MEFILES

Amnesty finds El Fasher at seven per cent of its population a year after capture

New resident testimony describes killings, detention and torture continuing twelve months after the RSF took the North Darfur capital. Amnesty says it knows of no diplomatic effort to build the protection force it is asking for.

Amnesty International published new testimony from El Fasher residents on 23 October 2026, timed to the first anniversary of the Rapid Support Forces' capture of the city on 26 October 2025. The organisation describes unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, torture and starvation conditions continuing a year on, with the remaining population under RSF surveillance. Middle East Eye, writing up the findings the same evening, reported that El Fasher now holds roughly seven per cent of the population it had a year ago — a decline of more than ninety per cent. Residents told Amnesty that a small number of humanitarian organisations had begun operating in the city again as of September 2026, eleven months after near-total exclusion. Amnesty’s asks are a ceasefire, the urgent deployment of an international protection force, and a halt to arms transfers by all states, including the United Kingdom. It says it is aware of no diplomatic effort to establish such a force. The testimony was gathered remotely and Amnesty says so.

The documentary record behind the anniversary is older than the anniversary. The Human Rights Council’s Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, created in October 2023, found in February 2026 that events in El Fasher carried the “hallmarks of genocide,” citing mass killings and ethnic targeting. The diplomatic track has moved on a separate rhythm: the UN-organised Sixth Consultative Meeting on peace initiatives opened in Geneva on 21 October, the sixth such gathering of mediators since 2024. Massad Boulos, an adviser to President Trump, told the session there is no military solution and backed the Quintet — the African Union, Arab League, UN, EU and IGAD — in enabling a Sudanese-led process, according to The National of Abu Dhabi. The characterisation that the warring parties were absent and that no direct SAF–RSF negotiation has occurred comes from the aggregator Rio Times and is not independently confirmed here.

The question of external supply reached the UN’s own leadership contest this week. The Associated Press reported on 23 October that Lana Nusseibeh, a UAE minister of state, has entered the race for Secretary-General and that her candidacy immediately drew scrutiny over Abu Dhabi’s role in Sudan. Nusseibeh says she wants to “rebuild trust” in the organisation and that it should use “quiet diplomacy.” The UAE has dismissed Sudan’s complaint at the International Court of Justice, filed in March 2026 and alleging complicity in Darfur, as “nothing more than a cynical publicity stunt.” Against that, the OHCHR Fact-Finding Mission’s 3 September 2026 report on weapons, fighters and external support networks found that foreign recruitment and outside backing are strengthening both belligerents, not one.

Assessment: Two tracks ran in parallel this week and neither touched the other. Amnesty’s central ask — an international protection force — has no sponsor, because the states with the lift to build one are also the states being named in the arms argument. That is why the demand reads as a reproach rather than a proposal. Watch the framing on both sides: the single-patron story is politically useful to Port Sudan and empirically incomplete, as the OHCHR mission found. The seven per cent figure needs Amnesty’s absolute baseline before anyone charts it. And a Secretary-General race turns Sudan from a protection file into a credentials file, which is a weaker forum for the people still in El Fasher.

Abyei market strike toll splits between 153 and 80 as Khartoum both explains and denies

A drone attack on Amiet Market on 19 October produced a mass-casualty event nobody disputes and two death tolls that do not reconcile. The Sudanese army has offered a target rationale and a denial of responsibility in the same window.

On 19 October a drone attack struck Amiet Market in Abyei, the disputed territory on the Sudan–South Sudan border. Al Jazeera reported on 21 October that at least 153 people were killed. A day later Sudan Tribune reported that the UN had confirmed 80 dead in the Abyei strikes. Neither figure has been reconciled publicly, and the gap opened inside twenty-four hours. Sudans Post reported on 22–23 October that the Sudanese army said the strike had targeted RSF fuel supplies, and separately that Sudan denies responsibility for hitting the market. Radio Tamazuj, datelined Khartoum and Nyala on 23 October, reported Khartoum’s denial alongside calls from RSF-aligned groups for an investigation. What is established is that a mass-casualty strike occurred; the toll and the authorship both remain contested on the record.

The strike lands inside an intensifying air war. Sudan Tribune reported from Khartoum on 22 October that the army had continued airstrikes against RSF positions in Darfur and Kordofan and had been running a large-scale aerial operation for roughly two weeks, hitting military targets and civilian infrastructure. The same outlet reported five children killed and their mother injured when a SAF Antonov bombed a house at Abu Zaima, North Kordofan, on 15 October, and a SAF drone strike on a civilian vehicle near Ankoush, West Kordofan, on 17 October that killed four — that second account rests on the Kordofan Observatory, a local monitor, alone. On the other side, RSF suicide drones struck at military and dam facilities in Gedaref and Kassala on 18 October and were intercepted, according to unnamed military sources favourable to the army. The International NGO Safety Organisation, cited by NPR in August, found North Kordofan had recorded more drone attacks than any other Sudanese state in 2026.

Assessment: A UN-confirmed toll is a floor, not a ceiling: it reflects what a verification process could stand behind within three days, while a wire figure of 153 typically reflects local counts that arrive faster and are revised later. Expect the two numbers to converge upward, not downward. The more telling item is not the arithmetic but the sequencing — a belligerent that explains why a target was legitimate and then denies striking it has told you which audience each statement was for. Abyei is also the place where a strike attributed to either side becomes a second state’s problem, which is precisely why attribution there will stay unresolved.

IPC warns of famine risk across Darfur and Kordofan while conceding it lacks data to classify

The 12 October alert rests on indicative evidence, not a completed analysis, and the distinction is being collapsed in the retelling. Twelve days on, there is still no update and the appeal remains under half funded.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification issued a Food Insecurity and Malnutrition Alert for Sudan on 12 October 2026, warning of growing famine risk across parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan. Al Jazeera, reporting the alert the same day, said poor vegetation growth affects nearly two-thirds of cropland in North Darfur and about half in South Darfur, West Kordofan and South Kordofan. UN News noted two things that travel less well: that as of 8 October less than half the humanitarian appeal for Sudan had been funded, and that the IPC’s Famine Review Committee says there is not enough survey data for a full analysis. The alert is therefore a warning built on indicative evidence, not a famine classification. The World Health Organization, as an IPC member, published the alert on the same date.

The drought variable is doing contested work. The International Rescue Committee, in a Khartoum-datelined release of 13 October, framed the crisis as an El Niño-driven drought depleting food stocks on top of the war. A round-up published by OkayAfrica on 23 October reported that rainfall in the July–September peak season was the lowest nationwide in more than three decades; the underlying source for that figure could not be traced to a primary document in our sourcing and should be treated as unconfirmed. The baselines against which any new classification would be read are the OCHA 2026 Humanitarian Response Plan figures cited by the UK House of Commons Library: 33.7 million people requiring support this year and 24.6 million in acute hunger.

Assessment: The gap between an alert and a classification is where the politics sits. A declaration triggers obligations and names responsibility; an alert asks for money and names weather. Both belligerents have an interest in the drought explanation, because rainfall cannot be sanctioned and sieges can — and the survey access that would close the data gap is withheld by the same parties whose conduct the data would describe. Watch for coverage over the coming fortnight that reports a famine as declared; it has not been. Watch also for whether the Famine Review Committee gets the access to upgrade the alert, and who denies it.