Image depicting Sudanese mother protecting boy from gunmen is AI-generated

The post, published on October 29, 2025, in Afaan Oromoo, one of Ethiopia’s major languages, reads: “This mother hoped she would save her son from danger.”

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on October 31, 2025

Shared more than 800 times, the post adds that the woman tried to hide the boy “from the ravage of bullets”, before “a beast who is human skin had rained bullets on them and killed them”. 

The image appears to show a mother and child holding each other tightly in a ditch while being threatened by armed men, whose long shadows are visible in the foreground.

Similar posts have been shared in English here, and in French here and here. 

El-Fasher crisis

The RSF has been at war with the regular Sudanese army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023. 

Commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF captured El-Fasher – the army’s last remaining stronghold in the western Darfur region – on October 26, 2025, following an 18-month siege marked by relentless bombardment and widespread starvation (archived here). 

The RSF has been accused of committing mass killings and other atrocities in El-Fasher (archived here). Survivors who reached the nearby town of Tawila told AFP of horrific scenes of civilians being executed, children shot in front of their parents, and people beaten and robbed as they fled.

In one video verified by AFP, a fighter is seen shooting unarmed men at close range. Another clip shows him standing among RSF fighters celebrating beside dozens of bodies and burnt vehicles.

However, the image of the woman and the child facing imminent death in Sudan is not authentic. 

AI-generated 

A closer look at the image reveals the text “@khoubaibf.bz” written on it. 

An online search for this name leads to a corresponding Instagram profile, the bio of which includes the description “Creative AI Specialist” (archived here). 

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Screenshot of the Instagram account, taken on November 3, 2025

This account regularly posts AI-generated images on a variety of topics, including conflicts in the Middle East. 

The same account also shared the image in question, but as an animation. In the clip, the mother and child appear to move, yet the shadows of the armed men do not -- a typical anomaly found in AI-generated videos.

The post, published on October 29, 2025, and liked more than 109,000 times, is accompanied by a caption explicitly stating that it was generated using AI tools and contains three hashtags: “#Sudan #ElFasher #Darfur” (archived here). 

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Screenshot of the original Instagram post, taken on November 3, 2025

Arabic text embedded in the clip near the top reads: “Al Fasher is being exterminated in silence.” This part has been cropped out in the images in the false posts.

AFP debunked the same claim in French.

Atrocities  

The war, which began over two years ago as a power struggle between the regular army and the RSF, has evolved into a brutal battle for territorial control (archived here). 

The army now controls the north, east, and central regions, including the capital Khartoum and Port Sudan, while the RSF holds much of the south and all of Darfur in the west, where it has established a rival administration in Nyala.

On October 29, 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned reports that 460 people were killed by the RSF at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, the last partially functional hospital in El-Fasher (archived here). 

Meanwhile, the United Nations and the Red Cross have called for investigations into reports of “summary executions, mass killings, and rapes” committed by RSF militants (archived here). 

On October 31, 2025, the paramilitary group announced that it had arrested several fighters accused of abuses during the capture of El-Fasher (archived here).