Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred; a further 40,000 civilians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for. This is the story of what happened.
In the pistachio green Toyota Land Cruiser rattling over the desert plain, Aboud Khater pressed his foot to the floor. Behind, the sun rose above El Fasher. Smoke belched from the stricken city. Khater was driving the last vehicle of the final evacuation convoy from El Fasher.
It was 5:45am on 27 October 2025. He couldn’t have waited any longer. The historic capital of Sudan’s sprawling region of Darfur would capitulate in the next two hours.
Thousands of civilians – children, women and men – were slaughtered. The city’s streets had seen the fastest and largest killing spree this century.
El Fasher’s fall marked the vicious finale of an 18-month starvation siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the most brutal chapter of its ruinous war against Sudan’s government forces. …