KHARTOUM: The Sudanese army and paramilitary forces traded strikes on each others’ positions in the west and south of the country on Monday, a military source and witnesses told AFP.
In Darfur in the west, army strikes hit the town of Zalingei, one of five state capitals in the vast region controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Two witnesses told AFP that they saw “smoke and flames” coming from a building there.
Confirming the attack, the military source told AFP that the building was an RSF warehouse.
In the neighboring Kordofan region, an RSF drone strike hit the town of Dilling, where the army recently broke a siege by the paramilitary group, the same source said.
The strike hit a building housing the government’s humanitarian aid agency, they added, without providing further details.
Dilling has been on the front line between the RSF and the army since the earliest days of the war, which began in April 2023.
After announcing last week that it had opened two corridors around Dilling, the army was continuing to advance toward South Kordofan capital Kadugli, the military source said.
Around 80 percent of the population, some 147,000 people, have fled Kadugli, according to the United Nations.
Since the October fall of El-Fasher, the last army stronghold in Darfur, the RSF have focused their efforts on Kordofan, a vast and fertile area in the south.
The secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Jan Egeland, called South Kordofan “Sudan’s most dangerous and neglected frontline.”
“Entire cities are being starved, forcing families to flee with nothing,” he said in a statement Monday after a visit to the region.
“This is a man-made disaster, and it is accelerating toward a nightmare scenario.”
Egeland said that those fleeing faced perilous journeys, as well as privation and overcrowding after reaching displacement camps.
The UN has repeatedly warned Kordofan risks a repeat of the atrocities committed in El-Fasher, where the RSF was accused of massacres, sexual violence and abductions targeting non-Arab communities after the city’s fall.
“This is a critical moment,” said Egeland. “We know exactly where this leads if the world looks away again.”
The war between Sudan’s army and its former ally the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced around 11 million more, creating what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
