Civilians are bearing the brunt as Sudan‘s vicious civil war extends and intensifies, the United Nations has warned.
The UN’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said in a report released on Friday that civilian deaths and ethnic violence rose significantly as the war passed its two-year anniversary during the first half of 2025. The same day, reports said that dozens were killed by paramilitaries in an attack on a mosque in Darfur.
The rate of civilian deaths across Sudan has increased, the report says, with 3,384 civilians dying in the first six months of the year, a figure equalling 80 percent of the 4,238 civilian deaths throughout the whole of 2024.
“Sudan’s conflict is a forgotten one, and I hope that my office’s report puts the spotlight on this disastrous situation where atrocity crimes, including war crimes, are being committed,” OHCHR chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
“Several trends remained consistent during the first half of 2025: a continued pervasiveness of sexual violence, indiscriminate attacks, and the widespread use of retaliatory violence against civilians, particularly on an ethnic basis, targeting individuals accused of ‘collaboration’ with opposing parties,” said the report.
New trends include the use of drones, including in attacks on civilian sites and in Sudan’s north and east, which until now have been largely spared by the war, it said.
“The increasing ethnicisation of the conflict, which builds on longstanding discrimination and inequalities, poses grave risks for longer-term stability and social cohesion within the country,” said Turk.
“Many more lives will be lost without urgent action to protect civilians and without the rapid and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a brutal war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced some 12 million people. The UN has described it as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine prevalent in parts of Darfur and southern Sudan.
The war has, in effect, split the country, with the army holding the north, east and centre, while the RSF dominates parts of the south and nearly all of the western Darfur region.
Efforts by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to broker a ceasefire between the warring parties have so far failed.
The RSF killed 43 civilians in a drone strike on a mosque early on Friday in the besieged city of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the Sudan Doctors’ Network NGO said in a social media post.
The NGO labelled the attack a “heinous crime” against unarmed civilians that showed the group’s “blatant disregard for humanitarian and religious values and international law”.
The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher, a group comprised of local citizens from the community that includes human rights activists, who track abuses, posted a video reportedly showing parts of the mosque reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered on the site, now filled with debris.
The same group reported on Thursday that the RSF had targeted several unarmed civilians, including women and older adults, in displacement shelters in the city.
A day earlier, it said that heavy artillery by the RSF had continuously targeted residential neighbourhoods.
