EL OBEID: Paramilitary drone strikes shook Sudan's flashpoint city of El Obeid on Monday, hours after the army regained control of the city's highway to the capital Khartoum. The army's former ally, now rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have for months amassed troops around El Obeid, attempting to encircle it ahead of an apparent large-scale assault.
Following a days-long advance across North Kordofan state, the Sudanese army on Sunday managed to push the RSF west, off the 400-kilometre highway that connects Khartoum with the embattled Kordofan region's largest city. At dawn, RSF drone strikes tore through two municipal buildings in El Obeid in apparent retaliation, leaving the local lawyers' association and a branch of the Agricultural Bank of Sudan in ruins.
No casualties were reported. Since the start of the year, drone strikes by both forces have killed over 1,000 people in Kordofan alone, according to the UN. Since April 2023, the war between Sudan's army and their former allies, the Rapid Support Forces, has torn the country apart and killed over 200,000 people, aid workers estimate. It has also created the world's largest displacement and hunger crises, with over 33 million people in need of humanitarian aid.
The highway to Khartoum remains closed to civilians, who have for most of the war relied entirely on the eastern road to the White Nile, where the RSF regularly launches deadly drone strikes. The army advance "opens a second supply route to El Obeid and beyond", said one of the army sources. Inside the city, where the UN says hundreds of thousands are in need of aid, relieved El Obeid native Sabreen Mohamed said that "the highway opening means goods can flow". — AFP
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