How we found an RSF military camp in the Libyan desert

A new CIR documentary has uncovered the location of a Rapid Support Forces (RSF) military camp in the desert of Sudan’s neighbour, Libya. A vehicle that was found in the camp was matched with a vehicle used in the violent takeover of the Zamzam camp for internally displaced people, in North Darfur. We also found a direct link between the RSF camp in Libya and a senior RSF commander.

Some links have been removed to avoid amplifying content. The coordinates of the military camp have also been withheld, but are available upon request.

In early 2025, a series of videos emerged online. Some showed large convoys of RSF fighters driving through a desert in trucks equipped with a variety of weapons, including machine guns and anti-aircraft guns. Others, also filmed in a desert landscape, showed hundreds of trucks stationed in what appears to be an established military camp. 

Separately, these videos provide snippets of information, allowing us to identify fighters, uniforms, equipment, and some of the locations where they were filmed. Pieced together, they reveal that military equipment is being transported, on a large scale, through Libya, some of which is directly linked to violence in the Sudan war. 

By analysing hundreds of videos posted to social media, CIR was able to match armoured vehicles, uniforms, and fighters seen in the desert footage to videos filmed in Sudan. We can connect these vehicles and fighters to senior RSF leadership, and we can go further still – identifying a commander using one of these vehicles during an attack on the Zamzam camp for internally displaced people in April 2025.

Locating a camp in the middle of a desert

War broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF in April 2023, plunging Sudan into what the UN describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 people have died, and more than 11 million people are internally displaced. 

There has been significant interest in how foreign weapons might be entering Sudan, and in neighbouring countries allegedly being used as supply lines into the war. A UN report from January 2024 stated that the RSF “purchased cars from Libya” and “was also able to procure weapons through Libya”. 

When videos of what looked like an RSF military camp surfaced in early 2025, CIR set out to find if there was any way to identify its location. The desert landscape did not offer many distinct clues, and could have visually matched the geographical surroundings of several of Sudan’s neighbouring countries.

CIR investigators analysed close to a hundred videos of the military camp. One such video, filmed from the top of a sand dune, clearly shows the camp below, and we were able to stitch together the frames to provide a panoramic view. However, with little to go on other than the rock formations visible in the footage, common methods of geolocation proved near-impossible. 

Using NASA’s Black Marble – a tool that captures satellite footage at night – CIR investigators were able to scan the area of interest for small sources of light that could be coming from the camp. In imagery captured a few weeks before the videos of the camp started to appear online, we identified a new light source south of the town of Al-Jawf in the Libyan desert. 

This was a breakthrough moment for the investigation. Scouring satellite images of the area, the camp could then be geolocated by matching the rock formation and skyline visible in the videos. 

The rows of vehicles were located in the middle of the desert in Kufra, Libya’s largest region. Located in the southeast of the country and bordering Sudan and Egypt, it is described by Chatham House as a “pivotal hub” for “cross-border” movements of goods and people.

Linking the camp to the war in Sudan

Finding the location of the camp in Libya was only the first step in our investigation. We wanted to establish whether any direct link could be made between the desert camp and the war in Sudan. How did we determine this camp was used by the RSF, and how did we connect it to fighting in Sudan? 

Fighters seen in several videos – driving through the Libyan desert and at the camp – are wearing a variety of camouflage uniforms, some of which are consistent with those worn by the RSF. The most important clues, however, are the RSF shoulder patches seen in many videos. 

Next, we turned our attention to the military equipment visible in the videos of the camp. Many videos show hundreds of vehicles parked in rows, with numbers spray-painted on the bonnets and doors. They are equipped with a variety of weapons and armour, and many have distinctive blue fuel tanks. 

These vehicles looked familiar. Over the course of the war in Sudan, CIR investigators have seen similar vehicles play a key part in all major RSF assaults, including in Khartoum, El Geneina, El Fasher, and Zamzam. 

As we set out to see if any of the vehicles in the Libyan RSF camp could be traced back to Sudan, we noticed some vehicles reemerging in multiple videos across various locations. By matching the spray-painted numbers, camouflage patterns, and signs of damage, we were able to locate one particular vehicle (assigned “Vehicle 136”) in several videos filmed over a series of months, tracing the pick-up truck from deep in the Libyan desert to the frontline in Sudan. 

Vehicle 136 is first seen in footage filmed sometime in January 2025 and geolocated to the RSF military camp in Kufra, Libya, when the car was still intact. In a picture taken around the same time, an individual whom we assigned the name “Fighter A” is seen sitting on the bonnet of the vehicle. We can link the footage and the photograph using the writing in the dust on the windscreen. This writing includes the words “RSF Preparedness”, which is part of the RSF slogan. 

This finding places the vehicle, along with Fighter A, in the RSF military camp in Libya at the beginning of the year. The footage of the vehicle allows us to document some of its distinct features, which are key to identifying it in other videos filmed in different locations. 

