both the SAF and RSF launched indiscriminate attacks in densely populated neighbourhoods. People have also been murdered in targeted killings, including in the capital Khartoum, but particularly in West Darfur where the RSF and allied militias carried out ethnically-motivated attacks against the Masalit people and other non-Arab communities.
Khalil* was one of those who recently escaped from El Fasher. He survived by pretending to be dead when fighters shot 17 men he was travelling with. ‘The RSF were killing people as if they were flies,’ he says. ‘It was a massacre.’
Ibtisam* left the Abu Shouk neighbourhood of El Fasher with her five children on the morning of 27 October. Along with a group of neighbours, they headed west towards Golo, on the outskirts, where they were stopped by three RSF fighters.
‘One of them forced me to go with them, cut
my jalabiya [a traditional robe], and raped me,’ says Ibtisam*. ‘When they left, my 14-year-old daughter came to me. I found that her clothes had blood on them and were cut into pieces. Her hair at the back of her head was full of dust.’
Ibtisam* told Amnesty that her daughter 18 AMNESTY SPRING 2026
remained silent for the next few hours until she saw her mother crying.
‘She came to me and said, “Mum, they raped
me too, but do not tell anyone.” After the rape, my daughter became really sick… When we reached Tawila, her health deteriorated, and she died at the clinic.’
Such harrowing testimonies are yet more proof, says Amnesty, of the failure of the international community in Sudan. Amnesty has repeatedly shown that the civil war is being fuelled by an almost unimpeded supply of weapons to the country – at a massive human cost. A UN arms embargo has existed for two decades but it is both limited – covering only the Darfur region – and too poorly implemented to have any meaningful impact.
Nearly all neighbouring countries are used by various armed groups as supply lines to transfer weapons into Sudan. Arms and military equipment are coming from countries such as France, Russia, China, Yemen, Serbia and Türkiye. We know this through painstaking research, which involves such techniques as searching shipment records and examining photographs of weapons being used in the conflict.
PHOTOS Above: The aftermath of an attack on the national radio and TV stations in Omdurman, after the current Sudan war erupted in April 2023. Employees were held ransom, and raped and killed by Rapid Support Forces fighters © Giles Clarke/Avaaz/ Getty
Opposite: Volunteers prepare free meals for residents of Al Fasher during the siege by the Rapid Support Forces, 11 August 2025 © Ebrahim Hamid/AFP/ Getty
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