People who fled the Zamzam camp after it fell under RSF control are pictured in a makeshift encampment in an open field near the town of Tawila, in Sudan's western Darfur region, on April 13.-/AFP/Getty Images
Paramilitary fighters in Darfur have launched a brutal attack on one of the world’s biggest refugee camps, destroying homes and clinics, burning a community kitchen, and killing scores of civilians, including doctors and aid workers.
Among the victims were the entire medical team of Relief International, the last international aid agency remaining at the besieged Zamzam camp in Sudan’s North Darfur region. Nine doctors, ambulance drivers and other workers were “mercilessly” executed by gunmen of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Friday night, the agency said.
By Sunday, on the third day of the assault, the RSF said it had seized control of the entire camp, which shelters more than half a million displaced people. The camp has been cut off from the world for months, with aid supplies largely blocked and famine officially declared.
The RSF has been battling Sudan’s military since 2023 in a devastating power struggle that has killed tens of thousands and forced 13 million to flee their homes. The war, described by aid agencies as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, marks its second anniversary on Tuesday with no end in sight.
Human-rights groups have warned for the past year that the RSF would commit atrocities against civilians if it captured Zamzam camp, and the events of the past three days have proven their predictions correct.
Videos on social media on the weekend showed RSF fighters executing civilians and torching homes in the camp. Dead bodies were visible in several videos. In an earlier assault in 2023, the RSF massacred an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people when they captured the West Darfur city of El Geneina.
Kashif Shafique, the Sudan director for Relief International, said the agency’s workers were killed when heavily armed RSF fighters stormed into the medical clinic during their attack on the displacement camp.
“I am heartbroken and devastated beyond words,” he said in a statement.
“This wasn’t just a facility – it was a lifeline, offering over 300 consultations daily, distributing 900 food baskets and delivering clean water, nutrition and hope. We were the only organization still standing with the people of Zamzam. Now, that lifeline has been shattered.”
Mr. Shafique said the RSF was seeking to destroy all health facilities in the region, as part of its offensive against the camp: “The central market in Zamzam and hundreds of makeshift homes have been completely decimated.”
The RSF said in a statement that its fighters attacked Zamzam because the camp had become a “military base” – an allegation denied by aid agencies and Sudanese leaders.
“Arson attacks have burned multiple structures and significant areas of the camp in the center, south, and southeast portions of the camp,” says a report by the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University’s public health school. Using satellite images and thermal sensor data, it described the assault on Friday as the biggest since the siege began last year, with large numbers of armed vehicles involved.
International leaders and aid agencies said they were shocked and outraged at the assault. In total, more than 300 civilians were reportedly killed or wounded by the RSF at Zamzam and at a separate North Darfur camp, Abu Shouk, where nearly 200,000 displaced people are sheltering.
“These families – many of whom have already been displaced multiple times – are once again caught in the crossfire, with nowhere safe to go,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has extensive operations in Sudan, cited reports that the gunmen at Zamzam had killed 20 children and torched a community kitchen with women volunteers inside.
“It’s a calculated campaign of destruction against civilians,” he said in a social media post.
In another North Darfur town, the RSF killed the medical director of Um Kadada hospital on Friday, according to local reports.
With the deaths of the Relief International team, more than 90 humanitarian workers have been killed in Sudan since the war began, UN officials say. Almost every aid agency has withdrawn from Zamzam camp because of the security risks.
Zamzam was established in 2004 for refugees from earlier massacres in Darfur, when African ethnic groups were targeted by the Janjaweed, a government-affiliated Arab militia that killed an estimated 300,000 people in the early 2000s and later evolved into the RSF. Both the earlier Darfur violence and the latest conflict have amounted to genocides, human rights groups say.
Recent foreign-aid cuts by the United States and other Western governments are making the current crisis even worse, aid agencies say.
“Funding for the regional response is less than 10 per cent of what is needed, making it impossible to cover basic needs,” the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
“Inside Sudan, reduced funding will cut access to clean water for at least half a million displaced people, significantly increasing the risk of cholera and other waterborne diseases.”