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More than 36,000 Sudanese have fled the Kordofan region east of Darfur since Saturday, the UN’s migration agency has said, a week after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took control of the city of El Fasher.
The strategic central area between Sudan’s Darfur provinces and the Khartoum-Riverine region that includes the capital to the east, has in recent weeks become the latest battleground in the two-year civil war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary group.
An estimated 36,825 people have fled five localities in North Kordofan state between 26 October – the day El Fasher fell to RSF – and 31 October, the International Organization for Migration said late on Sunday.
The people, most on foot, were headed to Tawila, a town west of El Fasher that’s sheltering more than 652,000 displaced people, the UN said.
Residents of North Kordofan on Monday reported a heavy surge in both RSF and army presence across towns and villages in the state.
Both forces are vying for El Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital and a key logistics and command hub that links Darfur to Khartoum, and also hosts an airport.
“Today, all our forces have converged on the Bara front here,” an RSF member said in a video shared by the RSF late on Sunday, referring to a city north of El Obeid. RSF claimed control of Bara last week.
Suleiman Babiker, a resident of Um Smeima, west of El Obeid, told Agence France-Presse that the number of RSF vehicles had increased since the group’s capture of El Fasher. “We stopped going to our farms, afraid of clashes,” he said.
Another resident, requesting anonymity for security reasons, also said “there has been a big increase in army vehicles and weapons west and south of El Obeid” over the past two weeks.
Martha Pobee, assistant UN secretary general for Africa, raised the alarm last week about “large-scale atrocities” and “ethnically motivated reprisals” by RSF in Bara.
She warned of patterns echoing those in Darfur, where RSF fighters have been accused of mass killings, sexual violence and abductions against non-Arab ethnic groups after the fall of El Fasher.
Pope Leo on Sunday appealed for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors in Sudan, saying attacks on civilians and hindrances to humanitarian aid “are causing unacceptable suffering”.
Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, on Sunday accused RSF of carrying out war crimes in El Fasher. He said the Sudanese government would not negotiate with the paramilitary group and urged the international community to designate it as a terrorist organisation.
