US push to break siege in Sudan appears to fall apart

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US efforts to get humanitarian aid into the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher appear to have collapsed following a surge in artillery and drone attacks and fighting close to the tens of thousands of people trapped in a worsening famine.

Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, claimed last month that he and officials from the United Arab Emirates secured agreement from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — which have surrounded the city since May 2024 — to allow in aid “very, very soon”.

However, RSF shelling of the Saudi hospital inside El Fasher claimed at least 12 lives this week, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, and dozens of people were killed in a subsequent artillery strike on a camp for the displaced inside a mosque.

Ezzaddean el-Safi, the humanitarian affairs minister in the RSF’s parallel government, said the paramilitary group had discussed aid delivery to other areas of Darfur, where El Fasher is located, but denied that there was a deal to allow aid into the city itself. “We told them clearly that technically they will not be able to reach El Fasher,” el-Safi said.

The city, along with surrounding villages and camps for the displaced, has been caught in a pivotal battle in Sudan’s civil war pitting the RSF against the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied militia.

Having lost their hold on much of eastern and central Sudan, including the capital Khartoum earlier this year, the RSF is battling to drive the army from its final remaining stronghold in the west.

UN officials accused the RSF of killing hundreds of civilians this year when they attacked and emptied a camp for the displaced outside El Fasher, in one of the worst in a string of recent atrocities.

El-Safi said the SAF had laid thousands of landmines in and around El Fasher and was fighting alongside several “uncontrolled militia”.

The latest estimates from UN officials suggest that around 260,000 people are still trapped inside, most of them dependent on dwindling stocks of animal feed to survive.

The Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been monitoring the siege by satellite, said a steady stream of people had fled the city in recent weeks, although it warned that many had been abducted, raped and executed on their way out.

People still trapped in El Fasher said that over the past week, SAF Antonov aircraft succeeded in dropping supplies to the army garrison for the first time since April. This was after the SAF bombed RSF air defences in the area.

“The air drop was significant this time, containing medicines, ammunition and food supplies for the army,” journalist Muammar Ibrahim, who is stuck inside the city, said of Monday’s drop. People were hoping, he added, that more food and medicine for starving and wounded civilians would follow.

Aid workers in the region and a former Sudanese minister in touch with the city were critical of the US for creating expectations that relief was on its way. “It raised hopes and then hopes are dashed,” the former minister said.