RFS militia have killed 60,000 people and 10 million Sudanese forced to dig their own grave is this true
Executive summary
The claim that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have killed 60,000 people in a single massacre and forced 10 million Sudanese to dig their own graves cannot be verified as stated from available reporting: multiple reputable investigations and governments report mass killings in El Fasher and wider Darfur with estimates that range from thousands to tens of thousands, and some tracking estimates for the El Fasher event place deaths in the 60,000–68,000 range (reporting and tracking figures vary); however, there is no credible reporting in the sources provided that supports the specific claim that “10 million” people were forced to dig graves [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the strongest death estimates say and where they come from
Investigative reporting and institutional estimates portray a spectrum: some NGOs, academics and briefing notes reported extremely high death tolls for El Fasher—British MPs were briefed with a “low estimate” of 60,000 killed in the recent weeks of violence there and some tracking sources place deaths between roughly 60,000 and 68,000 for that single massacre episode—yet other outlets and UN reporting describe thousands to tens of thousands killed across the city and region rather than a single uncontested, independently verified figure [1] [2] [3] [4].
2. Broader conflict mortality and displacement context
Beyond El Fasher, long-running conflict since April 2023 has produced very large tolls and displacement: the war has been characterized by “tens of thousands” killed, humanitarian agencies cite more than 12–13 million displaced or internally uprooted, and some institutional analyses put cumulative deaths across the civil war and related atrocities into the hundreds of thousands over multiple years—estimates vary and are constrained by access and security, which make precise national accounting difficult [5] [6] [7] [4] [8].
3. Allegations of genocide, mass atrocities and attempts to hide evidence
The RSF has been formally accused by the United States of committing genocide and other atrocity crimes, and multiple reports document summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks on hospitals and efforts to conceal evidence including burning bodies and mass burials; Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab and other investigators flagged massive civilian casualties and possible mass graves, which underpin serious international concerns though exact counts remain contested [9] [6] [3] [4].
4. The specific “10 million forced to dig their own graves” claim: evidence gap
None of the provided reporting substantiates a figure of “10 million” Sudanese forced to dig graves; the sources document atrocities, forced displacement on a multi-million scale and horrific accounts of summary executions and mass burials, but they do not report mass, organized forced-grave-digging on a ten-million-person scale—this particular numerical formulation does not appear in the cited investigations, UN briefings or major media pieces provided [6] [4] [1] [3].
5. Why numbers differ and how to treat competing figures
Discrepancies arise because of access limits, destroyed evidence, rapid population movements, reliance on survivor testimony, satellite and forensic work, and differing definitional frames (e.g., deaths in one city vs. countrywide conflict deaths); some outlets relay whistleblower briefings and academic low/high bounds while others caution that independent verification is incomplete—responsible reporting therefore treats very large single-event figures with caution while recognizing the weight of converging evidence about mass atrocity [1] [2] [3].
6. Bottom line and what remains to be independently verified
The core truth is that the RSF has been credibly implicated in large-scale, potentially genocidal atrocities with death tolls that in some investigations reach into the tens of thousands for El Fasher and into the hundreds of thousands across the conflict’s duration, and that millions have been displaced or placed at risk; the precise claim pairing “60,000 killed” (as an estimate that appears in some briefings for El Fasher) with “10 million forced to dig their own graves” lacks corroboration in the reviewed sources—the grave-forcing figure is not documented in the provided reporting and therefore cannot be treated as established fact [1] [2] [4] [6].