Satellite Images Suggest Evidence Of Mass Burials Ongoing In Sudan's El-Fasher

The images come amid growing international outrage over the more than two years of gruesome war between the paramilitary RSF and the Sudanese military.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Satellite images analyzed Wednesday appear to show mass burials being conducted in el-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized it, further raising concerns about the scale of the violence that descended on the city.

The images of el-Fasher come as the two-year war grinds on in Sudan despite growing international outrage, with local media and the United Nations reporting a drone strike targeting a funeral in another city called el-Obeid, killing at least 40 people.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab analyzed images of el-Fasher shot by Vantor, an imaging firm based in Colorado formerly known as Maxar Technologies. Those images appear to show mass graves being dug and later covered at two sites in the city, one at a mosque just north of the Saudi hospital where some 460 people reportedly had been killed and another by a former children’s hospital that the RSF had been using as a prison, the researchers said.

“It is not possible based on the dimensions of a potential mass grave to indicate the number of bodies that may be interred; this is because those conducting body disposal often layer bodies on top of each other,” their report said.

The Associated Press separately obtained access to the Vantor imagery and saw the details that corresponded to the Yale lab’s report at the sites. The AP also accessed satellite photos shot by Planet Labs PBC on Tuesday, which showed different-colored soil at both the sites, which typically indicates the ground being dug up and then reburied.