“An extensive earthen wall is being built around the besieged Sudanese city of el-Fasher and is intended to trap people inside, according to research from Yale University,” reports the BBC. About 300,000 people live there, mostly non-Arab people. The city is besieged by a mostly Arab militia, the Rapid Support Forces, which has committed genocide against a non-Arab people, the Masalit.
The BBC explains:
From satellite images, the university’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has identified more than 19 miles of berms – or raised banks – constructed since May in territory outside the city occupied by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
El-Fasher, under siege for more than a year, is the last major foothold in [the region of] Darfur for Sudan’s army, which has been battling the RSF since April 2023.
The Sudan Doctors Network has told the BBC that the RSF was intensifying its offensive there and deliberately targeting civilians. “Yesterday there was a shelling in a civilian area down in the city centre that ended up killing almost 24 civilians and injuring 55 people, among them five women,” says Dr Mohamed Faisal Hassan….The attacks on the central market and a residential area were “deliberate” and “heinous”, he said.
“Three days ago they targeted one of the biggest hospitals in el-Fasher and resulted in a massive massacre of patients and medical staff.”
Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL)…suggests that the RSF “is creating a literal kill box around el-Fasher”….Since the conflict erupted, RSF fighters and allied Arab militia in Darfur have been accused of targeting people from non-Arab ethnic groups.
“Some civilians are trying to escape the city but sadly they are being targeted and killed by the RSF forces,” Dr Hassan said.
Thousands of people have already died of starvation in the city of El Fasher.
Food is so scarce in El Fasher that it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars per pound, which few can afford. In late July 2025, a sack of millet was selling for the equivalent of approximately $2,500, a staggering and unprecedented price. By mid-August, the price had risen even further to nearly $4,000.
By July, many families were resorting to eating animal fodder and food waste. A displaced doctor in the city stated, “We are feeding our children animal feed, and even that is running out.”
The Rapid Support Forces earlier slaughtered thousands of people in one of the world’s largest camps for displaced people, Zamzam. “People told me multiple times that when they were fleeing from Zamzam [displacement camp], armed people would threaten them while they were in flight, saying sure, ‘Flee, go to that place, run here, run there, we will follow you, we will find you’,” said a woman who works with refugees, as quoted in a United Nations report.
Sudan is experiencing a bloody civil war. On one side is a genocidal militia — the Rapid Support Forces. “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” says the U.S. State Department. On the other side is Sudan’s military, which has used chemical weapons, and tactics that include “indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets, and hospitals, and extrajudicial executions,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
