World
A Massacre Threatens Darfur — Again
This is one of the biggest cities in Darfur, a region once synonymous with genocide. Now, it is on the brink of another catastrophe.
A video shows a neighborhood on fire.
Using the same scorched-earth tactics that horrified the world two decades ago, fighters have torched thousands of homes and forced tens of thousands to flee.
Satellite imagery shows several active fires burning in different structures in a neighborhood.
A civil war is ripping apart Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries.
Tens of thousands have been killed, millions scattered and an enormous famine looms, setting off one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
The city of El Fasher, home to 1.8 million people, is now at the center of global alarm. If it falls, officials warn, there may be little to stop a massacre.
Fighters battling Sudan’s military for control of the country have encircled the city. Gunfights rage. Hospitals have closed. Residents are running out of food.
The advancing fighters are known as the Rapid Support Forces — the successors to the notorious Janjaweed militias that slaughtered ethnic African tribes in Darfur in the 2000s. Last week, the U.N. Security Council demanded that they “halt the siege” of the city.
Yet a New York Times examination of satellite imagery and video from El Fasher make one thing clear:
The assault is intensifying.
Fighters battling the military often film themselves celebrating as neighborhoods burn on their push to the city center.
Videos show R.S.F. fighters in vehicles on a main road in El Fasher and celebrating as a neighborhood burns.
As the fighters closed in, more than 40 villages were burned near El Fasher since the beginning of April. Sources: Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (communities); Thomas van Linge (R.S.F. control)
A map shows the 43 villages that were damaged or destroyed.
More than 20,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed since the military’s rivals — the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F. — seized the east of the city. Sources: Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (burned area); UNOSAT (buildings)
A map shows the large burned areas in eastern and southern El Fasher.
With both sides imposing restrictions on aid, only a trickle of humanitarian relief — around 22 trucks for a city of 1.8 million — has reached El Fasher in the past three months.
A map shows where aid used to come into the city before the fighting. Even before this battle, about 500,000 people had been living in displacement camps in and around the city, some for decades. Now famine threatens and the two camps in the north are engulfed by fighting.
A map shows the three largest displaced camps in El Fasher. Zamzam, the most populous, is south of the city.
At the Zamzam camp south of the city, one child dies from hunger every two hours, Doctors Without Borders said in February. A woman and her baby in Zamzam camp wait alongside other women and their babies in a photo from January 2024.
Some were deliberately razed. Others may have caught fire in clashes with government forces.
The Times analyzed videos and satellite images of El Fasher, along with imagery analysis from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and the Sudan Witness Project at the Centre for Information Resilience, a nonprofit organization that documents potential war crimes.
The evidence shows that thousands of homes have been systematically razed and that tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee. Videos show the demeaning treatment of captives and the presence of a senior Rapid Support Forces commander recently singled out by U.S. sanctions for his role in atrocities against civilians.
On June 8, a major hospital run by Doctors Without Borders was forced to shut down after the military’s rivals stormed the compound, firing their weapons and looting equipment, including an ambulance.
Videos show R.S.F. fighters storming a major hospital and stealing an ambulance.
Videos posted in recent weeks show the military’s rivals rounding up and interrogating people. Some were whipped and forced to make animal noises.
A video shows the R.S.F. rounding up men, and another clip shows them making kneeling men make animal noises.
Other videos showed heavy clashes in the streets, as well as the bodies of fighters apparently killed in combat.
Videos show R.S.F. troops fighting in the streets, as well as a body in the street. As the violence spreads, aid workers say civilians are fleeing west and to other parts of Darfur. Those going east have walked up to 180 miles in search of safety, often in temperatures reaching more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
A map shows the route that many displaced people are taking away from El Fasher to the east and southeast, the direction from El Fasher not currently held by the R.S.F.
A growing number of women say they were sexually assaulted on the journey. A photo shows people evacuating El Fasher.
As the International Criminal Court appeals for evidence of atrocities, the fighters are making little effort to hide their actions. In this video, a Rapid Support Forces patch is clearly visible.
An R.S.F. patch is clearly visible in a video.
