Africa — 2026-07-12

RSF Drone Strikes and Siege Intensify in El-Obeid as UN Warns of Potential Mass Atrocities

BLUFRSF's infrastructure-degradation campaign against El-Obeid mirrors the pre-siege sequence that preceded El-Fasher's fall, though no evidence yet confirms the encirclement required to force a garrison collapse.

RSF drone strikes on El-Obeid have intensified, hitting fuel stations, power supply and water infrastructure in an apparent effort to weaken army control of the city and pressure civilians to leave, according to Al Jazeera and The Levant Files 12. Ten consecutive drone strikes have killed at least 50 civilians across the city and North Kordofan state, and food prices have surged 300 percent amid the siege 1. The Sudanese army says it retains control of El-Obeid, capital of North Kordofan state 12. The UN human rights office has warned of an impending "catastrophe" in the city, which hosts roughly 500,000 residents including some 105,000 already displaced, and cited the risk of a repeat of last October's El-Fasher siege 2. The International Rescue Committee said close to 2,000 residents have fled to White Nile state in recent weeks, while separately the army claimed recapture of the Blue Nile border town of Kurmuk from an RSF-SPLM-N faction alliance, a claim not independently verified 2.

Analysis
The intensifying strikes on El-Obeid's fuel, power and water infrastructure follow the same degrade-before-encircle sequence the RSF used ahead of El-Fasher's fall, and the UN's explicit invocation of that precedent signals humanitarian agencies now treat mass-atrocity risk as an active planning assumption rather than a distant contingency, a judgment held with low confidence given the absence of primary on-the-ground sourcing inside the city and reliance on Al Jazeera field reporting alongside secondary, aid-agency-derived accounts. Civilian flight toward White Nile state, now numbering close to 2,000 in recent weeks per IRC reporting, shows residents reading the trajectory the same way and moving before roads close. The army's simultaneous, unverified claim of recapturing Kurmuk in Blue Nile may function as messaging to offset its defensive posture in Kordofan rather than reflect an actual battlefield shift.

2 sources

Sudan El Obeid faces intensifying RSF drone attacks - Al Jazeera
Sudan's El-Obeid Braces for Assault as RSF Intensifies Drone Campaign, Army Claims Border Town Recapture in Blue Nile - The Levant Files