Sudan's army announced on Tuesday it has broken the long-time siege of the South Kordofan city of Kadugli, in a significant battlefield victory and a shift in its fortunes against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
It comes a week after the army pushed away the RSF siege around Dilling, another South Kordofan city.
The news from Kadugli could mean a reprieve from a months-long famine for tens of thousands of the city's residents.
"With God's help and guidance, your Sudanese Armed Forces and supporting forces have succeeded in opening the Kadugli-Dilling road, after a heroic battle," the army said in a statement.
"The forces of the militia and its mercenaries have pulled back after receiving crushing blows. They suffered heavy losses in lives and equipment. Those who survived fled before our forces."
There was no word immediately available from the RSF on the fate of Kadugli.
The war between the Sudanese army and the RSF broke out in April 2023 and has since displaced at least 12 million people and caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands have been killed in the war, sparked by a power struggle between army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo.
The conflict's latest frontline is the greater Kordofan region, which the RSF began sweeping through after the rainy season ended late last year.
Kadugli and nearby Dilling have been under intermittent siege by the RSF since the start of the war. But fighting in and around the cities intensified when the RSF tried to repeat its successes in Darfur. In Kordofan, it is allied with the powerful SPLM-N rebel group that has for years occupied large areas.
Nearly three years into the war, the RSF controls the entire Darfur region where it has its own government, and parts of Kordofan. The army controls the capital Khartoum along with the northern, central and eastern regions. Its own government is in Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
The siege of Kadugli caused famine conditions, a global hunger monitor said last year. Kadugli and Dilling have also been subjected to devastating drone attacks.
According to the UN, more than 80 per cent of Kadugli's population, or about 147,000 people, had already fled the city.
"The Rapid Support Forces were ill-advised to venture into South Kordofan," said Sudanese military analyst Amin Majzoob, a retired general and former commander of the army's 6th Infantry Division.
"Breaking the siege of Dilling and now Kadugli means the fighting will move to the frontiers of Darfur, where the Rapid Support Forces could quickly crumble," Mr Majzoob told The National.
The army's advance against RSF forces besieging Kadugli was aided by a breakdown in the RSF's supply lines from Libya into the Kordofan region, Reuters reported, quoting sources from the army and SPLM-N.
Al Shafied Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda.