Watching the arrivals is “truly heart-wrenching,” said a doctor with the aid group Care in East Darfur.
The Sudanese military, too, has faced accusations of war crimes, mostly for the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas with artillery and airstrikes. On May 11, Doctors Without Borders said, the military bombed an area next to a children’s hospital.
‘Precipice’ of a massacre
The siege of El Fasher has disturbing echoes of Rapid Support Forces tactics elsewhere in Darfur, where assaults were accompanied by ethnic slaughter, experts say.
Last fall, when the fighters captured El Geneina, near Sudan’s border with Chad, as many as 15,000 people were killed in a matter of days, U.N. investigators found.
Now El Fasher residents fear a repeat.
Note: 2024 imagery includes some imagery from the next month, in April. Source: Satellite imagery from Airbus via Google Earth
Longstanding ethnic tensions have underpinned the violence in Darfur for decades. Just as the Arab-dominated Janjaweed carried out a genocidal campaign against ethnic Africans in the 2000s, the Rapid Support Forces are targeting them now, with international warnings that a genocide could happen again.
In April, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the U.N., warned that El Fasher was “on the precipice of a large-scale massacre.”
Aid supplies choked
El Fasher is not just a city under siege. It is also a hub for relief aid in a region hurtling toward famine.
Already 1.7 million people are starving in Darfur, the U.N. says. Now, the consequences of the war are rippling across the region, which is the size of Spain.
Food and medicine are running short in East Darfur, where tens of thousands fled the fighting, because the supply route through El Fasher has been cut off, aid workers say. And in Central Darfur, some food prices doubled after commercial traders could no longer operate, according to Islamic Relief, an aid group working there.
The crisis is compounded by a severe lack of funds. The United Nations issued an emergency appeal for $2.7 billion. It has received less than a fifth of that.
American officials accuse both sides in the civil war of using hunger as a weapon.
Commanders Accused of Crimes
Several R.S.F. commanders who led campaigns elsewhere in Sudan joined the fight for El Fasher, according to videos verified by The Times and the Sudan Witness Project. They include Ali Yagoub Gibril, the R.S.F. commander for Central Darfur state, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in May for his role in violence that caused civilian casualties. He was killed on June 14, according to Sudan’s military.
Ali Yagoub Gibril (left) and Al Zeer Salem (right), another prominent R.S.F. commander, in two videos from El Fasher posted to social media.
Broadcasting the presence of prominent leaders signifies the importance of El Fasher to the R.S.F. But it could also demonstrate their responsibility for atrocities, said Matthew Gillett, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who previously worked at international criminal courts.
Videos showing R.S.F. leaders in close proximity to attacks on civilians “could help show the commanders’ awareness and command and control at the time,” Mr. Gillett said, even if the attacks were committed by their subordinates.
“The videos from El Fasher could become critical evidence in future trials for crimes in Darfur.”
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U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey resigned Thursday after clashing with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government over military spending, dealing the British leader a setback weeks before a critical NATO summit to include President Donald Trump.
Healey’s departure stemmed from a dispute over the delayed Defense Investment Plan (DIP) — the government’s long-promised roadmap for military investment and readiness — and as NATO allies face renewed pressure from Trump to boost defense spending.
“John Healey’s resignation is a seismic moment for the government and the Ministry of Defense,” Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Senior Associate Fellow Ed Arnold told Fox News Digital.
“For the government, it creates a sequence of political headaches in terms of a replacement, and trying to get the Defense Investment Plan published.”
BRITISH PM KEIR STARMER MOVES UK MILITARY INTO ‘WAR-FIGHTING READINESS’
Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey speaks with British and Norwegian naval personnel at the unveiling of the Atlantic Bastion programme in Portsmouth, Britain, on Dec. 4, 2025. (Peter Nicholls/Pool via Reuters)
Healey had been in intense, late-stage negotiations with Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves over the scale and timelines of the DIP.
Starmer reportedly refused to set out a timeline to reach 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2035 — a promise he made to Trump at last year’s NATO summit — and would not commit to a firm date for reaching 3%.
Instead, Starmer offered Healey a deal to spend 2.68% of GDP on defense by 2030, up only marginally from 2.6% next year, Reuters reported.
