At least 60 people, including women and children, have been killed after a drone strike by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit a displacement shelter in the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher.
The attack targeted the Dar al-Arqam centre at the Omdurman Islamic University, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Network. The group said: “Most of the victims sustained serious injuries as a result of deliberate missile and artillery shelling by drones and heavy weapons,” adding that three infants were among the fatalities.
The El-Fasher Resistance Coordination said the victims were killed “after Dar Al-Arqam School was targeted by two drones and more than eight incendiary shells, scattering bodies in a scene beyond description.”
The committee condemned the incident, saying: “Civilians were seeking safety but found burning death instead.” It reported that some bodies were still trapped under the rubble while others “were burned inside the shelter, including women, children, and the elderly.”
The Sudan Doctors’ Network said 17 children and 22 women were among the dead, with another 21 seriously injured. Friday’s attack was the latest in a series of RSF strikes on civilian areas in El-Fasher, which remains the last major city held by the army-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the Darfur region.
The El-Fasher Resistance Committee called for international intervention, saying: “Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned.” It added: “The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.”
A spokesperson for the doctors’ network called the attack “a massacre” and said it was “a continuation of the scorched-earth policy practised by the Rapid Support Forces against civilians, in flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.”
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According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 53 civilians were killed in similar attacks between October 5 and 8 alone.
Since May 2024, the RSF has enforced a full blockade on El-Fasher, surrounding the city with a 57-kilometre earthen berm visible from space. Satellite imagery from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab shows widespread destruction and burning of villages around El-Fasher, with evidence of ethnic targeting of non-Arab communities.
The UN Development Programme warned this week that “El Fasher faces collapsed markets, a complete collapse of food availability and affordability, and no road access for aid, forcing residents to survive on animal feed and food waste.”
Over 260,000 civilians remain trapped in El-Fasher, while the city’s population has more than halved from 1.1 million before the war to now 413,000, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Last week, the city’s only functioning medical facility, the Saudi Maternity Hospital, was attacked three times, killing six people, including a child. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for the “immediate protection of health facilities,” while EU Crisis Management Commissioner Hadja Lahbib condemned the strikes as “mindless”.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said hospitals and ambulances across Sudan are being routinely attacked, looted, or blocked at checkpoints.
Samuel Sileshi, emergency coordinator for Médecins sans Frontières, said: “The magnitude of humanitarian need in Sudan is quite staggering.” He added: “Unfortunately, cuts to international aid are adding insult to injury.”
The UAE-backed RSF has been fighting the SAF since April 2023, when tensions between the two military factions erupted into full-scale war. The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and plunged Sudan into what the UN describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
