrop. As open source intelligence analyst Rich Tedd noted on X: "This may suggest the SAF has either neutralised RSF air defences in the area or is confident they have been redeployed beyond range." If true, that would mean El-Fasher is no longer quite as isolated as before. Should additional airdrops be reported, it could indicate that the food situation will soon improve.

The resumption of airdrops, if it can be sustained, would represent a significant tactical shift. It would demonstrate that the SAF retains some capacity to support the besieged garrison and civilian population, and that the RSF's anti-aircraft capabilities are not absolute. However, even if the SAF's air corridor has been reopened, that doesn't mean the city is safe. The fundamental military situation—a city surrounded by hostile forces, with civilians trapped inside—remains unchanged.

The Race to Relieve El-Fasher

The cavalry are certainly trying to reach El-Fasher before it falls. Ever since the SAF retook the capital Khartoum, their forces and their allies have been attempting to drive west into Darfur. When the town of Bara in North Kordofan was liberated in mid-September, spokespeople from the Joint Forces and the Justice and Equality Movement claimed it as a necessary step towards the liberation of El-Fasher.

Yet even though the SAF and its allies are advancing west, they remain a long way from the besieged city. Their last breakthrough, in late September, was to Umm Sumaima. Even following the most direct route along the main road, that means they're still over 500 kilometers from El-Fasher. The distance represents weeks or months of fighting through contested territory, assuming the advance can be sustained at all.

Meanwhile, US officials are anonymously briefing that the city could fall in weeks or even days. This creates a grim calculus: can the relief force cover 500 kilometers faster than the RSF can overrun the final defensive positions in El-Fasher? The answer appears to be no. The timeline for relief and the timeline for the city's fall are badly mismatched, with the latter likely to occur long before the former becomes possible.

What Happens When El-Fasher Falls

If El-Fasher falls to the RSF, the consequences are expected to be catastrophic. Speaking to one of the last remaining doctors, the New York Times asked what would happen if the RSF overran the city. His response was both blunt and chilling: "They will kill everyone."

The Guardian reported that intelligence assessments indicate the RSF is bent on ethnic cleansing should El-Fasher fall, with model scenarios forecasting thousands will be massacred. This isn't speculation based on abstract analysis—it's prediction based on the RSF's established pattern of behavior. When El-Geneina fell, house-to-house massacres killed perhaps 15,000. When Zamzam was stormed, fleeing civilians were machinegunned. The RSF has demonstrated repeatedly what happens when they take control of areas populated by the Black African tribes they're targeting.

There are already signs that those remaining in El-Fasher might be reaching the limit of human endurance. Speaking to Middle East Eye, Nathaniel Raymond of Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab explained how things appeared through satellite imagery: "We have been watching civilian patterns of life in specific areas of el-Fasher for weeks now and the signals of civilian movement are growing less and less."

While one possibility is that civilians are deeper into hiding, now spending all their time in underground bomb shelters, the other possibility is darker: that there are fewer signals simply because there are fewer people. That so many have already died that only a minority are left. The satellite imagery, in other words, may be documenting not just a siege but a slow-motion extermination.

Either way, it's clear that the events in El-Fasher are approaching some sort of climax. After eighteen months of siege, the city likely cannot hold out much longer. And when it finally falls, there's no telling what might happen. As horrific as Sudan's war has been—with 12 million displaced, 25 million facing extreme hunger, and potentially 400,000 dead—it may be that the bloodiest chapter is yet to be written. The fall of El-Fasher could mark not just the end of a siege, but the completion of a genocide that began two decades ago and has been grinding forward ever since.

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FAQ

What is the siege of El-Fasher?

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in Sudan, has been encircled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since spring 2024. The city has spent over 500 days cut off from the outside world, with the RSF bombarding residential zones, blocking food and medicine, and attacking civilians who try to escape. It is the last remaining city in Darfur not under RSF control.

Who are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)?

The RSF is a paramilitary group that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in a civil war since 2023. Their core fighters are nomadic Arab militiamen, and they are the successors of the Janjaweed—the group responsible for the Darfur genocide two decades ago. The RSF is credibly accused of genocide against Black African tribes in Darfur, including the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa.

How many civilians are trapped in El-Fasher?

Estimates range from 260,000 to nearly 750,000 civilians trapped inside the city. Most belong to Black African tribes that have been historically persecuted by the RSF. Some have lived there since the earlier Darfur genocide, others arrived seeking refuge as the RSF swept across Darfur in 2023-2024, and still others came after the destruction of the Zamzam refugee camp.

What are the earthen berms being built around El-Fasher?

The RSF is constructing 31 kilometers of earthen walls around El-Fasher. Detected by Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab via satellite imagery, these berms serve to further block the smuggling of food and medicine into the city and to prepare for potential mass slaughter by creating a controlled killing ground where fleeing civilians can be easily targeted.

How severe is the famine in El-Fasher?

Famine was officially declared in areas around El-Fasher in July 2024. Thirty-eight percent of children under five are acutely malnourished, and the last functioning hospital admits up to forty starving children daily. A kilo of flour costs the equivalent of eighty dollars in a city where the average prewar monthly salary was seventy dollars. Many residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder.

Can civilians escape El-Fasher?

A single 50-meter-wide exit remains, controlled by RSF fighters. Reports indicate that men and boys attempting to leave are often executed, while women and girls face sexual assault. The 65-kilometer journey to the nearest refugee camp at Tawila is also extremely dangerous, with RSF fighters killing refugees along the road and rape described as commonplace.

Why isn't the international community intervening?

Russia has vowed to veto a proposed UK resolution on El-Fasher at the UN Security Council—not out of support for the RSF, but as part of its broader strategy of blocking Western proposals since the invasion of Ukraine. The UAE is clandestinely supplying weapons to the RSF as part of its geopolitical competition for influence in Africa. These dynamics have effectively paralyzed meaningful international action.

What role does the UAE play in the conflict?

Although Abu Dhabi officially denies it, multiple reports by official bodies and journalists have demonstrated that the UAE is clandestinely funneling weapons to the RSF, including drones used to kill civilians. The UAE's motivation stems from its perceived Great Game for influence in Africa, where it views ceding ground as giving rivals like Iran a dangerous advantage.

Sources

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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