“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country,” Healey wrote to Starmer in his resignation letter, warning that the financial constraints would “make the country less safe,” the outlet reported.
NATO CHIEF URGES MEMBERS TO ‘TURBOCHARGE’ DEFENSE PRODUCTION AS HE PAINTS PICTURE OF A WORLD BOUND FOR WAR
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer pose with NATO country leaders during the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. (Ben Stansall/Pool via Reuters)
“If the delay to the Defense Investment Plan was already undermining the government’s credibility on defense, John Healey’s resignation has blown a hole in its side,” Professor Kevin Rowlands of the RUSI defense and security think tank told Fox News Digital.
“The immediate consequence is not just political embarrassment for No. 10, but a significant loss of planning certainty at a time when the British Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defense, and industry really need clarity on what will be funded, and when,” he added.
The political fallout is expected to reverberate across the Atlantic, where Washington has increased pressure on European allies to fulfill their defense obligations. Trump has frequently criticized NATO alliance members as “free riders.”
On June 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the upcoming Ankara summit would be the “most important meeting” in NATO’s history because there are some things “that need to be cleared up and fixed.”
He added, “The United States is still in the NATO alliance, and we’ll be there.”
TRUMP EFFECT FORCES GERMANY TO REPRIORITIZE DEFENSE AS NATION PLAYS CATCH-UP IN MILITARY SPENDING
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer increased the military presence in Cyprus following an Iranian drone strike early Monday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Kin Cheung / POOL / AFP via Getty Images))
However, U.S. officials have made it clear that patience is wearing thin.
“Ahead of next month’s NATO summit, POTUS has been clear: Allies must fulfil their commitment to spending 5% of GDP on defense,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker posted on X this week.
Furthermore, a U.S. official noted that a U.K. funding package far lower than 18 billion pounds ($23 billion) would send a highly “negative” signal to Trump ahead of the Ankara meeting, according to The Times.
Starmer has pledged to lift spending to 3% in the next Parliament but Healey’s exit has exposed that the current strategy leaves the U.K. lagging behind key allies. By comparison, Germany plans to spend 3.7% of its GDP on defense by 2030.
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“Healey knows the threats we face, he knows the capabilities and shortfalls the armed forces have, and if he believes that the financial settlement is not enough to keep the country safe — to the extent that he cannot honorably stay in post — then we are in trouble,” Rowlands added.
“While the impact will mainly be felt on Whitehall, the international implications are severe with a NATO summit just three weeks away,” Arnold noted.
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After two years of strong performance driven by a shift to a war economy, Russia’s economic situation is weakening, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told Euronews.
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And although the IMF raised its forecast for Russia’s 2026 growth in its April outlook from 0.8% to 1.1%, Georgieva told Euronews this did not reflect the full picture of the economic weakening.
“The higher oil prices do give a breather to Russia,” Georgieva said, arguing the hike cannot offset the bigger hit to Russia’s economy.
“They have depleted their buffers dramatically,” Georgieva said. The oil price windfall “appears to be used to rebuild buffers rather than to inject more investment into the economy,” she explained.
“Growth has slowed down significantly. Now we are projecting 1%. Before the war, their potential growth was 1.6%,” Georgieva pointed out.
The IMF managing director also told Euronews that it is important to consider other economic indicators to better understand Russia’s current economic situation.
“Inflation is high. That means that interest rates are high, almost 15%.”
The IMF does not expect to see “material impact on growth in Russia,” Georgieva said. “It is a country whose medium (and) long-term prospects have worsened significantly.”
She listed three grounds on which the prospects have worsened. The first is losing people.
“A country that was in a demographic decline to begin with now lost so many young people for a terrible reason,” Georgieva explained.
The second factor is the sanctions, specifically the way they “bite a lot on the technology front.”
“What we see in the oil and gas sector in Russia, there is a tremendous problem with lack of technological renewal that is restricting the ability of the sector to expand,” she said.
And the third is the fact that “Russia lost standing.”