In a photograph posted in April 2025, which CIR assesses to be most likely taken in North Darfur, Fighter A is posing with Vehicle 136. We can identify the vehicle by matching the camouflage pattern. The pickup truck appears damaged, with a shattered windscreen and a bullet hole in the bonnet. In another piece of footage – posted in early May 2025 and likely filmed in late April – and geolocated to North Darfur [13.489168,25.322549], it has been damaged even further, with the back door shot to pieces. This time, we can match the camouflage pattern as well as the damage from the previous photograph. 

Along with vehicles and fighters, there are other visible items in the videos that can be matched across locations. In videos from the Libyan camp, we noticed blankets packaged in branded bags. The red and gold packaging reads “Al Rowad”, with the contents described as “super soft blanket”. 

We found a Facebook page of a store advertising the same blankets, located in Libya. While we cannot confirm the blankets were purchased there, we were able to identify them in footage filmed in Kufra, the desert convoys, and then in North Darfur, Sudan.

Identifying Hamdan Al-Kajli

By linking Fighter A and Vehicle 136 across multiple videos in different locations, we were able to make another important finding. In several videos, we were able to identify a senior RSF commander, Hamdan Al-Kajli, alongside both Fighter A and Vehicle 136. 

Al-Kajli is pictured alongside Fighter A and two other fighters in a photograph posted on 8 May 2025. If we look closely at the group photograph, we can again make out some writing in the dust on the window behind Fighter A. We can match this writing to a video posted on 1 February showing a convoy in the desert. In the video, we can also make out a partial “6” on the bonnet – further indication that this is Vehicle 136. 

In a separate photograph, posted on 2 February 2025, which is zoomed in on the commander and one other fighter, we can match the spray-painted number nine on the vehicle door and the dark camouflage patches to footage of the heavily damaged vehicle.

Al-Kajli is often seen alongside Abdul Rahim Dagalo, second-in-command to his brother, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF leader widely known as “Hemedti”. Al-Kajli is thought to be his right-hand man and is also of considerable rank. 

Connecting Vehicle 136 to Fighter A and Commander Al-Kajli allows us to establish a direct connection between the military equipment found in the RSF military camp in Libya and senior leadership in the RSF. 

Commander spotted in Zamzam

Our investigation was able to place RSF commander Al-Kajli inside Vehicle 136 during the violent takeover of the Zamzam internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in April 2025. 

Al-Kajli and Abdul Rahim Dagalo are filmed at a gathering of RSF fighters in North Darfur [13.405462,25.461691] in early April 2025 – located approximately 18km from the Zamzam IDP camp. 

On 11 April 2025, a video posted to Telegram shows the commander talking to the camera from the passenger seat of a vehicle as it enters the camp [13.488435,25.314243]. “We are here to liberate Zamzam,” Al-Kajli says to the camera. He then goes on to say that El Fasher, Khartoum, and Port Sudan will be “freed” next. 

A panorama of the footage shows the damaged windscreen, which matches other footage of Vehicle 136 – it is possible to see the same pattern of shattered glass on the driver’s side, and two shattered areas around the gun port. There are other small marks on the inside of the windshield and passenger window, visible at another time in the video, that were matched to other earlier videos of Vehicle 136.

Another video, posted on the same day, shows scenes from the attack on Zamzam, as fighters film themselves firing into the street. Investigators were able to geolocate the footage using trees, structures, and buildings visible in the video [13.481708,25.308403]. Vehicle 136 can also be seen in the background, and can be identified by its damaged windscreen and camouflage patches.

Separate footage, also posted to Facebook on 11 April, shows Fighter A also took part in this attack. He is seen talking to the camera, and the video can be geolocated to the Zamzam IDP camp.

‘Unprecedented’ wave of displacement

Satellite imagery shows how swathes of the Zamzam IDP camp were burnt down in consecutive RSF attacks – first in February 2025, when the market area of the camp was damaged, and then in April, when the RSF launched a large-scale attack on the area.

Reuters, citing the UN, reported that more than 300 people were killed in Zamzam and surrounding areas between 11 and 14 April. CIR verified multiple videos showing human rights violations in the wake of the attack on Zamzam, as well as extensive fire damage across the camp. NASA Fire Information Resource Management Systems (NASA FIRMS) picked up 88 heat anomalies between 11 and 16 April. 

Zamzam was one of the last ports of shelter for hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes because of the fighting. Consecutive RSF assaults meant they were forced to flee again, triggering what the UN described as “an unprecedented wave of displacement”. 

Our investigation traces military equipment used by the RSF in the violent attack on Zamzam, in Sudan, to an RSF military camp in a foreign country: Libya. 

These assaults have taken place while famine tightens its grip on Sudan. Approximately half of the population – 25 million people – are facing extreme levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program. As the situation grows more desperate, our findings point to a distressing reality: while food supplies and aid are in short supply, military equipment is not.