NAIROBI, Kenya — A brutal, 18-month assault by Sudanese paramilitaries on the city of el-Fasher, culminating in a spree of massacre, torture and rape in October, bore the “hallmarks of genocide,” according to a United Nations report published Thursday.

The finding was documented in gruesome detail by human rights experts. It is the first time a U.N.-mandated body has accused the paramilitaries, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, of committing acts of genocide.

The U.N. group does not have the authority to make a formal determination of genocide, which can come from bodies like the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court.

But the U.N. report offered fresh evidence of how el-Fasher, a now-deserted city in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, became a symbol of the worst abuses in the country’s civil war.

Although the report did not focus on the role of foreign powers in the war, the accusations of genocide are likely to bring new scrutiny to the United Arab Emirates, which is accused of supporting the RSF.

An RSF spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the U.N. report. The RSF’s leader, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, previously acknowledged some atrocities by his troops during the assault, but there is little evidence that any were investigated, and he has praised the fighters involved as “heroes.”

The UAE denies supporting either side. In an email, the Emirati Foreign Ministry expressed “deep concern” at the findings of the U.N. report and condemned atrocities by the RSF and Sudan’s military.

The two sides have been fighting since April 2023 in a calamitous civil war that has created one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises.

Last year, the United States determined that RSF fighters, who are mostly ethnic Arabs, had committed genocide in 2023 against the non-Arab Masalit group during their assault on Geneina in western Darfur.

The accusations in the U.N. report suggest a similar pattern of ethnic targeting in el-Fasher.

Last fall, RSF fighters filmed themselves carrying out executions and massacres as they swept through the city.

The U.N. report released Thursday confirmed those accounts and framed them as part of a campaign targeting two other non-Arab groups, the Zaghawa and the Fur. Fighters starved, raped and killed civilians as part of a “planned and organized operation” to eliminate those groups, the report found.

From the New York Times News Service.

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