Zamzam camp founded in 2004 and once home to half a million displaced Darfuris became the epicentre of the conflict’s worst atrocity when RSF fighters encircled it with armour and helicopter gunships in the early hours of 19 April 2025.
After a fragile lull in the 2010s, Sudan’s civil war reignited in April 2023 when relations collapsed between the national army (SAF) and its former Janjaweed spawned ally, the RSF.
The RSF ed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”) now controls large swathes of Darfur and has repeatedly targeted civilian enclaves.
Life in Zamzam on the Eve of Attack
UNICEF declared famine in Zamzam in August 2024, recording soaring child‑mortality and acute malnutrition amid an effective aid blockade.
By April 2025 the camp still hosted ≈500 000 people despite chronic shortages of food, water and medicine.
19 April 2025: How the Assault Unfolded
- 04:00 – RSF checkpoints seal all three camp sectors; artillery emplacements spotted on satellite images hours before.
- Sunrise – Fighters supported by helicopter gunships fire RPGs into shelters, then sweep house‑to‑house; witnesses report executions in two mosques and the central market.
- Dusk – RSF declares “full control,” claiming the camp hid army‑aligned rebels; UN teams record hundreds of bodies amid smouldering tents.
Eyewitness Voices
“They called people out by family name, then shot them in the street.” camp resident interviewed by Reuters
“The smoke was so thick we couldn’t see our hands… we ran into the desert with nothing.” mother displaced to Tawila, speaking to The Guardian
Humanitarian Impact
- Casualties: ≥300 confirmed dead; local NGOs fear >500.
- Displacement: IOM estimates 60 000–80 000 households (≈400 000 people) fled within 48 hours.
- Famine & Disease: Cholera and measles cases are rising in overcrowded bush settlements; MSF suspended operations after staff were killed.
International Response
- UN Security Council issued a rare unanimous statement condemning the RSF and demanding unhindered aid access.
- United States & EU threatened targeted sanctions and floated an expanded arms embargo.
- Human Rights Watch & Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect labelled the assault “an ethnic‑cleansing campaign.”
Legal Outlook
Deliberate attacks on civilians and forced displacement are prosecutable as war crimes and crimes against humanityunder the Rome Statute; the ICC’s long‑running Darfur docket is now under renewed pressure to indict RSF commanders.
The Zamzam massacre crystalises Darfur’s slide back into mass atrocity: hundreds dead, nearly half a million uprooted and famine tightening its grip. Without rapid, unimpeded humanitarian access and credible accountability mechanisms, the tragedy of 19 April risks becoming a grim prelude to even wider devastation across Sudan.
