More than 6,000 people were killed in three days when a Sudanese paramilitary group took control of the key city of Al Fashir last October, the United Nations has said.
The offensive by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) included widespread atrocities that amounted to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the UN Human Rights Office said in a report.
Rights violations in the final push for the city in Sudan underscored how “persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence”, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
The RSF and their allied Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, overran Al Fashir, the Sudanese army’s only remaining stronghold in Darfur, on 26 October 2025 and rampaged through the city and its surroundings.
It had previously been under siege for more than 18 months.
The UN Human Rights Office said it documented the killing of at least 4,400 people inside the city between 25 October and 27 October, while more than 1,600 were killed as they were trying to flee the RSF rampage.
The 29-page UN report detailed atrocities that it said ranged from mass killings, summary executions, sexual violence, abductions for ransom, torture and ill-treatment to detention and disappearances.
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In many cases, the attacks were ethnicity-motivated, it said.
Sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, was apparently widespread during the Al Fashir offensive, with RSF fighters and their allied militias targeting women and girls, the report added.
The RSF did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The alleged atrocities in Al Fashir, the provincial capital of North Darfur, mirror a pattern of RSF conduct in other areas in its war against the Sudanese army, the report said.
The tribal militia turned paramilitary is known to document its own war crimes.
Videos of their fighters lynching women, lashing emergency responders and cheering over dead bodies have circulated online since the start of the conflict.
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The war began in April 2023 when a power struggle between the two sides led to open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country.
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The conflict created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with parts of the nation pushed into famine.
It has also been marked by atrocities, which the International Criminal Court said it was investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of backing the RSF, something that an RSF intelligence officer appeared to confirm in an exclusive interview with Sky News.
But the UAE’s foreign ministry hit back at the allegations, saying: “We categorically reject any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war.”
