Writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday led 20 members of the Democratic Caucus in demanding that the Trump administration go beyond simply denouncing the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group in Sudan that has been accused of war crimes in the country’s civil war, and take “concrete action” to stop more mass atrocities as the group encircles the city of El Obeid.

“These actions should include ceasing certain US arms sales to external actors that are fueling this war, including the United Arab Emirates, which continues to arm the RSF,” wrote the senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

The lawmakers wrote to Rubio as an estimated 500,000 civilians were at risk in El Obeid, where many people have sought safety following RSF attacks across the Kordofan region.

The letter came as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said civilians are facing drone attacks in El Obeid, with humanitarian assistance also put at risk by the assault.

A number of the signatories, including Van Hollen and Sanders, have previously called on the Trump administration to end its complicity in RSF attacks like those that occurred in El Fasher last October, which United Nations investigators said bore the “hallmarks of genocide” after the group killed more than 6,000 civilians in the first three days of its offensive in the besieged city.

The senators described attacks like those on El-Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, where RSF forces “proceeded to search the wards and killing those they found, including patients, accompanying persons and medical personnel,” killing an estimated 460 people before pursuing civilians who tried to escape.

Reports described “the perpetrators chasing people in open fields, firing at them with automatic rifles and mounted submachine guns, and running over fleeing persons with vehicles, causing mass casualties,” the senators wrote.

More than 14 million people have also been forcibly displaced by the civil war.

But the scale of atrocities would likely not have been possible without the RSF’s support from the UAE, for which the Trump administration fast-tracked a weapons sale in May after having provided the country with $7 billion in weapons just two months earlier.

Also in May, said the senators, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that the UAE trained hundreds of Colombian mercenaries who then took part in the atrocities in El Fasher and trained RSF recruits, including child soldiers.

Now, they wrote, the RSF’s “encirclement and systematic crippling of resources in El Obeid increasingly parallels El Fasher, and this administration must use its leverage and influence to prevent a repeat of El Fasher’s horrors in El Obeid before it is too late.”

They pointed out that the administration has acknowledged that further "mass atrocities could be imminent” in Sudan, as a State Department spokesperson said on June 22. In November 2025, Rubio himself said that the RSF was “clearly receiving assistance from outside” and that “something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support the RSF is getting as they continue their advances.”

Despite those acknowledgments, said the senators, the Trump administration has shown a “grave failure to act despite the chorus of alarm bells.”

“What occurred in El Fasher is a stark warning of what could unfold in El Obeid and across Sudan if this administration—and the international community—continues this current pattern of inaction,” wrote Van Hollen and his colleagues.

“While we welcome the State Department’s expression of concern about the escalating situation in El Obeid, words are not enough,” they said. “The United States must use the leverage and influence at our disposal to prevent further atrocities in El Obeid and help bring this brutal war in Sudan to an end.”

The senators called for a response to their letter by August 17, urging the administration to provide “an update on what other actions the administration is taking, beyond just words, to prevent mass atrocities in El Obeid.”

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