Khartoum came under drone attack for a second consecutive day as Sudan's Rapid Support Forces widened operations against locations held by the army. A correspondent in the capital reported hearing drone and missile fire overhead on Thursday, after a larger coordinated wave struck Khartoum and other cities the previous day.
An army source said air-defence units engaged the incoming aircraft and shot them down. The source referred to the RSF as responsible, but the supplied account did not provide an independent tally of drones launched or intercepted. Images from northern Khartoum showed damage to a mosque wall and residents clearing debris said to have resulted from a drone strike. No casualty figure for Thursday's capital attacks was reported.
The renewed raids disrupted a period of relative quiet in Khartoum. Sudan's military regained the city last year in the war that has pitted it against the RSF since April 2023. On Wednesday, the paramilitary organization launched what was described as an extensive synchronized drone operation against the capital and army-controlled urban centres hundreds of kilometres apart.
Ground fighting also intensified southwest of Khartoum along the road to El-Obeid, a major Kordofan city. Sources aligned with both sides reported combat around Jabret al-Cheikh and Bara. An army source described numerous vehicles advancing against Jabret al-Cheikh after preparatory drone strikes. In El-Obeid, Wednesday's attacks killed two people, according to Emergency Lawyers, a rights group that tracks abuses during the conflict.
Farther east, the RSF mounted an operation at Kurmuk near Ethiopia, a strategically situated town the army had retaken the previous month. An RSF source claimed the paramilitaries had captured it, while a military source said the offensive originated from Ethiopian territory. Ethiopia denies accommodating RSF combatants, although local sources describe the difficult-to-police frontier as a supply corridor for the force and its partners.
The RSF consolidated control across much of Darfur last year and has sought new territory in Kordofan and near the southeastern border. The army controls much of Sudan's centre, north and east. Both commanders—army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—have resisted negotiations while seeking battlefield advantage.
Humanitarian workers estimate that the conflict has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced over 12 million. The United Nations describes Sudan as the world's gravest humanitarian crisis. The return of strikes to Khartoum shows that control of the capital has not insulated it from a war active across several distant fronts.
The previous month, government troops had pushed the RSF away from the highway between Khartoum and El-Obeid. Paramilitary leaders responded by threatening a broad retaliatory campaign. Thursday's activity across the capital, Kordofan and the Ethiopian frontier followed that warning, although no single source established central coordination among every reported engagement.
