The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 300 women and raped 25 others in the first two days of entering Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state in western Sudan, a Sudanese minister said.
“The RSF killed 300 women during the first two days of their entry into Al Fasher,” Minister of State for Social Welfare Salma Ishaq told Anadolu.
She said that women in Al Fasher have been “subjected to sexual assaults, violence, and torture” before being killed.
“All women in the city are exposed to sexual violence and killing. No woman is immune or protected, not even a child,” the minister said, noting that the documented rape cases reached 25.
“There are reports of female journalists being raped, and these crimes have been publicised,” she added.
“Sexual violence targeted even children in front of their mothers, who were then killed. Everyone has seen these scenes in videos,” the minister said.
“Anyone leaving Al Fasher toward Tawila (in North Darfur) is at risk, as the road between the two cities has become a ‘death road’,” Ishaq said, pointing out to physical abuses of women with racist slurs.
“The RSF is using humiliation and rape as a tool against women fleeing from Al Fasher.”
The Sudanese minister said that there are still families in Al Fasher who are being subjected to torture, humiliation and sexual violence.
“What happened in Al Fasher is a systematic act of ethnic cleansing, a major crime in which everyone is complicit through their silence.”
RSF crimes
Ishaq said the RSF crimes in Al Fasher resemble massacres that took place in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur in 2023.
According to a UN report in January 2024, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in Geneina, including the state governor, in ethnic-based violence carried out by the RSF and allied militias.
“Of course, what happened in Geneina was not documented as extensively as in Al Fasher. The RSF’s own filming in Geneina was not as abundant as in Al Fasher,” Ishaq said.
The minister stressed that documenting the RSF crimes has become “a part of the rebel group’s weapon to defeat the other side.”
“The pleasure of killing itself gives them a sense of victory. In psychological terms, it represents a sick form of triumph. It is about domination, and domination has been a key weapon for the RSF,” she added.
“If the RSF remains in Al Fasher, they will exterminate every human being in Darfur. This is systematic ethnic cleansing, and everyone is complicit through their silence,” the minister warned.
She reiterated that the silence of the international community would embolden the RSF to carry out more crimes in Al Fasher and throughout the country.
Humanitarian aid Regarding humanitarian assistance in Al Fasher, Ishaq said the delivered aid in Tawila via some organisations was insufficient to meet the needs of thousands of displaced families in the city.
She noted that governmental bodies are unable to enter the region, as it risks the lives of civilians and other humanitarian workers.
“But we are in contact with all actors and trying to help deliver funds without announcing,” she said.
On October 26, the RSF seized control of Al Fasher and committed “massacres” against civilians, according to local and international organisations, amid warnings that the assault could entrench the geographical partition of Sudan.
On Wednesday, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti) admitted that “violations” had occurred by his forces in Al Fasher, claiming that investigation committees had been formed.
With the fall of Al Fasher, the RSF gained control of all five Darfur states in the west, out of Sudan’s 18 states, while the army controls most areas of the remaining 13 states in the south, north, east, and center, including the capital Khartoum.
Darfur makes up about one-fifth of Sudan’s territory, but most of the country’s 50 million people live in army-held areas.
