RSF shells mosque shelter in El-Fasher, killing 13 displaced civilians

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agence France-Presse
Today 14:26
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Artillery fire from Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces struck a mosque sheltering displaced families in El-Fasher, killing 13 civilians.

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A man walks while smoke rises above buildings after aerial bombardment, during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 1, 2023. (AFP)

Thirteen people were killed and at least twenty others were injured when artillery fire from Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) struck a mosque sheltering displaced families in the besieged city of El-Fasher, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to AFP.

The attack occurred on Wednesday as dozens of civilians, mostly families who had fled earlier clashes, were taking refuge inside the mosque. The shells, reportedly fired from the northern outskirts of the city, originated in areas now controlled by the RSF after the group seized the Abu Shouk displacement camp.

"After the shelling in the afternoon, we pulled 13 bodies from under the rubble and buried them," said one resident. Another survivor recalled, "We were 70 families inside the mosque's walls after the Rapid Support Forces entered our homes. Yesterday, artillery shells fell, killing 13 of us, wounding 20, and destroying part of the mosque."

El-Fasher: City under relentless siege

The strike marks one of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which has endured an RSF siege since May 2024. Once a regional trading hub and humanitarian center, El-Fasher has long been a symbolic and strategic battleground in Darfur's decades of conflict, the same city where the Darfur war first erupted in 2003 between government-backed militias and local rebel movements.

Now, more than two decades later, the city again sits at the center of Sudan's conflict. Since the outbreak of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF in April 2023, El-Fasher has been the last major army-held stronghold in the Darfur region. Control of the city would grant the RSF complete dominance over Darfur, allowing it to entrench a rival administration and sever western Sudan from the rest of the country.

The RSF's assault on El-Fasher has combined drone strikes, artillery bombardments, and ground offensives, tightening the siege and isolating the city from aid routes. By late 2025, the Sudanese army controlled less than a fifth of the city's territory, according to independent estimates.

Starvation, desperation inside the siege

Humanitarian organizations say conditions inside El-Fasher are catastrophic. UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warn that thousands of children are now facing acute malnutrition, and civilians have been surviving on animal feed for months. The price of food has skyrocketed, with one sack of feed costing hundreds of dollars, a sum no family can afford after nearly 500 days of siege.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, at least 20 people were killed in RSF strikes on El-Fasher Hospital, one of the city's last functioning medical facilities. A month earlier, another RSF strike on a mosque killed at least 75 civilians. Humanitarian workers describe the siege as a campaign of "starvation warfare", where food, medicine, and fuel are deliberately withheld to force surrender.

According to the United Nations, the wider conflict in Sudan has displaced more than 10 million people and left nearly 25 million facing acute hunger, making it the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis. In El-Fasher alone, around 260,000 civilians, half of them children, remain trapped, without sustained humanitarian access.

City on the brink

UN agencies and the Sudan Doctors Network report that at least 23 people, including children and pregnant women, died of malnutrition in El-Fasher in September alone. UNICEF recently warned that after 500 days under siege, the city has become an "epicenter of child suffering."

If El-Fasher falls, the RSF would control the entirety of Darfur, an outcome observers fear could accelerate ethnic targeting and mass killings reminiscent of the early 2000s genocide. The Sudanese army, meanwhile, retains control over parts of the north, center, and east, but its foothold is weakening as the RSF continues to expand its territory through blockades and attritional warfare.

Humanitarian agencies say the ongoing siege has erased any distinction between civilians and combatants. Survivors describe mass graves, indiscriminate shelling, and forced extortion for safe passage. With no sign of a negotiated truce, El-Fasher, once a refuge for those fleeing violence, now stands as a city slowly being starved to death.