This earth wall indicates that another mass murder is imminent in the Sudan war

Al-Fasher is arguably the most fiercely contested city in the Sudanese war. For seventeen months, it has been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting against the national army. Al-Fasher is the last major city in the Darfur region held by the government army and its allied militias. The city is also the last remaining refuge for some ethnic groups persecuted by the RSF, such as the Masalit.

The humanitarian situation in al-Fasher is devastating. Food security experts declared famine in July 2024. Famine is the worst of five levels of the classification used by international experts to analyze levels of hunger. In June 2024, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to the siege and highlighting the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation.

Nothing has changed: Over a year has passed, and the siege continues. Not a single aid convoy has reached the city this year. Local journalists report that people are eating animal feed or even garbage. Many are dying of starvation.

Researchers at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) have been monitoring developments in al-Fasher since the war began. They have made a new, disturbing observation: Since May, the RSF has been building an earthen wall around the besieged town in the area they control.

Thirty-eight kilometers have already been completed, seven of them in the past two weeks alone. Satellite images from the American company Maxar show the earthwork and the progress of the work. Even the excavators can be seen in the images. To the west of al-Fasher, the wall runs right through the village of Alsen.

Currently, there are only two gaps left that are not enclosed by the earthwork. And the RSF appears to want to close them quickly, as indicated by the intensive work of the past few weeks. The RSF would thereby create a "veritable death zone around al-Fasher," the Yale researchers write in one of their reports .

"The RSF's intention is clear," HRL director Nathaniel Raymond told the NZZ. "They want to keep people trapped in the city." All escape routes from the city will be eliminated by the construction of the wall. Anyone trying to escape will have to pass through the RSF-controlled checkpoints. There, they are extorted, kidnapped, attacked, raped, or killed by RSF fighters. "We have visual evidence that executions are taking place there," Raymond says. "And it's inevitable that this will happen on a larger scale soon."

In the town of al-Geneina, west of al-Fasher, near the border with Chad, entire neighborhoods were burned by the RSF in 2023. Thousands of Masalit were killed. ( Read the residents' stories here. ) In February 2025, the RSF stormed the Zamzam refugee camp, located 15 kilometers south of al-Fasher. According to estimates, they killed between 300 and 1,500 people and burned down parts of the camp. Experts like Raymond fear that a similar scenario will be repeated in al-Fasher. The RSF's goal is to permanently expel or eradicate non-Arab ethnic groups from the Darfur region.

The United Nations estimates that 260,000 people are still in the city. What the Yale researchers also saw in satellite images: The number of graves is increasing day by day.