Sudan's armed forces and its civil war adversary, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, claimed victories on Sunday in two separate regions, in the latest fighting in their nearly three-year-old conflict.
The army said in a statement that it, with allied militias, had repelled an assault by the RSF on the south Kordofan city of Dilling, claiming they had killed scores of attackers and destroyed 36 fighting vehicles. It said they had also captured four other vehicles.
The RSF, which has been battling the armed forces since April 2023, said it had seized the town of Bara in northern Kordofan and the city of Al Kurmuk and three other places in Blue Nile state.
“These military operations and victories are a strategic step that will be followed through as part of a well-studied military plan,” it said, without giving details. It claimed that hundreds of soldiers and allied militiamen were killed, and many others had fled.
Sudan's civil war is essentially a struggle for power between the armed forces, led by Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, and the RSF and its commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo. Fighting began between the two sides after months of tension over their place in a future democratic Sudan.
The war has since claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than 12 million people and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with about half the population, 25 million people, facing hunger.
The army currently controls the capital Khartoum as well as the nation's eastern, central and southern regions, while the RSF controls the western region of Darfur, apart from at least one area on the border with Chad, as well as parts of Kordofan.
