Sixteen-year-old Mounir Abderahmane was standing in the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El-Fasher when he heard the gunshots that would haunt his eleven-day journey across the desert. Seven nurses had been summoned into a room by Rapid Support Forces fighters. What followed was execution by firing squad, their blood seeping from under the door as Abderahmane watched over his wounded father, a soldier in Sudan’s regular army.
“They summoned seven nurses and ushered them into a room. We heard gunshots and I saw blood seeping out from under the door,” the teenager recounted from the Tine refugee transit camp in Chad, his voice cracking with emotion. His father would not survive the escape. Neither would an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 civilians killed during the RSF’s final assault on Darfur’s last remaining stronghold on October 26, 2025.
The fall of El-Fasher after an 18-month siege has unleashed what United Nations officials are calling the world’s most catastrophic humanitarian emergency, with nearly 90,000 people fleeing the city in just two weeks. Their testimonies paint a portrait of systematic atrocities, hospital massacres, corpse-filled trenches, extortion at checkpoints, and a desperate exodus on foot through 300 kilometers of arid terrain toward an uncertain refuge in Chad’s overwhelmed border camps.
Hospital Becomes Killing Field
The Saudi Maternity Hospital, once El-Fasher’s only partially functioning medical facility, became the epicenter of horror on October 28, just two days after the RSF captured the city. The World Health Organization confirmed that more than 460 patients and their companions were shot and killed inside the hospital compound. Six health workers, four doctors, one nurse, and one pharmacist, were abducted, their fates unknown.
“I have lost the people whose faces I used to see smiling,” said Abdu-Rabbu Ahmed, a hospital worker who managed to escape El-Fasher, as reported by BBC News. The International Council of Nurses condemned what it described as “yet another tragic escalation in the humanitarian catastrophe,” noting that this massacre followed repeated assaults on the facility throughout October. One nurse was killed and three health workers injured in an attack just two days before the mass killing.
Since Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023, 46 health workers have been killed in El-Fasher alone, including the Director of Primary Health Care in the State Ministry of Health, as reported. Another 48 have been injured. The attack on the Saudi hospital represents one of the gravest atrocities in the 32-month conflict between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, a power struggle rooted in control over Sudan’s lucrative gold and oil resources.
Corpses Visible From Space
Satellite imagery analyzed by the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University has confirmed the presence of at least two mass graves in El-Fasher, with corpses piled so densely they are visible from space. Researcher Nathaniel Raymond reported observing bulldozers and trucks transporting bodies at an accelerating pace, suggesting the RSF is attempting to destroy evidence of war crimes as outlined by The Eastern Herald.
“We cannot estimate the number of bodies buried because they were piled on top of each other,” Raymond explained. His team detected fires at two burial pits, one near the Saudi hospital and another at the edge of the 55-kilometer sand trench the RSF dug around the city during the siege. The trench itself became a charnel house that fleeing civilians were forced to navigate.
Samira Abdallah Bachir, 29, described climbing down into the ditch with her three young children, carefully stepping around the bodies “so we wouldn’t step on them.” The Eastern Herald detailed similar testimonies of survivors. Hamid Souleymane Chogar, 53, who was crippled by Janjaweed militia fighters in 2011, had to be hoisted onto a cart that zigzagged through the city between debris and corpses. “Every time I went up to get some air, I saw new corpses in the street, often those of local people I knew,” he said.
The Nightmarish Journey West
Escaping El-Fasher required more than surviving the initial massacre. Refugees report that drone attacks intensified on October 24, two days before the city fell. Locals crammed into makeshift shelters to avoid the bombs, surviving on nothing but “peanut shells” for food. Those who attempted to flee moved through the darkness without lights or voices, diving into abandoned houses when RSF vehicle headlights swept the streets.
Mahamat Ahmat Abdelkerim, 53, hid with his wife and six children inside one such house when an RSF patrol passed. His seventh child had been killed by a drone days earlier. “There were about 10 bodies in there, all civilians,” he recalled. “The blood was still oozing from their corpses.” Mouna Mahamat Oumour, 42, was fleeing with extended family when a shell struck the group. “When I turned round, I saw my aunt’s body torn to pieces. We covered her with a cloth and kept going,” she said through tears. “We walked on without ever looking back.”