“That translates into many tangible and non-tangible losses. I mean, just think of the young Russians that could have built relations with Europeans and others and did not because of the war,” Georgieva stated.
“So, on the whole, Russia is coming crippled,” she concluded.
Not even the professionals inside the New York Knicks press conference room could contain themselves as the clock neared 1 a.m. Thursday morning. Some clapped when Knicks head coach Mike Brown hailed reserve guard Jose Alvarado’s performance—8 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists, all in the fourth quarter—during the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, which put the Knicks one win away from their first title since 1973.
“I know a lot of you guys can’t (clap) because you’re in the media, and you have to stay neutral,” Brown said, before doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. “I’m going to f—king clap for Jose,” he said. “Sorry, mom.”
It was that kind of night. None of this—erasing a 29-point deficit, these Knicks being one game away from hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy—was supposed to happen.
A few yards from the pressers, some of the world’s biggest celebrities partied in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, denying gentle requests to climb into the private cars waiting to whisk them away.
Other fans, still in disbelief, had gone from second-guessing why they’d spent thousands of dollars to see their team get blown out in the NBA Finals to wondering how they got away with such a bargain to see Knicks’ history. They belted Knicks in five! down the escalators, slowly leaving the building before massing outside, where scores of police officers sought to maintain order. Or maybe to re-establish it, after what transpired inside MSG during the second half of Game 4.
As the press conferences continued, players consistently reminded writers that there was still one more game to win. But if New York completes its Finals quest, Wednesday’s game will go down in the city’s sports lore.
New York is used to playing the role of top dog. Ensconced in midtown, with their multi-thousand-dollar tickets and A-list supporters, playing in “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” the Knicks are worth $9.85 billion, the third-most valuable team in the NBA. Its billionaire owner James Dolan shared a box with President Donald Trump on Monday night.
In the last few decades, the Knicks have more often represented flash than fight. But this team—assembled via free agency, trades and second-round picks, led by a coach on his fourth stop—has bucked that stereotype. Trailing by 27 at half, they were used to being down and doubted. They chipped away at their deficit, holding the Spurs to 30 second-half points as the gap narrowed and narrowed. Fans in the packed arena, famous or not, remained engaged throughout. Their thunderous yells surely contributed to Spurs star Victor Wembanyama clanking two late free throws with the Knicks down one.
In the waning moments, Jalen Brunson missed a three-pointer to take the lead, but OG Anunoby glided to the hoop in time to get just enough of his hand on the ball to direct it basket-ward.
Brown called Anunoby’s game-winning tip-in with 1.2 seconds left “the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball.” Images of that two-finger tap feel destined to adorn childhood bedrooms, subway cars and billboards for decades. One is already on a trading card, with a nickname to boot.
“Right hand of God,” Karl-Anthony Towns dubbed the play. A piece of the net will be inserted into one of Topps’ cards. The ball and OG’s jersey will likely be museum pieces, if not auction-house items, one day. Mike Breen’s triple “It’s good!” call on ESPN is certain to play over and over and over again.
OMG!, Thursday morning’s New York Post blared. Meanwhile more than 40 commemorative physical tickets handed out to attendees on Wednesday were bought on eBay by 10 a.m. Thursday. The cheapest ticket for a potential Game 6 on the secondary market now? It’s more than $12,000.
History sells.
The Knicks had already been credited with bringing New Yorkers together. Trump and Mayor Zohran Mamdani cheered for the same side in Game 3. Taylor Swift, sitting in a packed celebrity row, shared the same euphoria being projected on brownstones across NYC’s five boroughs and beamed from its street-corner Wi-Fi terminals. For the time being, the fighting between the Knicks and the city over watch parties has been forgotten.
“If there’s one thing Knicks fans don’t need permission for, it’s showing up for our team wherever we may be,” Mamdani posted on X earlier in the day after a watch party outside the team’s venue was scrapped.
When the final buzzer sounded, and the players, celebrities, crowds and city streets seemingly rose in unison, palms aloft, “You could just feel the abundance of joy,” Towns said.
By 2 a.m., with ears still ringing, fans were finally making their way home. It was pitch black on Gotham’s quieter streets. It felt more like dawn.
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