An alliance of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu launched an attack on Qaysan in the Blue Nile region, the local provincial government said. Fighting centered on approaches to the provincial headquarters, while regional media reported that RSF fighters reached the town's main market.
The provincial administration said Sudanese army units and allied forces were still fighting across several axes around Qaysan. Its statement used highly charged language to condemn the attackers and portrayed the operation as an assault on civilians and agricultural communities. Because that account came from a party aligned with one side of the conflict, its characterizations cannot be treated as independently verified findings.
Media platforms in Blue Nile reported that RSF personnel entered the principal market, looted it and fired at civilians. The supplied Sudan Tribune report did not provide casualty totals, name witnesses or include a response from the RSF or SPLM-N. Those allegations therefore remain attributed to the regional reports that carried them.
Qaysan's government said the attack coincided with the agricultural season, when residents were working their land. It alleged that crops were burned, civilians were frightened and people were displaced. The administration further labeled attacks on farmers a war crime. The evidence extract contains no independent legal assessment and does not establish the scale of any burning or displacement, so those points are presented as the government's claims rather than settled facts.
The assault added another active front in Blue Nile, where the RSF–SPLM-N alliance and Sudan's military have contested territory during 2026. Sudan Tribune reported that the army retook Kurmuk from the alliance in June. The region had become a renewed theater of fighting in February.
Kurmuk and Qaysan also have a much longer history as contested places. Before the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed a peace agreement in 2005, the two towns repeatedly changed hands during 22 years of war, according to the supplied report. That history does not determine the outcome of the latest attack, but it underscores the strategic and political significance of renewed combat in the area.
Sudan's government has accused neighboring Ethiopia of helping sustain the Blue Nile conflict by allowing fighters to cross its territory and by hosting recruitment camps for RSF members transferred largely from Darfur. The excerpt did not provide an Ethiopian response or independent evidence for those accusations. They are therefore claims by the Sudanese authorities, not verified conclusions.
The immediate military situation in Qaysan was unresolved in the evidence available for August 11. The provincial statement said fighting continued, while the market reports indicated that attackers had penetrated at least part of the town. There was no confirmed account of which force controlled the provincial headquarters, whether the alliance held the market afterward, or how many combatants and civilians had been killed or injured.
What the supplied evidence establishes is the outbreak of a major assault involving the RSF and SPLM-N alliance and continuing resistance by army-aligned forces. Reports of looting, attacks on civilians, crop destruction and displacement require corroboration as access and reporting conditions permit.
