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UN Describes 'Crime Scene' in el-Fasher, Sudan After Gaining Access to War-Torn City
UN officials said they were "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained."
Dec 30, 2025
After weeks of pushing for access to el-Fasher, the city in Sudan's Darfur region that was taken over by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in October, United Nations officials reported on Tuesday that their recent visit to the city showed evidence of a "crime scene," with the few people remaining there showing signs of trauma from the mass atrocities they suffered and witnessed.
UN humanitarian workers gained access to the city last Friday, two months after the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lost control of el-Fasher to the United Arab Emirates-backed RSF.
The city was the SAF's last major stronghold in Darfur, and fighting has now escalated in the Kordofan region.
Reuters reported that the RSF has attempted to portray el-Fasher as "back to normal" since its takeover, even as the Yale Humanitan Research Lab published a report earlier this month on the mass killings that the paramilitary group have sought hide evidence of "through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale."
Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, told Reuters that the few people remaining in el-Fasher are living in empty buildings or tents made of plastic sheets. A small market was operating, but was selling only locally grown vegetables.
"The town was not teeming with people," Brown said. "There were very few people that [we] were able to see... We have photos of people, and you can see clearly on their faces the accumulation of fatigue, of stress, of anxiety, of loss."
Healthcare staff were seen at Saudi Hospital in el-Fasher, where 460 people were killed in an RSF attack, but they were working without medical supplies, Brown said.
Yale's report earlier this month relied partially in satellite imagery taken between October 26-November 28, which showed clusters of what researchers said were consistent with human remains in and around el-Fasher. More than 70% of the clusters had become smaller in satellite images by late November, and 38% were no longer visible.
The researchers said the RSF has used particular patterns of killing, including murdering people as they flee attacks, door-to-door and execution-style killings, and mass killings at detention centers and military installations.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, said the UN's discovery of few signs of life in el-Fasher corroborated the lab's findings.
Brown said the UN team is "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained," and told Reuters the officials plan to return to assess water and sanitation access.
About 100,000 people fled el-Fasher in October, and about three-quarters of those forced to leave the city were already internally displaced people who had fled violence as many as three or more times. In total 1.17 million el-Fasher residents have been displaced.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), released a short documentary detailing the experiences of people who left the city and are sheltering in Chad.
"They call it Paris, and now it is destroyed," a man named Noor told MSF of el-Fasher. "In the past it was a good city with all its lights on."
An estimated 30.4 Sudanese people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, and on Monday the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported unprecedented levels of child malnutrition in the Um Baru locality in northern Darfur.
More than half of children there are suffering from acute malnutrition, and 1 in 6 are severely, acutely malnourished—a condition that could kill them within weeks if left untreated.
“When severe acute malnutrition reaches this level, time becomes the most critical factor,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Children in Um Baru are fighting for their lives and need immediate help. Every day without safe and unhindered access increases the risk of children growing weaker and more death and suffering from causes that are entirely preventable.”
Many of the families observed by UNICEF fled el-Fasher in recent weeks.
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While UAE Backs Sudan Genocide, NBA Cup Should Drop Emirates Sponsorship
The NBA’s credibility as a league that stands for justice and fairness is at risk. Will they take actions to break off their connection to a government that is funding and arming some of the worst atrocities in the world?
Dec 15, 2025
The National Basketball Association, a league renowned for its support of civil rights going back to the Bill Russell era, is now connected to the former member of Sudan’s Parliament Siham Hassan Hasaballah, who organized soup kitchens out of her home after the country’s most recent war began in 2023. Just weeks ago, she was executed in Darfur by a genocidal militia called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
The NBA, a league that actively promoted racial justice in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, is now connected to the Saudi Maternity Hospital in Darfur, where RSF soldiers murdered hundreds of patients and health workers last month. One video shot by RSF soldiers themselves reveals a dozen victims lying on the floor, while an RSF soldier kills an elderly survivor. Tedros Ghebreyesus, the Director of the World Health Organization, was “appalled and deeply shocked by reports of the tragic killing of more than 460 patients and companions” at the hospital.
The NBA, a league undertaking major investments in youth programs in Africa and around the world, is now connected to the world’s fastest displacement crisis taking place now in Sudan, which is the “largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded,” according to the International Rescue Committee.
What’s the connection? The NBA has developed a deep and evolving commercial partnership with the United Arab Emirates, which is providing weapons and support to the RSF, that genocidal Sudanese militia. The most visible and public manifestation of the relationship is the Emirates NBA Cup, the increasingly popular in-season tournament sponsored by the UAE’s flagship airline. The tournament's final round will take place this coming Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Global business dealings are complex, but surely genocide should be a red line for the NBA.
The NBA also has a deepening partnership with Rwanda, which over the last two years has sent thousands of troops into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, sponsored one of the deadliest militias in all of Africa—the M23—in support of its Congo intervention, and looted Congo’s valuable natural resources.
The league is now one degree of separation away from the two worst abusers of human rights in all of Africa: the RSF and M23.
“Sportswashing” has a long history. The Roman Empire had its bread and circuses. Hitler hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics, Mussolini hosted the 1934 World Cup, and Putin hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. Saudi Arabia owns the LIV golf league. They all recognized that attention from their own misdeeds could easily be diverted by investing in sporting events that entertain the masses.
