The situation in Sudan's besieged city of al-Fashir is catastrophic, with civilians facing relentless drone attacks and a man-made famine as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tighten their siege on the army's last stronghold in Darfur.
Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, is the Sudanese army's final bastion in a region otherwise dominated by the RSF. For over 500 days, the city has been under an ever-tightening siege, with the RSF constructing a 57-kilometer earthen wall that traps an estimated 260,000 people inside and blocks all humanitarian access. Satellite imagery analysis reveals a systematic campaign of destruction, with the RSF repeatedly and intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. These attacks have focused on the very places where people seek safety: displacement shelters, clinics, and mosques. Researchers from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab state that these actions constitute prima facie war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.
For the civilians trapped in al-Fashir, daily life is a struggle for survival against bombardment and starvation. To escape the constant threat of drones and shells, residents have been forced to dig their own foxholes and take refuge in underground bunkers. One resident described the paralyzing fear, saying people are "living in constant fear of death". The violence is inescapable; a single RSF drone strike on the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre in early October killed at least 57 people, including 22 women and 17 children. In another incident, an attack on a mosque killed more than 70 people. With the city's only functional maternity hospital also coming under repeated attack, the healthcare system has all but collapsed.
The deliberate siege has triggered a man-made famine. The United Nations Development Programme reports that al-Fashir faces "collapsed markets, a complete collapse of food availability and affordability". With no aid convoys able to enter for over 18 months, food supplies have been utterly exhausted. People have resorted to eating "ambaz," a residue from peanut oil processing that is normally fed to animals. Reliance on this inedible substitute causes severe diarrhoea and complications in children, worsening the malnutrition crisis. The local resistance committee has declared, "There is nothing left to eat today - all food supplies have run out".
As the siege grinds on, those trapped inside feel abandoned by the world. "We write, we scream, we plead; but it seems our words fall into a void," the El Fasher resistance committee said in a statement. There is a profound fear of mass reprisals and ethnic cleansing should the city fall to the RSF, with intelligence assessments forecasting a massacre. Despite a new U.S.-led peace initiative, the RSF shows no sign of relenting, believing total victory in Darfur is within reach. For the quarter-million people remaining in al-Fashir, the choices are grim: stay and face death from shelling or starvation, or attempt a perilous escape through RSF checkpoints where kidnapping, robbery, and execution are constant threats. As one volunteer put it, "Leaving is even more dangerous than staying".