Hunger and Shelling Kill Scores in Sudan’s Besieged El Fasher, Medics Report

RSF artillery pounds El Fasher on January 21, 2025.

June 11, 2025 (EL FASHER) – At least 179 people were killed by shelling and another 12 died from hunger in the besieged city of El Fasher in May, a Sudanese doctors’ network said on Tuesday, warning of a “frightening” spread of malnutrition.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have besieged El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, since April 2024, blocking food and humanitarian aid from entering the city of nearly one million people. Residents now line up to obtain ‘Umbaz’, a peanut residue used as animal feed, which has become the only food available for many to survive.

In a statement, the Sudan Doctors Network said the 179 deaths were a result of “deliberate rocket shelling by the RSF”. The group issued an urgent appeal to save more than 350,000 children at direct risk of severe acute malnutrition due to the “deliberate siege”.

It called for an immediate humanitarian corridor, warning that any delay “constitutes genocide for the nearly one million citizens besieged” in the city.

The RSF has intensified shelling, even as its ground assaults have been repelled by the army and its allies since mid-May. The repeated targeting of the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people has forced about 500 new families to flee in the last three days alone, a camp spokesperson said.

The siege has crippled the local economy. A trader in El Fasher’s only functioning market told Sudan Tribune that a 50kg sack of sugar now sells for 4.6 million Sudanese pounds and a single bar of laundry soap costs 25,000 pounds. He said basic goods like rice, salt, and lentils are completely unavailable 10.