Sudan’s RSF Killed Over 200 in Kordofan Attacks, Rights Group and Party Say

A village burning in Darfur, file photo

July 14, 2025 (BARA, North Kordofan) – Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have killed more than 200 civilians in a series of attacks on villages in North Kordofan state, the National Umma Party and a prominent Sudanese rights group said on Monday.

The RSF has been conducting attacks in the Bara locality since June, a region where the Sudanese army has recently been making advances.

The National Umma Party said in a statement that an RSF attack on the village of Wad Hamid involving heavy weapons left 46 people dead and led to widespread looting. The party also reported that attacks on the villages of East and West Shaq Al-Neem killed dozens more and resulted in one of the villages being completely burned down.

The party described the attacks as a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law” and said it holds the RSF leadership legally and morally responsible.

Residents from the area told Sudan Tribune that clashes left some 200 people dead in the village of Shouq Al-Noum. They said villagers with Kalashnikov rifles were fighting against RSF troops using heavy weapons and combat drones.

The fighting caused a “complete displacement” of the population, with some residents killed when artillery fire caused their homes to collapse, the residents said.

Corroborating these accounts, the Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group monitoring the conflict, said the RSF committed “horrific massacres” during attacks on at least five villages on July 12.

The group reported that over 200 people were killed in the village of Shaq Al-Noum alone, stating that “most were burned to death in their homes or shot.”

It added that at least 38 other civilians were killed in neighbouring villages, with dozens more forcibly disappeared or detained. The attacks were accompanied by widespread looting and the destruction of property, forcing villagers to bury the dead in mass graves, the group said.