Displaced Sudanese gather near a food distribution point at the Abu al-Naga displacement camp in the Gedaref State, some 420km east of the capital Khartoum on Feb. 6, 2026. (Credit: AFP)
The atrocities unleashed on al-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region last October were a "preventable human rights catastrophe", the U.N. rights chief said Monday, warning they now risked being repeated in the neighboring Kordofan region.
Giving the U.N. Human Rights Council an update on the situation in al-Fasher, Volker Turk decried the horrific scenes after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) unleashed a "wave of intense violence," following 18 months of brutal siege.
"Thousands of people were killed in a matter of days, and tens of thousands fled in terror," he said, stressing the need to "hold those responsible accountable, and to make sure this never happens again."
The Sudanese regular army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, with the conflict killing tens of thousands of people, displacing millions more and triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said that during a recent visit to Sudan, he had heard first-hand accounts from survivors of the al-Fasher violence, and had "rarely seen people so traumatized."
"They consistently reported mass killings and summary executions of civilians ... both inside the city and as people fled," Turk said, also saying he heard of widespread torture, rape and sexual violence.
"Survivors also spoke of seeing piles of dead bodies along roads leading away from al-Fasher, in an apocalyptic scene that one person likened to the Day of Judgment," he said.
Such atrocities were predictable and preventable, he added.
His office, he pointed out, had "sounded the alarm about the risk of mass atrocities in the besieged city of al-Fasher for more than a year".
"The threat was clear, but our warnings were ignored," he lamented.
While the RSF was responsible for the atrocities committed in al-Fasher, he insisted that the international community had a responsibility to "do better."
"If we stand by, wringing our hands while armies and armed groups commit well-flagged international crimes, we can only expect worse to come," he warned.
Turk said he was currently "extremely concerned that these violations and abuses may be repeated in the Kordofan region", where fighting has intensified since al-Fasher's capture.
Civilians were "at risk of summary executions, sexual violence, arbitrary detention" and family separation, and voiced particular alarm at repeated drone strikes by both sides, he added.
In just over two weeks leading up to February 6, Turk said his office had documented "some 90 civilians were killed and 142 injured in drone strikes."
The strikes, which were carried out by both the RSF and the Sudanese army, "struck a World Food Programme convoy, markets, health facilities and residential neighborhoods in South and North Kordofan," he said.
