Sudan war intensifies in Kordofan as RSF razes villages
Hundreds of civilians were killed by the RSF on Saturday and Sunday as its war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) intensifies in the strategically vital Kordofan region.
Images collected by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which has monitored the war in Sudan since it began in April 2023, show the smouldering ruins of the Shaq al-Noum, one of several villages in North Kordofan attacked by the RSF over the weekend.
The HRL identified smoke rising from several recently razed structures as well as disjoined areas of thermal scarring 'indicative of intentional arson attacks'. Also visible, it said, was a pattern consistent with vehicle tracks 'around buildings and throughout the community'.
More than 200 civilians are believed to have been killed, most of them burned alive in their homes or shot dead, in the attack on Shaq al-Noum, which began on 12 July.
The massacre is believed to be one of the deadliest to have taken place during the war in Sudan. Footage reportedly shot in Shaq al-Noum and cited by Sudan War Monitor showed structures ablaze and RSF troops running between houses. Shouts and gunfire could also be heard.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
The Emergency Lawyers human rights group said at least 38 others were killed in simultaneous massacres in the nearby villages of Fojah, Umm Nabag, Jakouh and Mishqah, while dozens were forcibly disappeared or detained.
Faheem, a man from one of these villages, told campaign group Avaaz that the RSF had arrived in his village, Fojah, in a convoy of around 30 vehicles.
'The vehicles surrounded the village, forced people to line up, and began detonating explosives in homes,' he said. 'Our houses are mostly made of straw, so fires broke out quickly.
'I saw my aunt's house burning. She's one of the oldest women in the village. I grabbed my children and we ran. We didn't hear from anyone else.'
The importance of Kordofan
Kholood Khair, a Sudanese analyst and founder of the Confluence Advisory think tank, told Middle East Eye that the intensification of 'back and forth' fighting across Kordofan was reminiscent of the beginning of the war, when the two sides were yet to settle into their respective power bases - the RSF in the western region of Darfur, the army in the central and eastern areas of the country.
The city of el-Obeid, a strategically vital point that sits close to roads that run to Darfur and to the capital Khartoum, is held by the army but was previously under an RSF siege. The paramilitaries are now shelling it again to try and wrest back control.
On 13 July, 46 civilians, including pregnant women and children, were killed in an RSF attack on the village of Hilat Hamid, close to the town of Bara, which has been under paramilitary control for most of the war.
Egypt hosts secret talks between Sudan's Burhan and Libya's Haftar in bid to mend ties, sources say Read More »
In West Kordofan, SAF air strikes killed at least 23 civilians from 10 to 14 July, and on 17 July at least 11 more civilians were killed in another strike in the Bara locality.
'Kordofan is now the strategic point,' Khair said. Key roads run through North Kordofan to el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur besieged by the RSF, and Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman, which have recently been retaken by the army.
With Sudan's rainy season at its worst between June and September, Khair said that both the RSF and the army are looking to make gains in Kordofan to mount offensives on el-Fasher or Omdurman when the dry weather comes in October and November.
Witnesses told MEE that drones are being used by both sides across Kordofan - as they are in other parts of Sudan.
The back and forth fighting comes as both sides await a diplomatic intervention from international actors - particularly the US administration of President Donald Trump.
'Both sides very much want to pursue a military push while they are putting in place all the necessary conditions for themselves ahead of any diplomatic mediation - particularly from the US,' Khair said.
Sudan's army-led government is being run from Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, while the RSF has set up a governing alliance in Nyala, South Darfur.
Humanitarian operations
The intensification of fighting across Kordofan has 'badly affected' the operations of aid agencies there, Shihab Mohamed Ali, a senior programme manager for Islamic Relief in Sudan, told MEE.
The charity runs 36 health centres in West Kordofan and 48 health centres in North Kordofan in collaboration with the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef.
Islamic Relief distributes food, water and cash to Sudanese civilians whose lives have been upended by the war, which has now forced over 12 million people to flee their homes.
How Trump's assault on USAID 'will lead to surging mortality' in Sudan Read More »
Two Islamic Relief offices in West Kordofan have been looted - one in August 2024, the other in May 2025, Ali said. In both cases, the looting took place in the midst of RSF invasions, though the charity cannot say for sure who was responsible.
'Most parts of West Kordofan are under RSF occupation and the conflict is continuous,' Ali said. 'In that state, Islamic Relief, Unicef and the WFP are trying to distribute aid.'
