It is one of the largest cities in Darfur, a region once synonymous with genocide. Now it’s on the brink of another disaster.
A video shows a neighborhood on fire.
The militants have used the scorched-earth tactics that shocked the world two decades ago, burning thousands of homes and forcing tens of thousands to flee.
Satellite imagery showed multiple fires breaking out in different nearby buildings.
Sudan is one of Africa’s largest countries and is being torn apart by civil war.
Tens of thousands have been killed, millions have been displaced, and famine is looming, triggering one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
The city of El Fasher, with a population of 1.8 million, is now at the center of global alarm. Officials warned that if it collapsed, it might be impossible to prevent a massacre.
Fighters fighting Sudanese forces for control of the country have surrounded the city. The gun battle was intense. The hospital has been closed. The residents are running out of food.
The advancing fighters, known as the Rapid Support Forces, are the successors to the notorious Janjaweed militia that massacred African minority tribes in Darfur in the 2000s. Last week, the United Nations Security Council asked them to “cease the siege” of the city.
Yet The New York Times’ examination of Fasher’s satellite images and film made one thing clear:
The attacks are intensifying.
Fighters fighting the army often filmed themselves celebrating as they pushed into the city center, burning neighborhoods.
Footage showed Doctors Without Borders fighters driving vehicles on a main road in El Fasher, celebrating as the community burned.
More than 40 villages were destroyed as the militants closed in. burn The area has been near El Fasher since early April.
Some were deliberately razed to the ground. Others may have started fires during clashes with government forces.
Source: Yale Humane Research Laboratory (Community); Thomas Van Linge (RSF Control)
The map shows 43 damaged or destroyed villages.
More than 20,000 buildings have been demolished damaged or destroyed Because the military’s rivals – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – occupy the eastern part of the city.
Source: Yale University Humane Research Laboratory (Burned Area); UNOSAT (Structure)
Map showing large burned areas east and south of El Fasher.
Due to restrictions on aid imposed by both sides, only a handful of humanitarian relief supplies – about 22 trucks – have arrived in El Fasher, a city of 1.8 million people, over the past three months.
A map shows where aid was coming into the city before the battle.
Even before the battle, approximately 500,000 people lived in displaced persons camp In and around the city, some have been around for decades. Now famine threatens, and two camps in the north are locked in fighting.
The map shows the three largest displacement camps in El Fasher. Zamzam is the most populous Zamzam spring, located in the south of the city.
Doctors Without Borders said in February that a child was dying of starvation every two hours in the Zamzam camp south of the city.
In a January 2024 photo, a woman and her child wait with other women and their children in the Zamzam refugee camp.
The New York Times analyzed satellite images and videos of the conflict with the Sudan Witness Project, a nonprofit organization that documents potential war crimes.
Evidence shows that thousands of homes were systematically razed to the ground and tens of thousands forced to flee. The film shows the humiliating treatment of the prisoners, as well as the appearance of a senior Rapid Support Forces commander who was recently sanctioned by the United States for his role in atrocities against civilians.
A large hospital run by Doctors Without Borders was forced to close on June 8 after military opponents attacked the facility, shooting and looting equipment including an ambulance.
Video shows Médecins Sans Frontières fighters storming a large hospital and stealing an ambulance.
Videos released in recent weeks show the military’s opponents rounding up and interrogating people. Some were whipped and forced to make animal noises.
One video shows MSF rounding up men, while another shows them making a kneeling man make animal-like noises.
Other footage showed serious clashes on the streets and the bodies of militants apparently killed in the fighting.
The video shows Doctors Without Borders troops fighting in the streets and a dead body in the street.
Rescue workers said as the violence spread civilians are fleeing to the west and other parts of Darfur. To find safety, those heading east had to walk 180 miles, with temperatures often reaching over 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
The map shows the evacuation routes taken by many displaced people to the east and southeast from El Fasher, a direction not currently controlled by MSF.
An increasing number of women say they have been sexually assaulted while traveling.
A doctor from East Darfur aid group Care said it was “truly heartbreaking” to see the arrivals.
Photos show people evacuating El Fasher.
When the International Criminal Court called for evidence of atrocities, the militants made no effort to cover up their actions. In this video, the Rapid Support Forces patch is clearly visible.
The RSF patch is clearly visible in the film.
Sudan’s military also faces accusations of war crimes, primarily for bombarding civilian areas with artillery and airstrikes. Doctors Without Borders said that on May 11, the military bombed an area near a children’s hospital.
The ‘cliff’ of the Holocaust
Experts say the siege of El Fasher is disturbingly consistent with Rapid Support Forces tactics elsewhere in Darfur, where attacks have been accompanied by genocide.
U.N. investigators found that when militants overran El Geneina near the Sudan-Chad border last fall, as many as 15,000 people were killed in a matter of days.
Now, El Fasher residents fear a repeat.
NOTE: The 2024 images include some images from next month, April. Data source: Satellite imagery provided by Airbus via Google Earth
Chronic ethnic tensions have been at the root of violence in Darfur for decades. Just as the Arab-dominated Janjaweed militias carried out a genocidal campaign against Africans in the 2000s, the Rapid Support Forces are now targeting them, with the international community warning that the genocide could happen again.
In April, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield warned that Fasher was “on the verge of mass murder.”
Aid supplies are blocked
El Fasher is more than just a city under siege. It was also a relief center for a region that was slipping into famine.
The United Nations says 1.7 million people are hungry in Darfur. Now, the consequences of the war are being felt across an entire region the size of Spain.
Aid workers say there are shortages of food and medicine in East Darfur state and tens of thousands have fled the fighting as supply routes through El Fasher have been cut off. In Central Darfur, some food prices have doubled as commercial traders are unable to continue operating, according to Islamic Relief, an aid group working there.
The crisis is compounded by a severe lack of funding. The United Nations issues an emergency appeal for $2.7 billion. It received less than a fifth of that amount.
U.S. officials accuse both sides of the civil war of using hunger as a weapon.
Commander charged with crime
Several SSF commanders who were leading campaigns elsewhere in Sudan joined the fight in El Fasher, according to videos verified by The Times and the Sudan Witness Project. They include Ali Yagoub Gibril, the Médecins Sans Frontières commander in Central Darfur who was indicted by the U.S. Treasury Department in May for his role in violence that resulted in civilian casualties. sanctions. He was killed on June 14, according to the Sudanese military.
Ali Yagoub Gibril (left) and another prominent MSF commander, Al Zeir al-Sale, in two videos posted by Fasher on social media Al Zeer Salem (right).
Matthew Gillett, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who has worked at the International Criminal Court, said the presence of high-profile broadcast leaders showed how important Fasher is to Médecins Sans Frontières, but it could also be a sign that they Responsible for atrocities.
Gillette said footage of Médecins Sans Frontières leaders attacking civilians at close range “can help demonstrate the commanders’ awareness and command and control capabilities” at the time, even if the attacks were carried out by their subordinates.
“Fasher’s film could become key evidence in future trials for crimes in Darfur.”
