The United Nations human rights chief warned of imminent mass atrocities in El Fasher, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur state, as fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces intensifies.
Volker Turk addressed the Human Rights Council's special session, highlighting patterns of strangulation, starvation, mass killings, widespread sexual violence, and forced displacement.
Civilians in the city have been reduced to eating leaves, animal feed, and peanut shells to survive, with entire communities starved as armed groups encircle the area.
Turk accused both the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces of blocking humanitarian access and attacking medical facilities, workers, and infrastructure.
Satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts indicate a deliberate campaign to subjugate civilians.
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution ordering the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan to urgently investigate violations in El Fasher.
The probe aims to identify suspected perpetrators for accountability, following the Rapid Support Forces' seizure of the city on October 26 after an 18-month siege.
Nearly 100,000 people have fled since the takeover, reporting indiscriminate attacks, sexual violence, and bodies lining streets.
Tens of thousands remain trapped without access to water, food, or healthcare, with reports of mass killings, ethnically targeted executions, gang rape, abductions, and attacks on health facilities.
The council's action seeks to document abuses for potential use in international courts, amid warnings that violence is spreading to neighboring Kordofan region.
UN Special Adviser Adama Dieng described a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe, calling for civilian protection, restored services, unrestricted aid access, and political dialogue.
The conflict, ongoing since April 2023, has killed thousands, displaced millions, and left Sudan as the world's largest displacement crisis.
The Rapid Support Forces control all five Darfur states, while the army holds most others, including Khartoum.