Drone strikes rock Sudan's El-Obeid after army secures highway

Drone strikes blamed on paramilitary forces shook the Sudanese flashpoint of El-Obeid on Monday, hours after the army regained control of the city's highway to the capital Khartoum.

The army's rival, the paramilitary 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 (250-mile) highway that connects Khartoum with the embattled Kordofan region's largest city, two army sources told AFP Monday on condition of anonymity.

Drone strikes were reported on the city at dawn, with local officials attributing them to the RSF.

The local lawyers' association and a branch of the Agricultural Bank of Sudan were left in ruins, an AFP reporter saw, though no casualties were reported.

Since the start of the year, drone strikes by both forces have killed more than 1,000 people in Kordofan alone, according to the UN.

Since April 2023, the war between Sudan's army and their one-time allies the RSF has torn the country apart and killed more than 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.

For months, each side has sought to cut off the other's supply lines around El-Obeid, which sits at an important crossroads.

Its north-south highway runs from Khartoum through Kordofan to the southern border, while its east-west axis connects RSF strongholds in the Darfur region to army-controlled central and eastern Sudan.

Breaking a stalemate?

"Now the militia has to turn to defend West Kordofan, which is the front line for Darfur," a retired army officer told AFP.

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 told AFP that "the highway opening means goods can flow".

Praising the army's advance in North Kordofan, Mohamed brushed off the RSF's dawn drone strikes as "death throes".

"We're used to it, every time the army advances, they retaliate against North Kordofan," she said.

Though both sides have reportedly committed war crimes including indiscriminate bombing, the army is generally regarded more favourably by civilians who have faced a litany of horrors at the hands of the RSF.

As the RSF mobilised on El-Obeid, the UN has for weeks warned of a repeat of atrocities committed during the RSF's takeover of the Darfur city of El-Fasher in October last year, which a UN inquiry found bore the "hallmarks of genocide".

A city of about half a million people, which the UN says has doubled in size because of displacement, El-Obeid has been caught in the crossfire since the war began.

It was under paramilitary siege from April 2023 until February of last year, when the army broke through.

Ever since, RSF attacks on roads, neighbourhoods and critical infrastructure such as power stations have worsened a humanitarian crisis, where the UN says only a fraction of the city has reliable access to food.