At the city’s southern edge, the RSF established checkpoints on the two main roads leading out of El-Fasher. Witnesses reported systematic rape and theft at these barriers, where fighters demanded between $800 and $1,600 per person for safe passage. Many families went days without food during the journey, walking more than 300 kilometers to reach Chad’s border, as documented by The Eastern Herald and Doctors Without Borders.
Chad’s Refugee Camps Buckle
The Tine refugee transit camp in eastern Chad, designed for temporary accommodation, is now hosting over 18,000 people sleeping on bare ground in 104-degree Fahrenheit heat. Most arrivals are women and children showing severe signs of malnutrition, having endured months of famine conditions before the RSF’s final assault. “We’ve walked a long way to get here,” said one refugee woman. “We’ve been here for several days but we’re struggling to find food and water. We’ve been wearing the same clothes for days.” Human Rights Watch.
Doctors Without Borders reported that the overwhelming majority of refugees arrive in Tine experiencing profound psychological distress due to the horrific violence they witnessed. Ameni Rahmani, 42, working with the medical charity, explained that “people are being relocated from Tine to reduce crowding and make room for new refugees.” The Eastern Herald covered the broader humanitarian struggle. Existing refugee camps like Iridimi have already reached maximum capacity.
Chad now hosts more than one million refugees and returnees from Sudan, straining resources that were already inadequate before El-Fasher’s fall. Humanitarian organizations warn of funding crises affecting the entire aid sector in eastern Chad, even as arrivals continue. The situation is further complicated by seasonal rains blocking roads in Wadi Fira and surrounding regions, making transport of food, medicine, and supplies increasingly difficult.
Famine and Genocide Warnings
The United Nations officially declared famine conditions in El-Fasher and the nearby city of Kadugli on November 3, 2025. The Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification confirmed that nearly 190,000 civilians remain trapped in El-Fasher facing starvation.
The RSF traces its origins to the Janjaweed, a largely Arab militia armed by the Sudanese government to commit ethnic cleansing against predominantly Black African tribes in Darfur between 2003 and 2008. An estimated 300,000 people were killed in those campaigns, with 2.7 million displaced, as documented by Amnesty International and International Criminal Court. Human rights organizations now warn that Darfur is plunging once again into genocide.
On November 3, the International Criminal Court expressed “deep concern” over reports of massacres, violations, and other crimes committed during the RSF offensive, confirming it has jurisdiction to investigate crimes in the region since April 2023. Yale researcher Nathaniel Raymond emphasized the urgency: “The United Nations must be allowed to send an independent investigative mission to el-Fasher. We cannot let the RSF erase evidence of their crimes.”
The War Beyond El-Fasher
The capture of El-Fasher gives the RSF complete control over Darfur, Sudan’s vast western region, marking a significant shift in the civil war’s trajectory. The paramilitary force, which has been accused of receiving weapons from the United Arab Emirates, is now pushing eastward into new territories. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for international action to cut weapons supplies to the RSF, though enforcement mechanisms remain unclear.
Since the conflict began in April 2023, tens of thousands have been killed, nearly 12 million have been displaced, making it the world’s largest displacement crisis, and the UN has designated Sudan as having the most extensive hunger emergency globally. Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces stand accused of war crimes, with the SAF criticized for systematically Genocide civilians when its troops face threats.
The fall of El-Fasher represents not just a military defeat but a humanitarian catastrophe that the international community largely failed to prevent. As survivors continue arriving in Chad’s overwhelmed camps with stories of blood seeping under hospital doors and streets filled with corpses, the question remains whether the world will act before the evidence of these atrocities, like the mass graves being burned by the RSF, disappears forever.UN Human Rights Office
For sixteen-year-old Mounir Abderahmane, who lost his father during the escape and witnessed nurses executed in cold blood, the journey to safety has ended. But the trauma of what he saw in El-Fasher’s Saudi hospital will endure long after the blood has dried and the bodies have been buried in unmarked graves visible only from space.
