The United Nations said more than 6,000 people were killed over three days in late October when Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a brutal offensive to seize el-Fasher in the Darfur region.

A report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed mass killings, executions, sexual violence and other abuses that may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, many of them ethnically motivated.

The RSF and allied Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, overran el-Fasher after an 18-month siege, with thousands killed inside the city and while fleeing.

The conflict, which began in April 2023 amid a power struggle between the RSF and the Sudanese military, has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and drawn investigation by the International Criminal Court, NPR has reported.

The U.N. warned the true death toll is likely far higher, citing additional killings at a maternity hospital and in a nearby displacement camp.