Sudan: UN Chief Condemns Relentless Attacks on El Fasher, Warns of Famine and Atrocities

A girl prepares a meal in El Fasher’s Abu Shouk camp, where civilians have been trapped under siege for more than 500 days.

By: ATN News

UNHQ, New York: The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has voiced outrage at what he called the “relentless” attacks by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the city of El Fasher in North Darfur, where families have been cut off and under siege for more than 500 days.

Once a refuge for those fleeing violence, El Fasher has now become a prison. Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped inside, surviving daily bombardments and repeated raids. The Abu Shouk displacement camp, home to some of the country’s most vulnerable people, has been hit again and again — even after the UN warned last December that famine was tightening its grip there.

Since August 11, UN monitors have confirmed the deaths of at least 125 civilians, some executed on the spot. Locals say the real toll is far higher.

“Families are being shelled in their homes, children are going hungry, and the wounded can’t reach care,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said on behalf of Guterres. “These are not just statistics. These are lives being stolen.”

Even when food and medicine are stockpiled nearby, aid convoys cannot get through. Trucks loaded with flour, fuel, and medical kits have been ambushed, drivers beaten, and supplies looted. Each failed delivery deepens the desperation inside El Fasher, where mothers are boiling leaves to quiet hungry children.

The Secretary-General warned of grave violations of humanitarian and human rights law, including attacks targeting communities along ethnic lines. He demanded an “immediate ceasefire” around El Fasher and safe passage for anyone wishing to flee.

Guterres’s envoy, Ramtane Lamamra, is working to pressure both sides into halting the bloodshed and moving toward the kind of political settlement Sudanese civilians have been calling for since the conflict erupted.

For now, the people of El Fasher remain encircled — waiting, starving, and bracing for the next round of fire.