The Rapid Support Forces have taken the Sudanese city of al-Nahud, a strategic junction in West Kordofan that opens toward Darfur, according to sources cited by Al Jazeera. Local reporting in the supplied evidence says the fighting killed 19 people and wounded 37 others.
Al-Nahud matters because of its geography as much as its immediate toll. The city sits on a route that links central Sudan to Darfur, and the evidence says control over it gives the RSF a strategic advantage in its effort to push toward el-Fasher, the main population center in Darfur still held by the Sudanese Armed Forces. The report places el-Fasher about 400 kilometers west of al-Nahud.
The supplied source says the RSF announced on Telegram that it had “liberated” the city from the army on Thursday. Local sources told Al Jazeera that RSF fighters rampaged through neighborhoods and looted the market, houses and cars as they overcame the SAF garrison. The excerpt also says the dead included a doctor, a journalist and a police officer, underscoring that the violence spread beyond the front line and into civilian space.
The battle for al-Nahud is part of a wider escalation in Darfur. Al Jazeera’s report cites the United Nations as saying 542 people were killed in Darfur in the previous three weeks. The city’s fall also comes after the RSF lost Khartoum last month, suggesting the paramilitary force is concentrating on western territory while still trying to keep pressure on the capital.
The article notes that the RSF has intensified its campaign around el-Fasher and the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled across the desert toward Tawila. That movement of displaced civilians shows the conflict is not just about territorial lines but about who can still live in or move through the region.
The same source says the RSF has also renewed attacks around Khartoum, including shelling the presidential palace and the army’s General Command headquarters. That detail matters because it indicates the war remains multi-front rather than shifting cleanly from one theater to another.
The evidence also quotes UN human rights chief Volker Türk saying the “horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” a line that reflects the broader alarm over mass killings and extrajudicial violence. The report attributes this warning to deaths in Darfur and abuses in Khartoum state.
What the supplied material does not provide is an independent battlefield count, an official SAF response or confirmation of how long the RSF can hold the city. It does establish that al-Nahud has fallen, that civilians were among the dead and wounded, and that the result reshapes the western front of Sudan’s war.
