Sudan's paramilitary RSF force committed widespread mass killings when they took al-Fashir in the Darfur region at the end of October, the HRL (Humanitarian Research Lab) research group at Yale University states in a report based on analyses of satellite images.
At least 150 “clusters” of objects resembling human bodies were identified in images studied shortly after RSF pushed Sudan’s regular army out of al-Fashir.
Over the following month, HRL continued to monitor the clusters from above. By the end of November, 108 of them had decreased in size – and 57 had disappeared completely, the researchers wrote in the report released on Tuesday. In addition, activity by RSF vehicles was observed at more than 30 of the clusters, and burning objects or excavations were seen at another 30 clusters.
The satellite images show that bodies were either burned, buried or moved, writes HRL, which thus concludes that RSF tried to hide the traces of the massacres.
RSF has not commented on the Yale report, but the force's leaders have previously admitted that "violations" occurred during the capture of al-Fashir.
It is not clear how many people have been killed in the city, but according to several independent estimates, it is in the tens of thousands.
The war in Sudan is between two rival military forces and has been raging since April 2023.
On one side is the regular army, led by General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan and with a power base in an establishment around the capital Khartoum and the Nile in the east.
On the other side are the so-called RSF forces, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (nicknamed Hemedti). They have their origins in the so-called Janjawid militias that former dictator Omar al-Bashir hired to brutally crush an uprising in the devastating and ethnically-charged Darfur conflict in the early 2000s.
Al-Bashir was overthrown in a wave of popular protests in 2019. But just over two years later, the two armies he had left behind – the regular military and the RSF – seized power in a joint military coup. However, within their joint junta, rivalry grew and eventually all-out war broke out.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and tens of millions have been displaced, many of them to poor neighboring countries. In the Darfur region, there are renewed alarms about ethnic cleansing.
The military is believed to have support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The RSF is believed to have support from the United Arab Emirates.
