He told the world what was happening in El Fasher. Then they sought him out. How Sudan lost ‘a true hero of the war’

For months, Mohamed Khamis Douda shared accounts of what life was like under siege. He was killed when RSF fighters finally took the Darfur city, raising fears activists and civil society figures are being hunted down

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or months, militiamen on the perimeters of El Fasher have asked those few who managed to escape the besieged Sudanese city whether Mohamed Khamis Douda was still inside. They shared videos threatening to kill him, which, as they hoped, made their way to the activist.

Even as the hunger and fear of living under siege and bombardment made him desperate to leave, Douda remained inside El Fasher, constantly working to let the outside world know what was happening to the people there. Then, on Sunday 26 October, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces overran the city and it was too late. His friends and family have confirmed to the Guardian that Douda has been killed.

As the official spokesperson for Zamzam, the displacement camp in Sudan’s Darfur region, Douda found himself at the centre of the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe. Injured during the RSF’s massacre there in April in which hundreds of civilians were killed, he had to be carried to the relative safety of nearby El Fasher.