NORTH DARFUR, Sudan — The Rapid Support Forces were accused on February 12, 2025, of storming Zamzam, Sudan’s largest displacement camp, looting the market and burning homes in an assault that deepened an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

The camp near el-Fasher is home to an estimated 500,000 displaced people living in famine conditions, and the evidence packet says the RSF had already been shelling the area for weeks before fighters were accused of entering the camp itself. A local refugee group said the invasion began on Tuesday, while an eyewitness described the situation as extremely catastrophic and said there were many casualties. The same source says the market and several homes were set on fire.

Medical care was immediately overwhelmed. Médecins Sans Frontières said its hospital in Zamzam received seven bodies and 21 injured people, most of them in serious condition. The aid group also said the facility lacked the ability to care for all of them and that surgery was no longer functioning. That detail matters because it shows the camp’s health system had already been pushed beyond its limit before the full scale of the attack could even be measured.

The roads out of the camp were nearly as dangerous as the camp itself. North Darfur’s health minister said wounded people could not reach el-Fasher for treatment because the RSF was blocking access. The evidence packet says thousands of residents fled again, adding another layer of displacement to people who had already been uprooted from their homes once or more. In North Darfur, where famine and siege conditions were already severe, the attack meant that the camp could no longer be treated as a refuge.

The RSF denied that its fighters had penetrated the camp, saying instead that they had seized a nearby military base belonging to an armed group allied with the Sudanese army. Its spokesman said the group had circulated a message promising to protect residents and asking them to stay away from areas of fire exchange. That denial does not remove the damage described by the witnesses, the aid workers and the refugee group, but it does show that the battle for narrative is running alongside the battle on the ground.

The bigger military context is grim. El-Fasher has been under siege since last April and is the only city in Darfur still held by the army. The RSF is also accused of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities elsewhere in the region. That means the Zamzam assault is not an isolated camp raid but part of a wider campaign in which the line between front line and civilian shelter has all but disappeared.

The evidence packet is stark about the result: dead and wounded patients arriving at a hospital that can no longer fully operate, a market burned, homes set alight and families forced to run again. Zamzam had already been associated with famine and repeated shelling. The latest accusations suggest that even a place built to hold people away from the worst of the war is now inside it.

For aid groups and local residents, the most important fact may be the most brutal one. The camp was supposed to be a place of last refuge. After this attack, even that idea has become almost impossible to defend.