A new drone campaign in Kordofan

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have intensified deadly drone attacks on government-held towns in North Kordofan, Reuters reported on September 24. Residents describe an apparent new campaign after several weeks in which the RSF had scaled back such attacks under international pressure. The RSF did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment but has said it does not intentionally target civilians.

Two strikes illustrate the pattern:

  • On September 8, a drone hit a crowded courtroom in the government-held town of Um Ruwaba, killing about 10 people and injuring dozens, according to Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese human-rights monitor. Reuters journalists filmed the aftermath at the site.
  • A day later, a drone struck the College of Development and Technological Sciences in El Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital. The dean, Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, said a security guard was killed and eight classrooms were damaged.

The United Nations says drone attacks by both sides killed more than 1,000 civilians in the first half of 2026, Reuters reported.

The shadow of El Fasher

The escalation carries a grim precedent. The UN's Fact-Finding Mission concluded that the RSF's assault on El Fasher — which fell to the RSF in late October 2025 after an 18-month siege — killed at least 60,000 people and bore the "hallmarks of genocide," with ethnically targeted killings and widespread sexual violence, according to Inter Press Service's September 21 reporting.

The RSF are now attacking El Obeid, a city of around half a million people, where RSF drones have hit hospitals and schools — raising fears of a repeat of El Fasher.

The world's largest humanitarian crisis

The war has produced the world's largest humanitarian crisis by displacement: over 11 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan or to surrounding countries, according to UNHCR figures cited by IPS, and around 20 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme. (Displacement estimates vary by source and reporting date; some September 2026 reporting puts the figure at 12–13 million.)

Khartoum itself is relatively quiet after the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) recaptured the capital last year — the curfew was recently lifted — while fighting is concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions in the west and Blue Nile state in the southeast.

The arms-embargo fight

In August, the US government proposed a UN Security Council resolution expanding the arms embargo — currently limited to Darfur — to the whole country, explicitly including drones. The Sudanese government condemned the proposal and Russia rejected it, which, given Russia's veto power, means it will not advance unless watered down, IPS reported.

A proxy war sustained from outside

The UN's Fact-Finding Mission found that multiple foreign powers supply weapons, personnel, and logistical support to both sides, making the war a proxy conflict sustained by outside self-interest, according to IPS. The mission's reporting names states including Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Turkey, and Ukraine as backing the SAF, and the UAE, Chad, Kenya, and Ethiopia among those backing the RSF. Most named states deny involvement.

In June, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and a group of civil society organizations made a legal submission to the International Criminal Court asking it to investigate several foreign officials for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes in Sudan, with evidence concerning the governments of Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and the UAE. Also in June, the ICC announced it had "concrete evidence" linking RSF leaders to atrocities in El Fasher.

What to watch

Whether the drone campaign on El Obeid continues to intensify, whether any version of the expanded arms embargo advances at the Security Council, and whether the ICC moves from evidence-gathering to action. On the ground, the trajectory points toward more of what the UN has already documented: a war increasingly fought from the air, with civilians absorbing the cost.