Ali said that away from Kordofan, 'the situation is improving. The local community has played a great role with the community kitchens, where they provide food for people,' referring to the kitchens run by Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, a network of mutual aid groups.
'They have managed to pass a difficult time,' Ali said, referring partly to the threatened withdrawal of US funding following the dismantling of USAID. 'But the situation is improving in different parts of the country.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Middle East Eye
7 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
'A distraction': Unrwa says Israeli and GHF claims over UN aid delivery are baseless
The United Nations Reliefs and Work Agency (Unrwa) has hit back at a smear campaign launched by Israel and the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) accusing the UN of failing to deliver aid and being responsible for the mass famine underway in Gaza. In a video placed by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, a narrator is heard saying: "While Israel cleared hundreds of trucks that crossed into Gaza, the UN refuses to distribute the aid. These trucks stand idle inside Gaza next to growing stockpiles of supplies. This is deliberate sabotage by the UN." The video then shows dozens of immobile trucks. Juliette Touma, director of communications at Unrwa, debunked the claims that trucks were sitting "idle" in Gaza, and aid within the enclave had not been delivered. "We have 6,000 trucks stuck in Jordan and Egypt full of food and medicines," Touma told Middle East Eye. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters "They have not been given the green light to get into Gaza where people are starving." Separately, the GHF chairman, evangelical Christian minister Reverend Johnnie Moore, wrote a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday and to the Under-Secretary General of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Tom Fletcher, on Tuesday, saying he wanted to collaborate with the UN and accused the UN of leaving aid abandoned in Gaza. In the letter addressed to Guterres, Moore wrote that he wished to collaborate with the UN. "The time has come to confront, without euphemism or delay, the structural failure of aid delivery in Gaza, and to course-correct decisively," he wrote. 'We have 6,000 trucks stuck in Jordan and Egypt full of food and medicines. They have not been given the green light to get into Gaza where people are starving' - Juliette Touma, Unrwa Moore said the "crisis was driven by the ability to deliver the food directly to those who need it. The UN's continued reliance on what it has termed 'existing infrastructure' has, in practice enabled the obstruction of aid". Moore blamed the failure of food delivery to civilians on the "manipulation of humanitarian flows by bad actors" without identifying who the "bad actors" were. He called on the UN to work directly with GHF to deliver "food at scale". In a letter to Fletcher, he accused the UN of leaving aid sitting around and failing to deliver it. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, also accused OCHA of being a "propaganda machine" against Israel, which he said purposely undercounts aid trucks heading into Gaza. The campaign comes as mass famine reaches critical levels with two million people on the brink of starvation in the enclave. 'A distraction to the inaction' Touma from Unrwa said that aid had been waiting to enter Gaza since 2 March. On 18 March, Israel abruptly ended the ceasefire that had been in place since 19 January, and has maintained a blockade on the Strip. Touma said there had to be "political will" for UN teams to enter, and added that the smears against the UN were "nothing new" and were distracting from the real issue: people starving in Gaza. "Distractions like these will delay actions that are needed. Children and adults are dying of starvation. Because of this scam of a distribution system [GHF], more than 1,000 starving people have been killed. "It's time to lift the siege, let aid in and release the hostages. It's time to allow Unrwa to do its work. There will be irreversible consequences if we do not." She advocated returning to the existing infrastructure in place managed by Unrwa. Unrwa has been banned from the occupied West Bank and Gaza since October. Children in Gaza show signs of malnutrition and abuse after detention in Israel Read More » She added that there was "a lot of manipulation of information" and called on media organisations to verify the videos being sent. "The media gets fixated on information that one side to the conflict is putting out. That's a distraction from the atrocities including the deliberate starvation of Palestinian people. "It's time for the media to verify these videos and geolocate the trucks and whether these videos are from Gaza or not, and when they were actually stationed there." Unrwa's Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Thursday that the mass starvation was "constructed and deliberate". In a statement, he said that GHF's flawed distribution system is not designed to address the humanitarian crisis. "It's serving military and political objectives. It's cruel as it takes more lives than it saves lives. Israel controls all aspects of humanitarian access, whether outside or within Gaza." He also said that airdrops – which Israel had approved – were "the most expensive and inefficient way to deliver aid". "It is a distraction to the inaction," he added. Starvation More than 100 humanitarian organisations warned on Wednesday that "mass famine" was spreading in the Gaza Strip after Israel blocked humanitarian aid from entering in early March and has been providing woefully inadequate aid via the controversial GHF since the end of May. MEE reported on Tuesday that renowned expert on famine, Professor Alex de Waal, accused Israel of "genocidal starvation" of Palestinians in Gaza with its continued deadly siege on the enclave. 'Because of this scam of a distribution system [GHF], more than 1,000 starving people have been killed' - Juliette Touma, Unrwa At least 122 Palestinians, including 80 children, have died of starvation since Israel's blockade resumed in March, including 15 who died of malnutrition on Monday, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at distribution sites run by the controversial GHF, in place since May and manned by Israeli soldiers and US security contractors. De Waal told MEE's live show on Tuesday that the UN is not in a position to declare famine due to Israel's obstruction of access to humanitarians and investigators who could gauge the extent of hunger. However, he said: "It is actually relatively straightforward if you are perpetrating a famine to shut out access to essential information and then say no one has declared famine. "Concealment of famine is an instrument of those who perpetrate it." De Waal added that famine is unfolding in Gaza in "a wholly predicted manner". De Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, affiliated with the Fletcher School of Global Affairs at Tufts University, and the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
