Doctors Without Borders Warns of Potential Attack on El Fasher and Ethnically Motivated Mass Atrocities Against Civilians

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Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) has expressed grave concern over threats of a full-scale attack on El Fasher, warning of ongoing mass atrocities in Sudan’s North Darfur State. The organization called on warring parties to halt indiscriminate violence and ethnically motivated targeting, and to facilitate humanitarian aid to those in need in the state capital, El Fasher.

This came in a report published on Thursday titled “Besieged and Starving Under Attack: Mass Atrocities in El Fasher and Zamzam, Sudan,” which highlights the grim situation civilians are facing in El Fasher and its surroundings.

MSF’s humanitarian affairs advisor, Mathilde Simon, stated:

“As patients and communities tell us their stories and ask us to speak out while their suffering is absent from the international agenda, we felt it was our duty to document this relentless pattern of violence that has devastated countless lives amid a year of indifference and inaction.”

The report reveals systematic patterns of violence including looting, mass killings, sexual violence, abductions, and deliberate starvation, as well as attacks on markets, health facilities, and other civilian infrastructure. These findings are based on MSF data, direct testimonies from its teams, and more than 80 interviews conducted between May 2024 and May 2025 with patients and displaced people from El Fasher and the nearby Zamzam camp.

The report describes how the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allies launched a large-scale ground assault in April on Zamzam camp, located outside El Fasher, forcing around 400,000 people to flee in less than three weeks under horrific conditions. Many camp residents sought refuge inside El Fasher, only to become trapped without humanitarian assistance and exposed to further attacks and mass violence. Tens of thousands of others managed to flee to Tawila, about 60 kilometers away, or to camps in Chad across the border, where MSF teams have been providing care to hundreds of survivors.

Mathilde Simon further explained:

“In light of the ethnically motivated mass atrocities committed against the Masalit tribe in West Darfur in June 2023, and the massacres that took place at Zamzam camp in North Darfur, we fear this scenario could repeat in El Fasher. This horrific violence must stop.”

Several witnesses reported that RSF soldiers spoke of their intention to “cleanse El Fasher” of its non-Arab residents. Since May 2024, the RSF and its allies have imposed a siege on El Fasher, Zamzam camp, and surrounding areas, cutting off food, water, and medical care, worsening famine, and crippling the humanitarian response.

Meanwhile, indiscriminate airstrikes by the Sudanese Armed Forces have had devastating consequences. A 50-year-old woman recounted:

“The Sudanese army mistakenly bombed our neighborhood and then came to apologize. Sometimes their planes bombed civilian areas even though there were no RSF forces there — I saw this in more than one place.”