British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper chairs a United Nations Security Council meeting on Sudan at UN headquarters in New York. AFP
The move follows a UN investigation last week that concluded the RSF militia had committed acts of genocide during their 18-month siege and eventual capture of the city.
Those sanctioned are RSF deputy commanders Abdelrahim Hamdan Daglo and Gedo Hamdan Ahmed, Brigadier General Al-Fateh Abdullah Idris, and field commander Tijani Ibrahim.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by what the UN has called a "war of atrocities" as Sudan's army and government fight against the RSF militia. The war has killed tens of thousands and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.
For a year and a half, the RSF militia besieged North Darfur state capital El-Fasher -- the region's last major city to evade their control -- before storming the city on October 26.
The campaign, which the UN fact-finding mission described as "three days of horror", was marked by summary executions, systematic sexual violence and mass detention -- primarily targeting the city's ethnic Zaghawa population.
Abdelrahim, brother of RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, appears in footage "giving direct orders to his fighters to not take captives but to kill everyone", according to the sanctions announcement.
He is already sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Idris, commonly referred to as Abu Lulu, became known as "the Butcher of El-Fasher" for graphic videos he himself posted of the takeover.
"Abu Lulu has filmed himself smiling and killing people while they begged for mercy, as well as videos where he makes ethnically targeted executions," the Security Council said.
He, Ahmed and Ibrahim were slapped with US sanctions last week over their roles in the "ethnic killings, torture, starvation and sexual violence" committed in El-Fasher.
A special Security Council committee with representatives of all 15 member countries makes decisions on such sanctions.
Following the Darfur war of the early 2000s, where the RSF's predecessor the Janjaweed committed similar atrocities at the behest of the Khartoum government, the Security Council in 2005 established a Sudan sanctions regime.
It includes an embargo on arms shipments to Darfur, as well as sanctions on individuals such as a freeze on assets and ban on foreign travel.
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