Fall of El Fasher and Darfur massacre
- Date
- 26 October 2025
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Sudan (Darfur)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 26 October 2025, Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured El Fasher, the Sudanese army's last stronghold in the Darfur region, after a brutal siege lasting some 18 months.
The takeover was followed by mass killings of non-Arab civilians, with a later UN fact-finding mission concluding that the RSF's atrocities bore the hallmarks of genocide. The fall of El Fasher gave the RSF control of all five Darfur state capitals, effectively partitioning Sudan amid a civil war that had killed tens of thousands and displaced millions since fighting erupted in 2023. The massacre drew international condemnation and renewed comparisons to the genocidal violence that had ravaged Darfur two decades earlier.
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Further reading
The wider story
The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
Gripping account of Africa's nations from independence to the present.
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