SHOCKING images taken after the fall of El Fasher in Sudan show vast expanses of red-tinged sand and clusters of bodies, marking a massacre so large it is visible from space.
A Yale University analysis indicates that more than 2,000 civilians were killed when Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters took the city in one of the deadliest episodes of Sudan’s two-year civil war.
In the city’s Daraja Oula neighborhood, analysts at the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory (HRL) found “clusters of objects consistent with the size of human bodies” and “reddish discoloration of the ground.”
In one image, light and dark shapes, each about six feet long, lie scattered next to pickup trucks and sand berms.
The reddish spots were not in the previous photos.
Nearby, vehicles block side streets in what investigators describe as “door-to-door clearing operations.”
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At least five separate groups of bodies appear around the city’s perimeter, where witnesses say civilians were shot as they tried to flee.
The Yale team concluded: “El Fasher appears to be engaged in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of non-Arab indigenous communities through forced displacement and summary executions.”
The local militia fighting alongside the army said the RSF “committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians,” stating that most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.
In just 48 hours, more than 2,000 civilians were “executed and murdered,” according to the Sudanese army’s Joint Forces.
Videos shared online show RSF fighters shooting captives at close range.
In one, a child soldier shoots a man in cold blood, and another shows rebels pretending to free prisoners before executing them.
The UN Human Rights Office said it had received “multiple and alarming reports that RSF is carrying out atrocities, including summary executions.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We are witnessing a deeply disturbing pattern of abuses in El Fasher, including systematic murder, torture and sexual violence.”
At the 157th Artillery Brigade base, satellite coordinates show new clusters of bodies along the berm, which “were not present in previous images.”
Elsewhere, two tanks, believed to be Soviet-made T-55s, appear in the RSF control zone.
The once bustling 6th Division headquarters is now blackened by “thermal scars” from at least 15 ammunition hits.
South of the city, hundreds of people can be seen on the B26 highway, fleeing on foot towards fields controlled by RSF.
HRL analysts described “large groups of objects consistent with people,” matching eyewitness videos of families running for their lives as fighters shouted racial slurs and opened fire.
“Kill the Nuba,” a gunman shouts in a video verified by researchers in a chilling echo of Darfur’s genocidal past.
Cameron Hudson, former US National Security Council director for Africa, said: “We have seen what is happening in El Fasher before.
“It was two years ago in El Geneina… It’s happening again and we still don’t do anything. What a shame for them. What a shame for us.”
The RSF, made up largely of Arab militias once known as the Janjaweed, is accused of repeating the genocidal tactics it unleashed in Darfur 20 years ago.
The group has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, when a power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) erupted into a full-scale civil war.
Since then, 14 million people have been displaced and up to 150,000 have died, according to humanitarian agencies.
The UN calls it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Before the fall of El Fasher, the city had been under siege for 18 months. More than 260,000 civilians, half of them children, were trapped without food or medicine. Many ate animal fodder to survive.
Now, the RSF controls all the state capitals of Darfur, effectively dividing Sudan.
Analysts say the army’s withdrawal marks a turning point and perhaps the death of a united Sudan.
General al-Burhan said his forces had withdrawn “to a safer place” but vowed to fight “until this land is purified.”
The European Union said it was “deeply concerned” and urged all parties to de-escalate tensions. “There can be no impunity,” said EU foreign affairs spokesman Anouar El Anouni.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned that the risk of “ethnically motivated violations and atrocities” was “growing day by day”.
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RSF’s record is discouraging. When El Geneina was seized in 2023, an estimated 15,000 civilians were massacred.
The same playbook seems to be playing out now: house-to-house murders, racial attacks and executions near the city limits.
