Gaza: In a report released on Thursday, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said the evidence establishes that at least three underlying acts of genocide were committed: "killing members of a protected ethnic group; causing serious bodily and mental harm; and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part."

According to Qatar News Agency, Mohamed Chande Othman, Chair of the mission, stated, "The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war." He emphasized that these actions were part of a "planned and organized operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide."

The mission highlighted that genocidal intent was "the only reasonable inference" from the RSF's "systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, destruction, and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities." The findings focus on events in and around El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, during the RSF takeover in late October 2025, following an 18-month siege that progressively cut off civilians from essential resources such as food, water, medical supplies, and humanitarian assistance.

The report detailed how the siege "systematically weakened the targeted population through starvation, deprivation, trauma, and confinement," which left many civilians unable to escape when the assault occurred. The conflict in Sudan began on 15 April 2023, with the eruption of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF, subsequently spreading across the country and severely impacting civilians amidst urban warfare, shifting front lines, and the breakdown of basic services.

The fact-finding mission noted that the conduct in El Fasher represented "an aggravation of earlier patterns" of attacks on other non-Arab communities in Sudan, but on a significantly more lethal scale.