Middle East Eye
8 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
US asked Saudi Arabia to send missile interceptors to Israel during Iran conflict. Riyadh refused
Israel was running low on Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) interceptors as Iranian ballistic missiles slammed into Israeli cities in June. The US asked Saudi Arabia to turn over interceptors to help the US ally in need. But Riyadh's response was "no", two US officials familiar with the talks told Middle East Eye. "During the war, we asked everyone to donate," one official told MEE. "When that didn't work, we tried deal-making. It wasn't aimed at one country." But Saudi Arabia was well placed to help Israel, and US officials have been keen to emphasise that Iran is a threat to them as well as Israel. The US has already deployed air defence systems to the oil-rich Gulf state, which until recently was targeted by Houthi missile and drone attacks. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters As Iran and Israel were fighting it out, the kingdom was preparing to receive the first THAAD battery it purchased with its own sovereign funds. In fact, the battery was inaugurated by the Saudi military on 3 July, just nine days after Israel and Iran reached a ceasefire. Just before the inauguration, US officials were concerned that a massive Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel would drain the US stockpile of interceptors to a "horrendous level". Middle East Eye was the first to report that Israel was rapidly depleting the US's stockpile of ballistic missile interceptors as well as Israel's arsenal of Arrow interceptors. The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian later confirmed MEE's report. The Guardian later reported in July that after the conflict, the US was only left with about 25 percent of the Patriot missile interceptors that planners at the Pentagon assess are needed for all US military operations globally. A US official confirmed that classified number to MEE. The US also fired the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) mounted on Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers to defend Israel. Iran receives Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries after Israel ceasefire deal Read More » Despite Israel's three-tiered air defence system being backed up by additional American firepower, Iran was able to send missiles into Israeli cities right up until the ceasefire was reached. The Telegraph reported that Iranian missiles directly hit five Israeli military facilities. Analysts say that the American and Israeli air defence systems held up better than some military planners anticipated, given the scale of Iran's barrages, but the Islamic Republic was able to exploit the system's weak spot, particularly as the conflict dragged on. "The weakness is that it is an enterprise where you are at risk of running out of your magazine depth. We only have so many interceptors and the ability to produce them," Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, previously told MEE. Amid the shortage, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that some US officials even discussed taking THAAD interceptors purchased by Saudi Arabia and diverting them to Israel. One US official confirmed to MEE that the talks took place after Saudi Arabia had rejected polite US overtures and deal-making efforts. Both US officials also told MEE that the US asked the United Arab Emirates to share interceptors with Israel. Neither would confirm if any arrived. The UAE was the first non-US country to purchase and operate the THAAD, which it activated in 2016. Iran's success breaching Israel's sophisticated air defences did not go unnoticed in the more lightly defended Gulf states, experts say. 'Israel paid a price' Scrambling the globe for interceptors has become a common job for a select few US officials as its allies, Israel and Ukraine, both face adversaries who rely on much cheaper ballistic missiles and drones. The US Department of Defense's office for policy has taken the lead in trying to cajole and coax US allies to share interceptors with Israel. The efforts were led by Christopher Mamaux, who is deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Global Partnerships. But Saudi Arabia's refusal to help Israel will sting officials in Washington. Before the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the US was working to integrate Israel's air defence system with Gulf allies in part of a much hyped "Middle East Nato". Instead, Gulf states sat out the Israel-Iran conflict and felt "vindicated" they had revived relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, analysts in the region told MEE. 'Vindicated': Unscathed by war, Gulf states look to capitalise on Israel and Iran's losses Read More » The Trump administration still says it wants to broker a normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But Riyadh and other Arab states are increasingly seeing Israel as an expansionist military power to check - not aid in a time of need. For example, Saudi Arabia lobbied the US for Syrian soldiers to deploy to southern Syria this month. Riyadh was upset that Israel launched strikes on Syrian government forces amid the sectarian clashes in the country. As the smoke clears from the Israel-Iran conflict, the flaws in Israel's missile defence system are being studied, and Iran is rebuilding its air defences with help from China, MEE has reported. As one Arab diplomat told MEE: "From our perspective the war ended well. Israel experienced the price of confronting a strong nation state." And Iran, trying to regroup from a blistering Israeli bombing campaign, is also becoming more dependent on the Gulf, too. "On Israel, the Saudi position has hardened in light of unchecked Israeli actions in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. With Iran now weakened, the kingdom is repositioning closer to Turkey & may even do the same with Iran," Firas Maksad, Eurasia Group's managing director for the Middle East and North Africa, recently wrote on X.
