The war in Sudan has now reportedly entered a harrowing new phase in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is carrying out what rights groups describe as racially targeted massacres against the region’s Black population, using Chinese-made drones and brutal execution squads to cement control.
Humanitarian organizations report that violence surged after the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, seized El Fasher, the largest city in Darfur. Videos verified by the Sudan Doctors Network appear to show militia members shooting unarmed civilians in the streets as fires gutted neighborhoods and bodies lay strewn beside burned-out vehicles. At the city’s only functioning hospital, the World Health Organization said RSF fighters killed all 460 people inside — patients, health workers, and family members.
The RSF, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, is the latest incarnation of the Janjaweed militias that slaughtered more than 200,000 people in Darfur two decades ago. U.S. officials have long accused the group of pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the region’s Black communities. Rights researchers warn that the current killings could rival the 1994 Rwandan genocide in scale and brutality.
“This is only comparable to Rwanda-style killing,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab. “In my entire career, I have never seen a level of violence against an area like we are seeing now. These people have an air force—no one can hide because they can see them from the air.”
The RSF’s ability to wage such a technologically advanced campaign has drawn scrutiny toward its backers. U.S. intelligence officials say the United Arab Emirates has supplied the militia with howitzers, mortars, and Wing Loong II drones, though a U.A.E. spokesperson denied providing “any form of support to either warring party.” Analysts warn that the involvement of foreign powers risks deepening Sudan’s humanitarian crisis and further destabilizing the region.
Witnesses describe RSF fighters conducting door-to-door searches, rounding up non-Arab men and boys for execution, and raping Black women. “I haven’t heard from any of my family members, I pray they are safe,” said Awil Mohamad, 60, who fled El Fasher with her grandchildren after the militia stormed her neighborhood. “We hid in trenches and damaged buildings during the attacks.”
An estimated half a million people have fled El Fasher, most of them Black Sudanese now struggling in famine conditions without food or clean water. U.N. officials estimate that 70 percent of the city’s population has been displaced.
The war began more than two years ago as a power struggle between Sudan’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Dagalo, his former deputy. The conflict has killed as many as 150,000 people, fractured one of Africa’s largest countries, and split control between the army’s eastern territories and the RSF’s western strongholds.
Eric Reeves, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute, said the RSF’s campaign reflects “fierce ethnic animus” toward Darfur’s Black civilians. “The obscene violence is clearly comparable,” he said, noting that many deaths will result from starvation and disease as the RSF blocks aid deliveries.
The militia’s drones have leveled power plants and homes, leaving most of Darfur in blackout. In one strike on October 11, 60 people were killed at a refugee shelter. Yet Dagalo has vowed to press on, declaring his troops will keep “cleaning the city of any remnants of the army until the restoration of stability.”
Sudan’s military has condemned the massacres but remains unable to retake the city. In a televised address, al-Burhan said his troops withdrew “to spare citizens” but promised to continue fighting.
For Darfur’s displaced Black families, the promise offers little comfort. As one aid official put it, “The world said ‘never again’ after Rwanda. But it’s happening again — in real time — and few are watching.”
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