Sudan’s city of El-Obeid is facing an escalating crisis as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensify drone strikes on the North Kordofan capital, killing at least 45 people and injuring 41 in just 15 attacks between June 6 and 28, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
The bombardment has forced more than 11,000 residents to flee in recent weeks, with over 5,500 of them children, according to local authorities. The city, home to roughly 500,000 people including about 100,000 internally displaced persons, has endured siege-like conditions for 18 months as the RSF attempts to encircle it.
June saw the highest monthly total of drone strikes since Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, with 27 separate attacks hitting the city, violence monitoring group ACLED reported. The strikes have targeted fuel stations, water and sewage trucks, electrical substations, residential neighborhoods, and markets in what residents describe as a deliberate campaign to cripple daily life.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard warned that El Obeid could face violence on a scale similar to El Fasher, the North Darfur capital that fell to the RSF last October after an 18-month siege marked by mass killings. “The situation is frightening. You leave your house as if you will never return,” one doctor in the city told the BBC.
The city holds enormous strategic value in the war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. El Obeid sits at a crossroads linking RSF-controlled Darfur in the west with army-held territory to the east, including the capital Khartoum. A Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report warned earlier this year of an imminent RSF siege.
Summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence have been reported along escape routes used by people fleeing the conflict, Turk said. The SAF has been unable to repel the drone strikes despite maintaining a military presence in the city.
The crisis comes as Sudan’s civil war enters its fourth year, having killed tens of thousands and displaced over 14 million people, creating the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis. Recent weeks have also seen the SAF launch counteroffensives, managing to break RSF sieges on nearby cities Dilling and Kadugli in South Kordofan.
Sources: BBC News, CFR Global Conflict Tracker, Sudan Tribune
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