Tens of thousands of civilians have fled towns in Sudan’s Kordofan region, east of Darfur, as fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) intensifies, the United Nations reported.
According to the UN, more than 36,825 people left five localities in North Kordofan between October 26 and 31, following the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher just over a week earlier.
Residents have also reported a marked increase in both RSF and army activity across towns and villages in the area.
North Kordofan, a strategic corridor linking Darfur to the Khartoum-Riverine heartland, has become the latest flashpoint in Sudan’s brutal conflict, which has raged since April 2023.
Both forces are now vying for El-Obeid, the state capital, which serves as a major logistics hub and hosts an airport.
“Today, all our forces have converged on the Bara front,” an RSF member said in a video last Sunday, referring to a city north of El-Obeid.
The RSF had claimed control of Bara the previous week.
Local residents described the growing danger on the ground. Suleiman Babiker, who lives in Um Smeima west of El-Obeid, said the number of RSF vehicles increased significantly after El-Fasher fell.
“We stopped going to our farms, afraid of clashes,” he told AFP.
Another resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported a rise in army vehicles and weapons west and south of El-Obeid over the past two weeks.
Martha Pobee, assistant UN secretary-general for Africa, warned last week of “large-scale atrocities” and “ethnically motivated reprisals” by RSF forces in Bara, echoing patterns seen in Darfur, where fighters have been accused of mass killings, sexual violence, and abductions against non-Arab communities.
The conflict in Sudan has already killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly 12 million people, and created what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in terms of displacement and hunger.
