At least three people were killed and nine others wounded when the Rapid Support Forces launched a drone strike on the Sudanese city of el-Obeid, according to military sources cited by Al Jazeera.
The attack hit a square near a police station in the Tayba neighbourhood of the North Kordofan city on Saturday afternoon. Several of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition. The strike is the latest sign that the RSF is expanding the use of drones as the war shifts into the strategically important Kordofan region.
The city of el-Obeid matters because it sits within an area that links the war’s western and central fronts and contains oil infrastructure that has economic significance for both Sudan and South Sudan. As the fighting moves away from Darfur and deeper into Kordofan, the region is becoming more central to the conflict’s likely outcome.
The report said Sudanese Armed Forces had earlier struck RSF positions in Um Adara in South Kordofan, while RSF fighters shelled Um Rawaba in the north, causing civilian casualties. The group also targeted army positions in Kosti, in White Nile state, destroying a military vehicle and injuring its crew. That pattern suggests the conflict is increasingly mobile, with both sides carrying out attacks across multiple states rather than holding fixed front lines.
The broader military picture is worsening for the army-aligned government. Al Jazeera noted that the RSF recently seized the Heglig oilfield in West Kordofan after government forces withdrew, a loss that threatens revenue streams and strategic supply routes. The same report said the army was also pulling back from Babnusa, another important location in West Kordofan.
Taken together, these developments show a war evolving into a contest for central territory, oil assets and logistics routes. Kordofan has become the hinge region between the west, the capital-linked north and the south, and control there could shape the next phase of the war.
Civilian harm has become a defining feature of the fighting. The attack on el-Obeid did not hit a military base but a public area near a police station, which means ordinary residents remained exposed even as the battlefield shifted. The wounded count also indicates that, although the death toll was limited, the strike was still capable of causing serious casualties in a crowded urban setting.
The RSF’s use of drones signals a further escalation in tactics. Air power had once been associated mainly with the state military, but the spread of drone warfare has changed that equation. In Kordofan, as elsewhere in Sudan, the result is a widening geography of fear with no clear safe zone for civilians.
