More than three years after the war between the Sudanese army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began, the conflict keeps spreading into new territory, leaving exhausted cities and trapped civilians in its wake. This week two flashpoints show that pattern clearly. One is El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan, where the humanitarian situation has become dire. The other is Geisan, in Blue Nile state, where the paramilitaries have just claimed a major territorial advance.
El Obeid, home to around 500,000 people, has become one of the most critical points in Sudan’s war. The Norwegian Refugee Council has warned about repeated drone strikes hitting markets, schools, water infrastructure and aid convoys. At least 45 civilians were killed over a three week period in June alone, a toll that shows how intense the bombardment has been in a densely populated area.
The food crisis there is extreme. Families have been reduced to mixing flour with water to feed their children, while soaring fuel costs have brought aid deliveries to a near standstill. According to Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, families have to queue for long hours to get water that is often unsafe to drink. That situation raises a real risk of a cholera outbreak just as the rainy season begins.
More than 80,000 internally displaced people have made their way to El Obeid after fleeing other combat zones, only to find themselves exposed to the same dangers they were trying to escape. Aid groups are still trying to preserve some sense of normal life. Schools remain open despite the violence in order to give children a measure of psychological stability, even though, in a chilling sign of how deep the trauma runs, their play has increasingly turned into re enactments of shelling.
The United Nations has warned of the risk of mass atrocities should the RSF launch a ground assault, as the group continues to tighten its hold around the city. On the ground, the Norwegian Refugee Council has provided cash transfers to 13,500 people since the start of the year, emergency kits to 7,500 families, and support for five learning centres serving 5,000 children, a response that aid workers describe as far short of what is actually needed. The priorities voiced by humanitarian actors remain immediate civilian protection, urgent funding, and unobstructed access for aid.
On another front, more than 700 kilometres to the southeast, the RSF, backed by a faction of the SPLM North, launched an early morning assault on August 11 against the town of Geisan in Blue Nile state, using heavy artillery and drones. The paramilitaries now claim control of large parts of the town.
The Sudanese army says it has held on to its headquarters there, that of the 13th infantry regiment, and that it responded with drone strikes on opposing positions. According to the International Organization for Migration, around 2,500 people have been displaced by the fighting, and local reports point to looting at the town’s main market.
Geisan carries particular strategic weight because of its proximity to the Ethiopian border, making it a contested territorial gateway between the two sides and a potential chokepoint for the logistics and movement of people tied to the conflict.
Taken together, these two episodes tell much the same story. Since April 2023 the war has killed at least 59,000 people and displaced around 13 million, pushing large parts of Sudan into famine. As the front lines keep shifting, areas that had been relatively spared until now, El Obeid and Geisan among them, are being drawn into the violence in turn, bringing immediate humanitarian consequences for populations that were already stretched thin, and an international aid response that remains, almost everywhere, badly insufficient.
