Paris, 31 October 2025 – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) denounces the horrendous mass atrocities and killings, both indiscriminate and ethnically–targeted, that have culminated this week in and around El Fasher. We reiterate our fear that large numbers of people remain in grave danger and are being prevented by the Rapid Support Forces and its allies from reaching safer areas, such as Tawila, where we work.
Our teams in Tawila prepared to cope with a mass influx of displaced and injured people when El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, located 60 kilometers away, was seized by the Rapid Support Forces on October 26 after 17 months of a suffocating siege and attacks. In recent months, waves of people fled to Tawila after each major escalation of violence in El Fasher, which, according to the UN, was still home to 260,000 people as of late August. However, over the past five days, just over 5,000 people managed to make their way to Tawila, according to aid agencies on the ground. They describe massacres and spoke of people who remain stranded and being subjected to torture, kidnappings for ransom, sexual violence, and summary executions in El Fasher neighboring towns and along escape routes.
Between October 26 and 28, new arrivals from El Fasher, mostly women, children and the elderly with catastrophic levels of malnutrition, were brought by truck. Others, including gunshot victims, traveled on foot, hiding during the day and trekking at night to avoid armed men on the main roads. Among new arrivals on October 27, every single one of the 70 children under five years old was acutely malnourished, with 57% of them suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The following day, our team screened 120 men arriving from El Fasher, with 20% suffering from severe acute malnutrition. These shocking indicators point to the sheer agony endured by people in El Fasher and surrounding camps. The area was declared as undergoing famine more than a year ago and has since then been increasingly cut off from food and lifesaving supplies, with people relying on animal feed to survive.
Several eyewitnesses told MSF of a group of 500 civilians as well as soldiers from the Sudanese Armed Forces and Joint Forces, who attempted to flee on 26 October, only for most to be killed or captured by the RSF and its allies. Survivors report individuals being separated by gender, age or perceived ethnic identity with many remaining held for ransom, with sums ranging from 5 million to 30 million Sudanese pounds (7,000€ to 43,000€). One survivor said he paid 24 million Sudanese pounds (34,000€) to his captors to save his life and escape. Another reported extremely gruesome scenes of fighters crushing several prisoners with their vehicles.
MSF set up a health post at the entrance to Tawila, whilst scaling up the provision of emergency care, surgical care, and other medical services at the hospital. Most of our MSF Sudanese staff in Tawila have relatives who were killed in El Fasher over the week. Displaced people already present in the town go to meet new arrivals in the hope of recognizing a familiar face among the starving and traumatized people or seeking news of their missing relatives.
“Given the state of people who escaped and made it barely alive to Tawila, it’s clear that they are in urgent need of medical and nutritional care, psychosocial assistance, shelter, water, and humanitarian assistance in general”, says Tampellini. There is no more time to waste to help other survivors, they need to be allowed to move to safer areas and get lifesaving assistance.