To that end, the NBA relationship isn’t the only sportswashing the UAE is engaged in, as the Emirati government and its subsidiary companies are also sponsors of Formula One racing, US Open tennis, Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts events, European soccer teams, and National Football League teams, among others.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s deputy, Mark Tatum, has argued that the NBA follows “directives and guidance” from the US government, and he has told private audiences that if American policy changed, the NBA’s action would change accordingly.
That change is underway. On November 12, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stopped just short of saying the quiet part out loud: “"We know who the parties are that are involved [in arming the RSF]... I can just tell you at the highest levels of our government that case is being made and that pressure is being applied to the relevant parties… This needs to stop."
At the moment, it remains unlikely that a US official would publicly name the UAE as the largest supplier of weapons to the RSF. But it is clear US policy toward the UAE’s arming of the RSF is shifting. NBA Commissioner Silver has a duty to recognize that change, as his deputy said, and “change accordingly.”
With the crisis in Sudan only getting worse, now is the time to act. The activist campaign Speak Out On Sudan, coordinated by a number of humanitarian and human rights organizations including Refugees International and The Sentry, is calling on the NBA to make it clear to its Emirati partners that as long as the UAE continues to fund and arm the RSF, this will be the last Emirates NBA Cup. The NBA is one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world—surely it can find another sponsor.
There is precedent for this. Recently, partly in response to growing activist pressure, the English Premier soccer club Arsenal announced the end of its commercial partnership with Rwanda, which has invaded neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and is looting the Congo’s mineral wealth. The German club Bayern Munich did the same earlier this year. These teams have shown brand sensitivity and willingness to change when called out for commercial arrangements that connect them to horrific human rights abuses. The UAE's support for a genocidal Sudanese militia is no different.
The NBA’s credibility as a league that stands for justice and fairness is at risk. Will they take actions to break off their connection to a government that is funding and arming some of the worst atrocities in the world? Or is “shut up and dribble,” the infamous line used by Fox News host Laura Ingraham to LeBron James, going to be the way forward for the NBA on this issue?
Global business dealings are complex, but surely genocide should be a red line for the NBA. As this year’s Emirates NBA Cup concludes this week, let’s hope it’s the last.
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ICC Collecting War Crimes Evidence Against Sudanese Militia After Darfur Massacre
The court said the actions of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, who are backed by a US ally in the UAE, "may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Nov 04, 2025
The International Criminal Court said it is collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region following a massacre committed by a militia group and amid reports of widespread starvation.
In a statement published Monday, the ICC—the international body charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity—expressed "profound alarm and deepest concern over recent reports emerging from El-Fasher about mass killings, rapes, and other crimes" allegedly committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which breached the city last week.
According to the Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a medical organization monitoring the country's brutal civil war, the militants slaughtered more than 1,500 people in just three days after capturing El-Fasher, among them more than 460 people who were systematically shot at the city's Saudi Maternity Hospital.
The ICC said that "such acts, if substantiated, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute," the court's founding treaty, which lays out the definitions for acts including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The court said it was "taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions."
The announcement comes shortly following a new report from the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world's leading authority on hunger crises, which found that famine has been detected in El-Fasher and the town of Kadugli in Sudan's South Kordofan province. Twenty other localities in the two provinces—which have seen some of the civil war's worst fighting—are also in danger of famine, according to the report.
The two areas have suffered under siege from the RSF paramilitary, which has cut off access to food, water, and medical care. The IPC says it has led to the "total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition and death."
According to the UN's migration authority, nearly 37,000 people have been forced to flee cities across North Kordofan between October 26 and 31. They joined more than 650,000 displaced people who were already taking refuge in North Darfur's city of Tawila.
Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with potentially as many as 150,000 people killed since it began. Over 12 million people have been displaced, and 30.4 million people, over half of Sudan’s total population, are in need of humanitarian support.
The recent escalation of the crisis has led to heightened global scrutiny of RSF's chief financier, the United Arab Emirates. In recent days, US politicians and activists have called for the Trump administration to halt military assistance to the Gulf state, which it sold $1.4 billion in military aircraft in May.
On Tuesday, Emirati diplomats admitted for the first time that they "made a mistake" supporting the RSF as it attempted to undermine Sudan's transitional democratic government, which took power in 2019 after over three decades of rule by the Islamist-aligned dictator Omar al-Bashir. Those efforts culminated in a military coup in 2021 and an eventual power struggle for control over the country.
However, as Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik wrote in The Guardian on Monday, the UAE "continues to deny its role, despite overwhelming evidence."
"The UAE secures a foothold in a large, strategic, resource-rich country, and already receives the majority of gold mined in RSF-controlled areas," Malik wrote. "Other actors have been drawn in, overlaying proxy agendas on a domestic conflict. The result is deadlock, quagmire, and blood loss that seems impossible to stem, even as the crisis unravels in full view."
"Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated," she continued. "Because to reckon with the horror in Sudan... is to see the growing imperialist role of some Gulf powers in Africa and beyond—and to acknowledge the fact that no meaningful pressure is applied to these powers, including the UAE, to cease and desist from supporting a genocidal militia because the UK, US, and others are close allies with these states."
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