Sudan’s civil war broke out two years ago to the day, since when it has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 13 million and created what the International Rescue Committee has described as “the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”.
15 April 2023
Fighting breaks out in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as a bitter struggle for power between the Sudanese military – led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler – and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – led by the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – turns violent.
At least 25 people are reportedly killed and the RSF claims control of the presidential palace and airport.
21 April 2023
Up to 20,000 people flee across Sudan’s western border to Chad to escape the fighting, while many more are internally displaced. An attempt to negotiate a ceasefire before the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr fails. As the two sides refuse to negotiate and Khartoum’s hospitals run out of supplies, the death toll passes 300, with thousands more injured.
23 April 2023
The UK evacuates its diplomats and their dependants from Sudan and other western nations step up evacuation efforts, but many UK citizens remain trapped.
May 2023
The final flight evacuating UK citizens leaves from Port Sudan on 3 May, after a brief ceasefire breaks down.
Reports emerge of armed men raping women in Khartoum, as the conflict spreads to North Kordofan and the restive Darfur region. More than 60 children die after they became trapped in their Khartoum orphanage.
July 2023
The UN says at least 87 bodies have been found in a mass grave near Geneina in West Darfur. Many are non-Arab Masalit people, who had largely supported the army against the RSF and allied Arab militias.
August 2023
The UN says the number of people fleeing to neighbouring countries has passed a million, while 3.4 million have been internally displaced. More than 20 million people are suffering from acute levels of food insecurity.
October 2023
Violence spreads south of Khartoum towards Gezira state, endangering thousands of people who have fled there. Almost 6 million people have been displaced by the war.
December 2023
The RSF seizes control of Wad Madani, Sudan’s second city and capital of Gezira state. More than 10,000 people have now been killed.
February 2024
Sudan’s armed forces advance in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the other side of the River Nile, for the first time since the war started.
March 2024
Masalit refugees in Chad, where more than 1 million Sudanese people have fled the civil war, report ethnic cleansing by the RSF in Darfur.
May 2024
Tens of thousands flee a displacement camp in El Fasher, North Darfur, after an RSF attack.
June 2024
At least 100 people are killed when the RSF attacks Wad al-Noura village in Gezira. The outgoing UN aid chief warns that more than 750,000 people are at risk of famine.
July 2024
Passports recovered on the battlefield suggest the United Arab Emirates is putting boots on the ground in Sudan. The UAE continues to deny it is supplying arms to the RSF.
August 2024
Famine is declared in a displacement camp in El Fasher. The city’s camps house about 600,000 people. Floods wipe out about 20 villages, killing at least 30 people, 25 miles outside Port Sudan, now the country’s de facto capital.
September 2024
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, calls on the RSF to stop its siege of El Fasher. Tens of thousands of priceless artefacts have been looted from the National Museum of Khartoum, a museum official warns.
October 2024
The RSF is accused of killings, sexual violence, looting and arson during eight days of attacks on villages in Gezira. The UN says 47,000 people have been displaced in the space of a week.
November 2024
A UN report says militia fighters who raped and attacked minority groups in Darfur threatened to force them to have “Arab babies”.
December 2024
A Sudanese airstrike on a North Darfur market kills more than 100 people, according to a pro-democracy lawyers’ group. A militia aligned with the army is accused of killing dozens of young men in Khartoum, on suspicion of cooperating with the RSF. A 28-truck aid convoy reaches a besieged area of Khartoum for the first time since the war began.
January 2025
Sudanese armed forces recapture strategic Wad Madani, south of Khartoum.
The US formally declares that the RSF has committed genocide against the Masalit and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur during the war, echoing massacres committed there by the RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed, in 2004. The international criminal court’s prosecutor says he is seeking arrest warrants for people accused of atrocities in Darfur.
February 2025
RSF fighters kill 54 people in an attack on an Omdurman market and hundreds more in White Nile state, south of Khartoum, as Sudan’s military reports sweeping gains in the capital city.
March 2025
Sudan’s armed forces recapture the presidential palace as they gain control of Khartoum, while the RSF consolidates control over territory it controls in Darfur.
Evidence emerges of more than 500 people potentially having been tortured or starved to death and then buried in a secret mass grave north of Khartoum. Videos of the national museum show empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts, revealing the extent of the looting of Sudan’s antiquities.
13 April 2025
RSF paramilitaries kill more than 200 civilians in attacks on displacement camps in and around El Fasher. The UK hosts a conference on the second anniversary of the war that aims to find a path to peace. The UN says the total number of displaced people has reached almost 13 million.
