The phrase with which the United Nations report on Sudan issued yesterday begins, “Three days of terror with no safe refuge”, is not merely descriptive but accusatory. It indicts not only the perpetrators of violence but also a global system that has grown accustomed to civilians being trapped in spaces that are supposedly protected yet function as killing fields. Zamzam IDP camp was not an obscure or ambiguous site. It was, as the report states, “the largest IDP camp in North Darfur”, established in 2004 for survivors of the Darfur war, and over time it developed “neighbourhoods, schools, markets, police stations, water sources and health facilities”. This was a civilian environment in every meaningful sense. Its destruction, therefore, cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate side effect of war. It represents a deliberate assault on the very idea that displacement camps are places of refuge.
The report traces a grim continuity between the past and present, noting that Zamzam housed people who were already “survivors of the war in Darfur that began in 2003”. Many had fled violence multiple times, only to find themselves once again encircled. From May 2024, the Rapid Support Forces “maintained an effective siege of El Fasher” and launched “relentless attacks” on surrounding camps, including Zamzam. Siege here was not a tactical manoeuvre against armed opponents but a mechanism of civilian attrition. Residents testified that food, fuel, water and medical supplies were systematically blocked, leading families to survive on “peanut shells” and abandon communal Ramadan meals because “there was simply no food to share”. When starvation becomes routine, it ceases to be collateral damage and begins to resemble strategy.
The report describes how Zamzam, already hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people, became a destination for those fleeing El Fasher when the city was besieged. By July 2024, famine conditions were officially identified in the camp. Yet instead of humanitarian corridors or de-escalation, the response was intensified violence. From December 2024 into early 2025, Zamzam came under “relentless and coordinated RSF attacks” that destroyed markets, houses and hospitals. The justification offered by the RSF was the alleged presence of Joint Forces fighters. However, the report later emphasises that “there was no apparent presence of the Joint Forces in most parts of the camp”, and that attacks continued even after their withdrawal, a fact that “strongly suggest[s] that the RSF deliberately targeted the civilian population”.
The three-day offensive of 11 to 13 April 2025 marks the collapse of any remaining pretence that civilians were not the primary target. The report documents “the killing of at least 1,013 civilians”, including “at least 319” who were “summarily executed”. These numbers are staggering not only for their scale but for what they reveal about method. Civilians were killed in markets, in mosques, in schools and inside their homes. One survivor described how a shell exploded in the main market, killing four men instantly and leaving another to die later of his wounds. Others spoke of RSF fighters entering houses, conducting searches and killing men on the spot. This was not indiscriminate violence alone; it was selective, intimate and often performed in front of family members.
The report repeatedly returns to the theme of terror as an objective in itself. RSF fighters reportedly “shot in the air and directly at civilians”, looted medical supplies, burned homes and told survivors to leave without their belongings. Bodies were left unburied as people fled. In some cases, houses were burned “with people inside”. Such acts align precisely with what international humanitarian law prohibits: “any act or threat of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among the civilian population”. The implication is unavoidable that terror was not incidental but intentional.
Ethnicity runs like a fault line through the violence. OHCHR notes that many violations appeared “ethnically motivated”, targeting individuals “based on their tribal identity or perceived affiliation”. Zaghawa men, in particular, were singled out as presumed supporters of the Joint Forces. Witnesses described RSF fighters using slurs, accusing victims of being “Jayashi” or “Falangai” before killing them. One community leader recounted hiding with ten men when RSF fighters inserted rifles through window holes and fired, killing eight people in moments. Elderly men were executed in mosques, and civilians sheltering in Quranic schools were killed. These were acts of punishment, not combat.
Perhaps the most harrowing aspect of the report is its documentation of sexual violence. OHCHR recorded “66 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence” involving “at least 104 victims”, including women, girls and boys, while acknowledging that these figures are likely a fraction of the true scale. Sexual violence appears throughout the testimonies as a deliberate tool of humiliation and control. Women were raped in their homes beside the bodies of their husbands, abducted along escape routes, gang raped in detention, and beaten when they resisted. One woman recalled being told, “You are a wife of a Jayashi, lay down,” before being flogged and raped at gunpoint. Such acts were not only violent but symbolic, aimed at destroying family structures and communal dignity.
The report makes clear that flight offered no safety. As civilians fled towards Tawila and other areas, they encountered checkpoints, ambushes and attacks. Dozens of bodies, including those of women and children under five, were seen scattered along the roads. Some showed no gunshot wounds, suggesting they died of thirst, hunger or lack of medical care. One woman described begging an armed camel herder for water, only to be attacked; when her brother intervened, he was shot dead. These journeys expose the cruel irony of humanitarian language that urges evacuation without guaranteeing safe passage.
Attacks on healthcare strip away any remaining illusion of restraint. On 13 April, RSF fighters attacked the Primary Health Care Centre, the last functioning medical facility in the camp, and killed nine medical staff and an ambulance driver. They reportedly accused doctors of treating wounded fighters before shooting them. This act alone represents a profound moral and legal rupture. Medical personnel and facilities enjoy special protection, and their deliberate targeting signals a willingness to dismantle all norms that distinguish war from atrocity.
What emerges from the report is not only a catalogue of crimes but a portrait of impunity. The patterns documented in Zamzam mirror those previously recorded in El Geneina and other parts of Darfur. The report warns that “impunity for violations continues to drive cycles of unrelenting violence”. Yet the international response remains largely rhetorical. The language of concern, alarm and condemnation has become routine, even as the crimes described meet the legal thresholds of war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity.
The controversy lies not in the facts, which are meticulously documented, but in what is done with them. When a UN report can describe “three days of terror with no safe refuge” and yet the structures that enabled that terror remain intact, the failure is collective. Zamzam forces an uncomfortable reckoning with how displacement camps, humanitarian law and international accountability have been hollowed out. If a place housing half a million civilians can be besieged, starved, shelled, looted, raped and emptied with such predictability, then the promise of civilian protection has become dangerously performative.
The survivors’ words linger long after the statistics fade. “I will never return to Zamzam even if the war will stop,” one woman said. “I feel safer here.” That statement alone exposes the moral collapse at the heart of the crisis. A refugee camp, stripped of water, food, safety and dignity, became more dangerous than exile. Zamzam is not only a tragedy of Sudan; it is a warning about the erosion of global norms. When terror becomes routine and refuge becomes illusion, the question is no longer how such atrocities occur, but how long the world will continue to accept them.
