RSF fighters close in on army garrison in Sudan's El Fasher

Fighters from Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are closing in on the lone army garrison in El Fasher after they tightened their grip on districts of the north Darfur city, residents said on Tuesday.

El Fasher is the only city in Darfur − a western region roughly the size of France − that remains under army control, with the rest held by the RSF.

The city has been besieged by the RSF since May last year, with the army's 6th Infantry Division and allied groups its last defenders. Many of El Fasher's residents have fled to escape the fighting.

Residents said the RSF had on past occasions forayed inside the city only to be swiftly chased out by troops and militiamen. However, they said the RSF this week ordered the eviction of the remaining inhabitants of the southern and eastern parts of the city, suggesting the paramilitary group wanted to make one more push to overrun the garrison, the army's last foothold in the city.

The RSF and the army have been locked in a devastating civil war in Sudan since April 2023. The conflict has killed tens of thousands people and displaced more than 14 million of the country's 50 million people. Another 26 million are facing hunger.

The garrison is in the northern part of El Fasher, where many people remain, residents told The National.

Video clips shot by the RSF's media team and shared online purported to show deserted roads inside El Fasher, with the charred skeletons of vehicles and areas of shattered tarmac visible.

The team, joined by fighters, posed outside the heavily damaged local office of the security and intelligence agencies and the Al Kabeer, or grand, mosque. Both locations are in the centre of the city.

They said they were no more than 300 metres away from the 6th Infantry Division headquarters. Sporadic gunfire could be heard in the background.

The National could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video clips, but the residents, who live in the northern part of the city, said the footage was from El Fasher. Members of the RSF media team said the videos were shot on Monday.

There has been no word from the army or the RSF updating the military situation in El Fasher, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the country's civil war to date. The army on Friday agreed to a UN call for a week-long humanitarian truce in El Fasher. The RSF did not publicly respond.

Losing El Fasher would be a serious blow to the army, which retook the capital Khartoum from the RSF in March and threw the paramilitary group out of central Sudan shortly before that. The army also controls northern and eastern Sudan.

The RSF, on the other hand, controls parts of Kordofan in the south-west − where it has struck an alliance with a powerful rebel group − in addition to all of Darfur, with the exception of El Fasher.

Darfur is the birthplace of the RSF's forerunner, the notorious Janjaweed militia, as well as RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo.

The region has been roiled in bloody conflict since the early 2000s, when ethnic Africans took up arms against the Khartoum government to demand an end to discrimination and the monopoly on power by a northern Sudanese elite.

Some 300,000 people died in that conflict and another 2.5 million were displaced, according to UN figures, and the root causes of the conflict has never been fully dealt with.

A Darfur fully under RSF control would be a huge step towards the partition of Sudan, a prospect that the country's friends and the UN have repeatedly warned about.

The war in Sudan began when differences between Gen Dagalo and the commander of the armed forces, Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, over their future in a democratic Sudan boiled over into open conflict.

Both men, however, are seen to be essentially vying for control of the resource-rich but impoverished Afro-Arab nation.

Al Shafie Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda.