Escalation of Genocide in Sudan: Children Killed, Civilians Disappeared, Cities Captured Under the Cover of a Truce
We are extremely alarmed and outraged by the mass killing of children in Kadogli, South Kordofan, and wish to raise the alarm about the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Kordofan. If left unaddressed will soon see a repeat of the deadly atrocities in El-Fasher. For nearly two years, the people of Sudan, especially the women and children of Darfur and Kordofan, have faced a deliberate and systematic campaign of extermination, displacement, imposed starvation, and sexual violence at the hands of the genocidal paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). What we are witnessing today is not a breakdown of order, but the calculated destruction of entire communities, underscoring the RSF’s intent to completely wipe out entire indigenous communities. This has been demonstrated by the scope and the nature of the RSF’s systemic attack, where hospitals are bombed, children in kindergartens are struck by drones, aid convoys are incinerated, and detention centers are filled with civilians whose only crime is surviving. These atrocities are occurring in full view of the world. The people of El Fasher, Kalogi, Tawila, Kadugli, and Zamzam are not dying in silence; they are being abandoned by the world in action. The crimes in Sudan today are crimes of complicity. Every day that protection is delayed, every week that humanitarian access is debated, another mass grave is dug, another child starves, and another community disappears without a witness left to tell the story. An act of extermination of a whole community, enabled by the lack of serious action from the international community, including the UNSC and the United States government.
Deliberate Targeting of Children: Mass Killing in South Kordofan
On December 4th, 2025, South Kordofan experienced one of the most horrific assaults since the massacre in El Fasher began on October 26th, 2025. In Kalogi, the capital of South Kordofan, drone strikes intentionally targeted a kindergarten filled with children, killing at least 79 civilians, including 43 children, and injuring dozens more as terrified families searched for their missing sons and daughters. A second strike hit a crowd of parents and rescue workers, and a third hit the entrance of the hospital, where families gathered to identify the dead.
UNICEF confirms that children as young as five were killed inside their own classroom. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Kordofan now stands at immediate risk of mass atrocities, echoing the fate of El Fasher. These attacks show the true nature of this war: children are not collateral damage; they are targets. Hospitals are not safe zones; they are battlefields. This violence is meant to destroy Sudan’s future generation and terrorize entire communities into disappearance.
El Fasher: A City Turned Into an Open-Air Detention Camp
Since its seizure on October 26th, El Fasher has been turned into a network of detention centers where civilians are held, tortured, raped, starved, executed, and disposed of in mass graves under total communication blackout.
More than 3,000 men and over 500 women are held inside Shalla Prison. At the former UNAMID headquarters, in El Fasher University dormitories, in private RSF compounds, and even inside the Children’s Hospital, now turned into a prison, over 2,000 civilians, including doctors, officials, and humanitarian workers, remain detained without food, medicine, or sunlight. Survivors describe rape occurring daily, beatings that lead to death, ransom videos sent to families, and the disappearance of detainees at night into burial pits west of UNAMID and along the road to Tawila.
More than 400 patients and their caregivers were executed inside the Saudi Hospital in the first hours of RSF control, their bodies buried secretly in nighttime mass graves. By cutting off Starlink access, RSF has silenced survivors and turned hospitals into propaganda stages. El Fasher is not merely occupied; it is being emptied, erased, and hidden from the world’s eyes.
RSF Capture of Babnusa: Military Expansion Disguised as Humanitarian Commitment
On December 1, the genocidal paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced full control over Babnusa, the last remaining Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) stronghold in West Kordofan. Babnusa is not simply a city; it is a strategic location connecting Darfur, South Kordofan, and Sudan’s central trade routes through Kosti and El Obeid. Whoever controls Babnusa controls civilian movement, food transport, fuel pipelines, humanitarian corridors, and the only viable access routes into famine-stricken North Darfur.
With this takeover, RSF now holds a commanding military corridor capable of moving forces north toward El Fasher, west toward Geneina, and south into Kordofan. RSF is far from being trusted, as they promised a ceasefire, but only continue their attacks on civilians unabated. During the same week they proclaimed full commitment to a humanitarian truce, RSF forces continued attacks without pause, bombing markets, burning trucks, and sealing off road networks across West Kordofan. Drone strikes hit civilians in transit, aid convoys attempting to enter North Darfur, and medical routes that once served the wounded fleeing El Fasher. This is not a truce. It is a battlefield acquisition wrapped in humanitarian language.
