"Massacre," "carnage," "bloodshed": United Nations observers and human rights organizations have said they fear the worst in the event the ongoing siege by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces on El Fasher — the last stronghold of the opposing Sudanese Armed Forces in Darfur — culminates in an attack.

Since the outbreak of the war in Sudan in April 2023, El Fasher has turned into Darfur's largest humanitarian hub. Today, it's home to around 1.5 million people including 800,000 internally displaced persons.

An informal peace deal between the warring parties — the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, under General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and his rival, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo — had so far granted relative safety for the city's growing population.

This situation, however, changed last month when two armed groups in El Fasher, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, announced plans to side with the Sudanese Armed Forces.

"These two groups not only have their own local networks but they see the Rapid Support Forces as a shared enemy which is a very potent driver to unite them," Hager Ali, a researcher at the German think tank GIGA Institute for Global and Area Studies, told DW.

In turn, the RSF stepped up its military efforts to ensure these new alliances neither get too strong, nor that they would be able to strike military........

© Deutsche Welle