By Vibhu Mishra
30 October
2025
Briefing ambassadors in the Security
Council, the UN’s top relief official Tom Fletcher
said “women and girls are being raped, people being
mutilated and killed – with utter impunity,” adding:
“We cannot hear the screams, but – as we sit
here today – the horror is
continuing.”
After overrunning the Sudanese
Armed Forces’ (SAF) last major stronghold in Darfur which
had held out for over 500 days, RSF fighters moved house to
house, he said, with “credible reports of widespread
executions” as civilians attempted to escape.
Nearly
500 patients and their companions were reportedly killed in
the Saudi Maternity Hospital, one of numerous health
facilities targeted in the fighting.
“Tens
of thousands of terrified, starving civilians have fled or
are on the move,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Those
able to flee – the vast majority women, children,
and the elderly – face extortion, rape and violence on the
perilous journey.”
Horror
spreads
Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha
Pobee called the fall of El Fasher “a significant shift in
the security dynamics,” warning that the implications for
Sudan and the wider region are
“profound.”
Fighting has already intensified in
the Kordofan region, where the RSF captured the strategic
town of Bara last week.
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Drone strikes by both RSF and
SAF, she said, are now hitting new targets across Blue Nile,
South Kordofan, West Darfur and Khartoum. “The territorial
scope of the conflict is broadening,” she
cautioned.
“The risk of mass atrocities,
ethnically targeted violence and further violations of
international humanitarian law, including sexual violence,
remains alarmingly high,” Ms. Pobee told the
Council.
“Despite commitments to protect civilians,
the reality is that no one is safe in El Fasher. There is no
safe passage for civilians to leave the city.”
The
UN human rights office, OHCHR,
has documented mass killings, summary executions, and
ethnically motivated reprisals both in El Fasher and Bara.
In the latter, at least 50 civilians were killed in recent
days, including five Sudanese Red Crescent volunteers, Ms.
Pobee said.
History of atrocity in
Darfur
“What is unfolding in El Fasher
recalls the horrors Darfur was subjected to twenty years
ago,” Mr. Fletcher said, referring to the
atrocities of the early 2000s that shocked the world and
eventually led to International
Criminal Court indictments.
“But somehow today
we are seeing a very different global reaction – one of
resignation,” he continued. “This is also a crisis of
apathy.”
“The Sudan crisis is, at its core, a
failure of protection, and our responsibility to uphold
international law,” Mr. Fletcher said.
“Atrocities are committed with unashamed
expectation of impunity…the world has failed an entire
generation.”
Descent into all-out
war
The conflict in Sudan began in April 2023, when a
long-simmering power struggle between the SAF and RSF
erupted into open war.
The RSF traces its roots to the
Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities in Darfur 20 years
ago, while the SAF represents the remnants of long-standing
military rule from Khartoum.
Both forces once shared
power after the 2019 ouster of former president Omar
al-Bashir, but a dispute over integrating the RSF into the
national army triggered a nationwide collapse.
What
began as a contest for control of the State has since
devolved into a brutal struggle marked by ethnic killings,
urban siege warfare, mass displacement, and famine
conditions across large parts of the
country.
Regional spillover and humanitarian
collapse
More than four million people have already
fled into neighbouring Chad, South Sudan and the Central
African Republic, straining humanitarian operations and
heightening instability in already fragile border
regions.
Inside Sudan, more than 24 million people –
over 40 per cent of the population – are food insecure.
Tawila, the main destination some 50kms away for those
fleeing El Fasher, is already hosting hundreds of thousands
displaced by earlier attacks.
“Our teams in Tawila
are seeing traumatized people arriving showing shocking
signs of malnutrition,” Mr. Fletcher said.
‘Blood
on the sand. Blood on the hands’
Mr. Fletcher said
the Council must act “with immediate and robust action”
to stop atrocities, ensure safe humanitarian access, and
halt flows of weapons fuelling the war.
“I urge
colleagues to study the latest satellite imagery of
El Fasher; blood on the sand,” he told
ambassadors. “And I urge colleagues to study the
world’s continued failure to stop this. Blood on the
hands.”