Middle East Eye
8 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Academics fear Columbia University's deal with Trump has wider ramifications
The US government intends to fine several universities it accuses of failing to stop antisemitism on campus in exchange for federal funding freezes to be lifted, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The strategy would see Harvard, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown universities targeted, according to a White House official, with Harvard being the main focus. All of the universities are currently in talks with President Donald Trump's administration over accusations by a federal task force committee that they have allowed antisemitism to fester on their campuses. The move comes after the administration successfully extracted $200m from Columbia to settle allegations that it violated Title VI by failing to address harassment of Jewish students, in exchange for restoring its federal grants. Now, the administration is looking to widen the net to other institutions and reportedly hopes to garner much more money from Harvard, which has an endowment of $53.2bn. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Critics believe the agreement with Columbia sets a dangerous precedent, and that these tactics can be used to change the academic landscape. Former Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke said that Columbia bent over backwards to appease the government by implementing the agreement in advance for months. This included adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, circumventing its senate to change the University Judicial Board rules/composition, and creating a new provostial position to monitor certain departments. Columbia University to pay $220m, undertake major reforms in bid to restore federal funding Read More » "It's an unusual tactic in normal times, to implement the terms of a settlement voluntarily before the full agreement is reached," she said. "But these are not normal times, and Columbia has shown itself more than willing to bend a knee to the Trump administration in the hopes that doing so will make things less bad." Harvard University has put up more of a fight and is currently suing the Trump administration in federal court, with one lawsuit claiming that the administration's freezing of more than $2bn in federal research money is illegal. Harvard is also being penalised by being cut off from future grants. Franke warned that the agreement was a slippery slope and that the government would weaponise the spectre of antisemitism to dismantle the institution. "This agreement is not the end of the story… it is merely the start of the next phase of the administration's campaign to use Columbia as an example for other universities. They won't let up, and the 'agreement' gives them all the power to keep weaponising the specter of antisemitism to dismantle a world-class university." Undermining the fightback Columbia's agreement with the Trump administration is also being seen as a move that undermines the fightback from Harvard and students and activists on campuses. A student, who wished to be anonymous and is a member of the pro-Palestine group Students for Justice in Palestine at Wesleyan College in Georgia, said: "What Harvard has done, at least legally, to combat the Trump administration is now being undercut by Colombia's capitulation. I think that it bodes very poorly for the climate of student activism in the coming year." 'The bottom line is ultimately more important than the purported mandate or principle of learning, freedom of thought and expression' - Kourouss Esmaili, scholar at Tufts Kouross Esmaeli, a visiting scholar at Tufts University in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora, said that plans to control universities expose the corporate nature of universities. "The bottom line is ultimately more important than the purported mandate or principle of learning, freedom of thought and expression," Esmaeli said. In an email he sent to Middle East Eye, he wrote: "The administration's use of federal funds to intimidate and transform higher education into an acquiescence factory is a serious compromise of our basic values and rights. "The people in charge of the corporate universities will continue to bend the knee to their sovereign in the name of saving their institution. But hopefully this is exposing the universities' complicity not only in the genocide in Palestine, but the larger American capitalist interests." Esmaeli says that the events demonstrate why universities have been so resistant to divest from Israel, a key demand from pro-Palestine protesters, and the US military-industrial complex.