Attacks on Humanitarian Corridors and Cross-Border Civilians
This week, even the last remaining lifelines for civilians were violently attacked. At the Adikon market near the Adré crossing on the Sudan-Chad border, a drone strike killed between 18 and 20 civilians, mostly Chadian traders, and burned humanitarian aid trucks carrying food and medical supplies to El Fasher and Babanousa. Aid workers were among the dead, and shops burned with people still inside. This crossing is not a military site; it is a UN-recognized humanitarian corridor serving more than 1.2 million Sudanese refugees across eastern Chad. The deliberate targeting of this aid route and the incineration of relief trucks come just days after the genocidal paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) publicly claimed adherence to a “humanitarian truce” and a commitment to ensuring aid delivery. Their actions tell the truth their statements conceal: this is not a truce, it is expansion under the cover of diplomacy, starvation by design, and the violent destruction of every pathway that keeps civilians alive. As the World Food Programme confirms that Sudan is now facing “the world’s worst food crisis,” and convoys remain stranded at borders while famine deepens, this attack demonstrates that relief access is not simply being obstructed; it is being hunted, incinerated, and deliberately extinguished.
At Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG), we refuse to remain silent about the genocide unfolding in Darfur and Kordofan. We are dismayed and agonized by the international institution’s constant failure and our leaders’ indifference to the people of Sudan. In the face of the deadliest atrocities in history, we must not let the world leaders normalize genocide or reduce Sudan’s agony to diplomacy, ceasefire negotiations, and “truce frameworks” that not only ignore and deepen the suffering, but its directly enabling perpetrators the impunity to kill more people.
Every day, we witness heartbreaking testimonies of survivors who continue to plead for protection as they continue to speak even when the world has stopped listening. This is a testimony to the lack of leadership and institutional failure in our highest policy-making arenas.
For nearly two years, Sudan’s civilians, especially the people of Darfur and Kordofan, have endured what no community should ever face: mass slaughter, sexual violence used to destroy entire generations, starvation enforced as policy, and forced displacement at a scale the world has not seen in decades. Today, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and markets are not caught in crossfire; they are chosen, targeted, and destroyed with intent. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue their march across civilian territories, while the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and international mediators remain locked in political calculations that give no protection to the people dying on the ground.
It is not a lack of evidence that delays action; it is a lack of political will. Sudan’s people have screamed, documented, escaped, testified, and buried their dead with their own hands. What is needed now is not further observation, but intervention that preserves lives.
At DWAG, we remind the international community that silence is not neutrality; it is complicity. Genocide does not need permission to continue; it only needs indifference. We call on the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, the United States, the European Union, IGAD, and all international stakeholders to take the following urgent measures:
- Enforce an Immediate Ceasefire with Civilian Protection Guarantees, including an immediate stop on the aerial bombardment, drone strikes, and siege tactics, and mandate the withdrawal of armed forces from civilian zones in El Fasher, Kordofan, and West Darfur.
- Open Safe Humanitarian Corridors by Land and Air with guaranteed access for food, medical aid, fuel, and emergency response teams, including cross-border corridors through Chad, without interference or blockade by armed groups.
- Deploy international protection forces under Chapter VII mandates to safeguard civilians, displacement camps, hospitals, and aid workers.
- Expand the Arms Embargo to All of Sudan by cutting the weapons pipeline feeding genocide, including enforcement against international suppliers and intermediaries known to be arming RSF.
- Support and fully resource the UN Fact-Finding Mission and the ICC to document atrocities, secure evidence of mass graves, and prosecute crimes of genocide, sexual violence, ethnic targeting, and mass starvation as weapons of war.
- Impose targeted sanctions, travel bans, and international criminal designation, including scrutiny of states and private entities supplying arms or financing RSF’s campaign.
- Designate RSF as a global terrorist group and urge for global collective response
We implore all of you to add your voice and force global action to stop genocide, protect survivors, and demand accountability through our One Million Voices for Sudan Campaign. We can collectively speak in one voice, and we can make a difference, end the suffering, save lives, and hold the perpetrators accountable.
With Gratitude,
Niemat Ahmadi
President, Darfur Women Action Group
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