Sudan's Rapid Support Forces paramilitary has turned its attention to Al Obeid in northern Kordofan, seeking to build on recent battlefield gains.
Witnesses reached by The National in Al Obeid reported thick grey clouds rising over the city following drone strikes, and artillery shelling targeting a barracks that houses the army's 5th Division.
The witnesses said they believed the attacks late on Wednesday were in response to the army shelling RSF positions west and north-west of Al Obeid.
They reported that some of the garrison's troops have left their base and set up positions in residential districts across the city, possibly to avoid being targeted in the base.
Neither the army nor the RSF, locked in a ruinous civil war for nearly three years, has spoken about the latest fighting in Al Obeid. Capture of the city by the paramilitary could catapult the capital Khartoum and Sudan's northern region to the top of its battlefield priorities.
The RSF captured the key city of Babanoussa in West Kordofan last week. In late October, it seized control of the city of El Fasher, the last army foothold in Darfur.
As the battle lines now stand, the RSF controls Darfur – an area about the size of France – as well as large parts of Kordofan, where the paramilitary is allied with a powerful rebel group that has been fighting government-backed forces for many years.
The army controls Khartoum, which it retook from the RSF in March, as well as the country's northern, eastern and central regions.
The availability of drones to both sides, however, is not allowing the distances separating their lines in the vast Afro-Arab nation to limit their reach.
The RSF has this year used drones to attack Port Sudan on the Red Sea, the wartime capital of the military-backed government. The paramilitary also used drones to attack infrastructure in the capital as well as areas in the south.
The war in Sudan is rooted in a power struggle pitting army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, also the de facto leader of Sudan, against RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo.
Months of tension between the two men over their position in a democratic Sudan boiled over into open warfare on April 15, 2023, plunging the ethnically diverse nation with a history of civil strife into a new bout of bloodletting.
To date, tens of thousands have been killed in the war and more than 12 million displaced. Half the population, around 25 million, are facing hunger, with pockets of famine surfacing in parts of the country.
Heeding a call by the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE for a humanitarian truce, Gen Dagalo last month declared a unilateral ceasefire. That, however, did not stop RSF fighters from capturing Babanoussa and now moving in on Al Obeid. In both cases, the RSF claims it was responding to ceasefire violations by the army.
Gen Al Burhan has for his part rejected the truce offer, insisting the army will not silence its guns until the RSF is vanquished. However, he later moderated his position, saying the "relevant authorities" will respond to the truce offer.
Al Shafie Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda
