NRK warns of strong images in this case.
Few journalists have been able to report on the atrocities that have unfolded in the town of Al Fashir in Sudan over the past 18 months.
Under RSF-militsens suffocating siege of the city, journalists have been persecuted. All filming and photography has been prohibited.
Muammar Ibrahim defied hunger, bullets and drones, and still reported.
He cleaned the windows, charged the laptop with a solar panel, and told about the city’s fate via satellite signal.
This is what you need to know about the war in Sudan
Table of Contents
Who is fighting each other? There has been a civil war in Sudan since 2023. There, primarily two forces are fighting each other:
- The Sudanese Army, known as the SAF
- Rapid Support Forces, known as RSF
The two forces worked together for several years. But they fell out with each other in 2023 due to pressure to merge. Since then, they have fought each other to gain control of Sudan.
What are they fighting about? Both the government army and the RSF control large resources that they are unwilling to give up, including gold.
The RSF controls large parts of Western Sudan, including the Darfur region. The SAF controls many areas in the east, including most of the capital Khartoum.
What consequences has the war had? The conflict is called “the world’s greatest hunger disaster”. 24 million people suffer from hunger in the country, according to Doctors Without Borders.
12 million people have fled their homes. Around 150,000 people have probably been killed.
The conflict is complicated and has roots back to the civil war that raged from 1983 to 2005.
When NRK interviewed him in August, he was clear:
– I have to be their voice to the world. These are civilians who have nothing to do with the war, but whose lives are in danger. Their lives must be taken seriously.
But after RSF took full control of the city last week, there has been silence from Ibrahim.
The last we’ve seen of him is a video posted on X on October 26. It shows RSF fighters filming themselves in the dark, standing around a tall man in a white shirt.
The tent camp in Tawila, where thousands have fled. Many have disappeared on the way.
Photo: – / AFP / NTB
– I am the journalist Muammar Ibrahim from Al Fashir, says the man, and confirms that he was arrested while trying to leave the city.
Another video shows Ibrahim sitting by a fire, surrounded by several RSF fighters. In the video, he says that he is a “guest” at RSF.
– RSF has taken full control of the town of Al Fashir. That means they control the whole of Darfur, he says to the camera.
The map shows who is in control where in Sudan right now. Yellow is where the RSF is in control, red is the Sudanese Army’s (SAF) areas.
Thousands missing in escape attempts
RSF, which receives financial support from the United Arab Emirates, among others, took control of Al Fashir last week. Prior to that, the group had besieged the city for over 18 months.
Since then, over 65,000 have tried to do what Ibrahim tried to do – to flee.
Most have tried to set out on the six and a half mile long road towards the neighboring town of Tawila, where several aid organizations are ready to receive them.
But fewer than 6,000 have arrived, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children are also concerned about where the remaining 60,000 people have gone. In addition, aid workers fear that 200,000 remain in Al Fashir and are being held hostage by the RSF.
Giulia Chiopris, who works for Doctors Without Borders at a hospital in Tawila, says that they receive more victims of torture and shooting along the way.
Videos on social media show RSF soldiers driving along the road outside Al Fashir.
Dozens of dead people lie along the road.
Watch the video below:
A video shared on social media by the Rapid Support Forces shows soldiers from the group driving outside Al Fashir. Dozens of dead people lie along the country road.
Survivors have told Reuters and the BBC of men who tried to leave the city but were separated from their families and killed.
Other videos shared by RSF show extensive destruction and many dead outside Al Fashir.
Watch the video below:
In the video it is said, among other things, “We killed them! Now they are just dust.” Video is taken from X.
Ethnic cleansing
Ibrahim’s last post on X was published at five in the morning on the day he was abducted:
«#ElFasher May God protect his people. I pray”
Only those who were there know exactly what happened in the days when the RSF took over Al Fashir. Neither journalists nor aid workers have access to the city.
But in the last week, the few traumatized people who managed to escape have spoken about the terror.
People from Al Fashir in the Norwegian Refugee Council’s camp in Tawila.
Photo: Hephzibar Bukasu/NRC
They bear witness to targeted executions and massacres of unarmed civilians, sexual violence, abductions and looting.
RSF fighters are said to have gone from door to door looking for civilians.
Almost 500 were killed when the city’s main hospital was turned into a slaughterhouse. Satellite images show bloodstains from mass killings, and earthen embankments dug around the city to prevent people from fleeing.
The assaults have provoked strong reactions internationally.
Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told NRK that RSF has a clear responsibility for the violence that is now happening in the region.
– I am seriously concerned that we may be faced with ethnic cleansing in El Fasher. We are receiving reports which indicate that the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces is now killing civilians on a very large scale in the city, says the foreign minister.
A satellite image from Friday 31 October should show burnt-out cars along an earth embankment north-east of Al Fashir.
Photo: HANDOUT / AFP / NTB
The RSF themselves have filmed and shared several of their war crimes, as they have done several times before during this war.
One video shows a mother and two children hanging from nooses from a tree, another shows several men being run over at high speed. A third shows men bound hand and foot being shot, one by one.
Researchers at the Humanitarian Research Lab, who have analyzed a number of videos and images of the abuses, call this a systematic ethnic cleansing of non-Arab groups.
Muammar Ibrahim worked from Al Fashir knowing that what happened to his people was being forgotten by the outside world.
In the week before the city fell, he wrote:
“The citizens of Al Fashir are suffering from severe starvation due to the ongoing siege, while the world watches without breaking in.”
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Published
04.11.2025, kl. 16.34
