Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces attacked each other’s positions in the west and south of the country on Monday, a military source and witnesses told AFP.
Attacks in Sudan’s Kordofan, Darfur: military sources, eyewitnessesIn western Darfur, the army attacked the city of Jalingei, the capital of five states in a vast region controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Force.
Two witnesses told AFP they saw “smoke and flames” coming from a building there.
Confirming the attack, military sources told AFP that the building was an RSF warehouse.
In the neighboring Kordofan region, an RSF drone strike hit the town of Diling, where the army recently broke a siege by paramilitary groups, the same source said.
The strike hit a building of the government’s humanitarian aid agency, they added, without giving further details.
Dealing has been on the front line between the RSF and the Army since the first day of the war, which began in April 2023.
After announcing last week that it had opened two corridors around Diling, the army is set to advance towards Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, the military source said.
About 147,000 people, about 80 percent of the population, have fled Kadugli, according to the United Nations.
Since the October fall of El-Fashar, the last army base in Darfur, the RSF has focused its efforts on Kordofan, a vast and fertile region in the south.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, called South Kordofan “Sudan’s most dangerous and neglected frontline”.
“Entire cities are going hungry, forcing families to flee with nothing,” he said in a statement after visiting the region on Monday.
“This is a man-made disaster, and it’s accelerating toward a nightmare scenario.”
Eggland said those who fled faced dangerous journeys as well as isolation and overcrowding upon reaching displacement camps.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned Kordofan it risks a repeat of the atrocities committed in El-Fashar, where the RSF was accused of genocide, sexual violence and kidnappings targeting the non-Arab community after the fall of the city.
“This is a critical moment,” Egeland said. “We know exactly where it leads if the world looks away again.”
Fighting between Sudan’s army and its former ally the RSF has killed thousands and displaced nearly 11 million, in what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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