Sudan's RSF says it has seized key oilfield in Kordofan

Paramilitary pledges to protect installation as death toll from kindergarten and hospital drone attack reaches 114

A worker at the Toma South oilfield to Heglig, South Kordofan. Reuters

Sudan's ​paramilitary ​Rapid ‌Support Forces (RSF) has announced it ‍took control of the strategically important Heglig oilfield ​in ‍South ⁠Kordofan on Monday. The group said it had chased army troops away from the site and pledged to protect it.

“Our forces emphasise they will secure and protect all vital oil installations in the region ... as well as provide the necessary protection for the engineering and technical teams at oil installations and workers,” said a statement from the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in a ruinous civil war since April 2023.

The pipeline that carries South Sudanese oil from the southern border to Port Sudan on the Red Sea is also a vital source of income for impoverished Sudan, which has had its economy destroyed by the war.

Separately, the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday that as many as 114 people, including 63 children, were killed in “senseless” strikes on a hospital and kindergarten in Sudan's South Kordofan last week. The previous death toll from the attack had stood at 50, according to voluntary groups tracking violence. However, the African Union on Sunday said at least 100 were killed in the attack.

Local official Essam Al Din Al Sayed, head of the Kalogi administrative unit, said Thursday's drone attack, which has been blamed on the RSF, hit “first a kindergarten, then a hospital and a third time as people tried to rescue the children”. Following their capture of El Fasher – the army's last foothold in Darfur – in late October, the RSF has pushed eastward into the oil-rich Kordofan region.

The strikes “hit a kindergarten and, at least three times, the nearby Kalogi Rural Hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children, and injuring 35 people”, WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, referring to the WHO's Attacks on Health Care monitoring system.

Survivors from Thursday's attack were moved to Abu Jebaiha Hospital in South Kordofan for treatment, and urgent calls have gone out for blood donations and other medical support, Dr Tedros said.

“Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” he said. “WHO deplores these senseless attacks on civilians and health facilities, and calls again for an end to the violence and increased access to humanitarian aid, including health.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was “appalled” by Thursday's attack, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. “The Secretary General calls on all states with influence over the parties to take immediate action and use their leverage to compel an immediate halt to the fighting and stop the arms flows that are fuelling the conflict,” he said.

The war in Sudan erupted in April 2023 after months of tensions between army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamad Dagalo over their place in a democratic Sudan boiled over into open warfare.

Nearly three years later, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 12 million and created the world's worst and largest humanitarian crisis. Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.