Ethnically-driven killings in Sudan’s war have jumped this year, UN says
Ethiomonitor -Addis Ababa
September 20, 2025 Reuters
Sudan has seen a significant rise in civilian killings during the first half of this year due to growing ethnic violence, largely in the western region of Darfur, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.
The conflict that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven killings, caused mass displacement and created what the U.N. has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
At least 990 civilians were killed in summary executions in the first half of the year, the report found, with the number between February and April tripling.
That was driven mainly by a surge in Khartoum after the army and allied fighters in late March recaptured the city previously controlled by the RSF, the OHCHR said.
“One witness who observed SAF search operations in civilian neighbourhoods in East Nile, Khartoum between March and April, said that he saw children as young as 14 or 15 years of age, accused of being RSF members, summarily killed,” OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said.
“Every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground,” OHCHR Sudan representative Li Fung told reporters in Geneva.
Fung said ethnicity was a motivating factor for violence, which she described as very concerning.
She explained that certain ethnic communities were being targeted because they are associated with the leadership of the SAF and RSF, building upon decades of discrimination and division between different groups and identities in the diverse nation.
