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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The Toronto Police Service is investigating after gunfire broke out Saturday night at a large Latin street festival in Midtown Toronto, leaving at least two people dead and four others wounded.
Police said they received reports of a shooting at St. Clair Avenue West and Arlington Avenue at 8:12 p.m. local time and discovered an active shooter situation.
First responders found six people suffering from gunshot wounds, officials said. Two of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene.
Police respond to an active shooter at the Salsa on St. Clair event in Toronto, Saturday, July 11, 2026. (Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP)
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It is unclear what led to the shooting, and authorities said suspect(s) are still “outstanding.” No arrests have been made as of Saturday evening, police said.
Toronto Police Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said during a news conference there seemed to be an “exchange of gunfire” between two individuals targeting each other.
“This is a very chaotic scene,” he said. “I think we had something in the neighborhood of 13,000 people participating in this festival.”
Police initially described the incident as an active shooter situation before later determining that was not the case.
Police officers stand guard at the site of a deadly shooting at a salsa-themed street festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 11, 2026. (REUTERS/Cole Burston)
“There was some concern of an active shooter. That turned out not to be the case,” Barredo said.
Barredo said authorities were managing three separate crime scenes connected to the shooting. Two firearms have been recovered, he added.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “horrified” by the shooting.
“My prayers are with the families grieving their loved ones, those who are in critical condition, and everyone who has been affected by this horrific event,” he said in a statement.
“My thanks to the police officers and other first responders whose courage and fast action prevented further tragedy,” he continued. “Police have my full support as they work to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
Paramedics respond to an active shooter at the Salsa on St. Clair event in Toronto, Saturday. (Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP)
FOUR DEAD AND 29 SHOT IN CHICAGO WEEKEND VIOLENCE AS LEADERS TOUT CRIME PROGRESS
Following the shooting, the Toronto Transit Commission suspended train stops at the nearby St. Clair West station on Line 1 Yonge-University due to what officials described as a “security incident.”
Regular transit service has since resumed.
Authorities urged the public to avoid the area and follow all directives from police at the scene.
The TD Salsa on St. Clair Festival, Toronto’s biggest Latin culture celebration, was celebrating its 22nd annual event in Toronto’s Hillcrest Village.
Emergency Task Force vehicles and police officers are seen on the site of a shooting in Toronto on Saturday. (Jorge UZON / AFP via Getty Images)
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The Toronto Police Service told Fox News Digital no further information is available.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Published On 12 Jul 2026
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former emir of Qatar who transformed the small Gulf state into one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential nations through its vast natural gas wealth and an ambitious programme of political, economic and social reforms, has died. He was 74.
A charismatic figure with a friendly demeanor, the father Emir assumed the reins of power in 1995. Regarded as the architect of modern Qatar, he embarked on forging development and reform plans and education programs.
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During his reign, Qatar’s GDP increased more than twenty-fourfold, while production from the North Field turned the country into the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2006. After four years, the small nation’s LNG production capacity reached 77 million tons per annum, according to government’s figure.
His tenure also saw the establishment of the Qatar Foundation, the launch of Al Jazeera News Channel in 1996, the promulgation of Qatar’s first permanent constitution in 2004 and the introduction of municipal elections in which women were granted the right to vote and stand as candidates. Under his leadership, the Gulf nation also adopted the Qatar National Vision 2030 and secured the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Born in Doha in January 1952, Sheikh Hamad graduated from the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst before becoming commander of Qatar’s armed forces. He became heir apparent and defence minister in 1977, assumed power as emir on June 27, 1995, and handed over leadership to his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on June 25, 2013.
“The future lies ahead of you, the children of this homeland, as you usher into a new era where young leadership hoists the banner,” Sheikh Hamad said as he announced his abdication and the carefully crafted transition to his son, the British-educated crown prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who was then 33.
The peaceful, voluntary transfer of power was rare in a region where such change usually results from death or overthrow.
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