Qualla: Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres

Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. They had already fled once. Many of the families huddled inside the earthen shelters of Zamzam and Abu Shouk had walked here from the Darfur genocide of 2003, Fur and Zaghawa and Masalit survivors who lost homes and relatives to the Janjaweed and kept walking until they reached the flat, dusty ground fifteen kilometers south of El Fasher. Two decades later, the grandchildren of those survivors watched shells fall on the same camps. Between April 10 and April 13, 2025, the Rapid Support Forces, descended from the same Janjaweed militias, attacked the two camps in wave after wave, killing hundreds. The United Nations confirmed at least one hundred civilian deaths; advocacy groups working inside the camps put the number far higher. Most of the dead were women and children.

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Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: A Siege That Never Paused

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. The shelling did not begin in April. It began on April 13, 2024, when the RSF opened its offensive on El Fasher and the two camps on its flank became targets of what came next. The Sudan Tribune logged the dates the way a funeral home keeps a register. June 2024: nineteen killed ...

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Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: Three Days in April

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. The ground assault began on April 10, 2025, and continued through Saturday, April 12. RSF fighters struck Zamzam's central marketplace, the Relief International clinic, the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital, the mud-brick houses of the Labado and Ahmadai neighborhoods. Hundreds o...

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Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: Those Who Tried to Help

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. On April 29, an RSF-allied militia intercepted a convoy evacuating Zamzam. They arrested forty aid workers. They took about fifty civilians who were trying to walk out. The abductions were announced by the camp spokesman, then confirmed by Radio Dabanga and Sudan Tribune. The aid...

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Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: The Names They Kept

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. The RSF issued a formal denial, claiming that footage of the suffering had been staged. The General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugees kept publishing names when they could find them, along with ages, and the villages in Darfur the victims had fled twenty years earlie...

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Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camp massacres: What Stands at 13.49 North

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinKassemJ120, CC0. The coordinates 13.49 degrees north, 25.31 degrees east mark a flat stretch of North Darfur that the maps still label Zamzam. From the air in 2026, the shape of a camp is still visible in the scorched outlines of streets, but the population is scattered. The people who lived here...

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