The United Nations has detailed a massacre of staggering brutality, reporting that Sudanese paramilitary forces killed over 1,000 civilians during a deliberate, three-day assault on a famine-stricken displacement camp in Darfur last April. In a report released Thursday, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) documented that at least 319 of those killed were summarily executed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with victims shot in their homes, in a marketplace, and in schools and mosques where they sought refuge. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk stated that such deliberate killing "may constitute the war crime of murder" and called for an impartial war crimes investigation.
The attack on the Zamzam camp, which housed nearly half a million people already displaced by war, was marked by indiscriminate violence and clear ethnic targeting. Survivors described RSF fighters using heavy artillery, drones, and ground vehicles to shell densely populated areas randomly. One survivor recounted to Amnesty International that fighters were "just shouting and shooting anywhere," while another described a shell landing near a mosque during a wedding ceremony. The UN report details horrifying execution methods, including RSF fighters inserting rifles through windows to shoot groups of people hiding inside rooms. The violence was ethnically motivated, primarily targeting the non-Arab Zaghawa tribe. The assault also involved widespread sexual violence, with the UN documenting at least 104 victims, mostly women and girls subjected to rape, gang rape, and sexual slavery.
This massacre is not an isolated event but a cornerstone of the RSF's broader campaign of atrocities in Darfur. The attack on Zamzam was a strategic precursor to the RSF's siege and eventual capture of El Fasher, the last major city in Darfur held by the Sudanese army, in October 2025. Following that victory, the RSF committed further mass atrocities, with verified videos showing fighters executing wounded civilians and celebrating over rows of dead bodies. Human Rights Watch has concluded that the RSF's widespread, ethnically targeted killings in the region amount to crimes against humanity, war crimes, and raise the possibility of acts of genocide. Throughout this campaign, the RSF has systematically used starvation as a weapon of war, blocking food and medical aid from reaching camps like Zamzam for months before the attack.
International response has been criticized as woefully inadequate. Amnesty International and other rights groups accuse countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of fueling the conflict by continuing to supply weapons to the RSF despite its well-documented crimes. The assault on Zamzam itself is seen by some analysts as a deliberate provocation, timed to occur just as international donors were preparing for a conference on Sudan, as if to test the world's resolve. The consequence of this inaction is a profound humanitarian catastrophe. The Zamzam attack alone forcibly displaced over 400,000 people. Millions across Darfur now face famine conditions, with aid blocked and critical infrastructure destroyed.