10 March 2026 | New Haven
A new report released today by the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at Yale University and NASA Harvest finds that paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) deliberately razed farming communities surrounding El-Fasher, Sudan in 2024 in an attempt to starve the local population as they began an 18-month siege of the city.
The targeted attacks effectively depopulated 41 critical agricultural communities, which severely disrupted planting season and decimated local food supplies, the report says. The findings corroborate a February United Nations report that concluded RSF committed genocide in El-Fasher, including the intentional starvation of the city’s population.
“RSF deliberately targeted and damaged farming communities, as well as killed and displaced farmers to stop them from planting crops,” said Rebecca Chausse, a lead author of the study and a geospatial analyst at HRL. “This campaign of systematic attacks made the already lean agricultural season in the region leaner, longer, and more catastrophic.”
HRL researchers believe at least 28 of 41 communities north-northwest of El-Fasher were depopulated following arson attacks allegedly perpetrated by RSF between 31 March and 12 June 2024. The RSF targeted predominantly Zaghawa agricultural communities, according to the research. Residents of these communities were forcibly displaced or killed by RSF, leading to substantial declines in production in agricultural areas typically responsible for feeding El-Fasher. The targeting of these communities devastated production of the city’s most critical local food resources by displacing farmers and destroying necessary farming infrastructure.
Experts at the Yale HRL and NASA Harvest analyzed a combination of open-source information, environmental remote sensing data, and very high-resolution satellite imagery in reaching their findings. The Yale HRL also found that 10 of the 41 total communities were razed more than once — including one community that was razed at least seven times — bolstering the report’s finding of the intentional nature of the RSF attacks.
The research conducted by the HRL — which is located within the Yale School of Public Health — and NASA Harvest was unique. Commissioned by NASA in 2017, NASA Harvest is a multidisciplinary consortium of agriculture and remote sensing experts who work with farmers, agribusinesses, economists, humanitarian organizations, governments and others to deliver critical agricultural assessments.
“This report is the first of its kind to use remotely sensed data to corroborate an alleged campaign of intentional starvation,” said Dr. Danielle Poole, Ph.D., faculty director of Yale HRL and an author of the report. “The study’s unique methodology, developed with the support of NASA Harvest, is a major step forward in using remote sensing to understand how food security is affected in communities experiencing armed conflict.”
The Yale HRL remotely monitored communities around El-Fasher for months following RSF attacks. The researchers observed a lack of planting activities, as well as heavy vegetation overgrowth covering civilian homes, buildings, and livestock corrals, leading them to conclude that most of the communities were uninhabited. The images appear to support RSF’s intent to depopulate the communities and significantly impact the population’s ability to plant, grow, and harvest food, the researchers said.
In addition to razing local farmlands, RSF also blocked humanitarian organizations from delivering aid to the city, the report says.
In July 2023, the Yale HRL warned the U.S. Government, the public, and the UN Security Council that a genocidal massacre could occur if El-Fasher fell to the RSF. El-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur, was home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) including from the Zaghawa, Fur, Berti, and other Black Indigenous communities who had been the targets of the Darfur Genocide conducted by the Janjaweed two decades ago.
RSF launched their siege on El-Fasher with attacks on agricultural communities west of the city in April 2024 before encircling the city and razing neighborhoods, bombarding critical infrastructure, and preventing goods including food and humanitarian aid from reaching the city. In April 2025, RSF attacked and razed Zamzam Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp, displacing an estimated half a million IDPs. RSF completed the construction of an earthen wall surrounding the city in the beginning of October 2025 and captured the city on 26 October 2025. After the city’s capture, Yale HRL documented evidence of mass killings within the city, including the identification of over 150 groups of objects consistent with human bodies. During the RSF’s 18-month siege and capture of the city, the Yale HRL produced more than 65 reports documenting mass killings and other atrocities against the Fur, Zaghawa and other Indigenous non-Arab people, documenting mass killings and other atrocities against the Fur, Zaghawa and other Indigenous non-Arab people.
Contact: hrl.comms@yale.edu