Flattened houses and rubble where a school once stood: These are the scenes that have appeared in footage of the Sudanese city of El Obeid published by Ayin Network, a nonpartisan Sudanese media outlet. Drone attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have caused enormous damage to civilian infrastructure, including power grids, transformers, water treatment plants, schools, universities and hospitals in the capital of North Kordofan.
The local population is struggling to survive, according to Ahmed Awad, project manager for the UK children’s rights organization Plan International, and a native of El Obeid. The city — whose population previously numbered half a million but has now become home to several hundred thousand internally displaced persons (IDP) — is under siege, he added.
There is a shortage of medical supplies as well as food and safe, clean water, and Awad said he saw long queues of IDPs at just one water pump: “Sometimes you can spend all day to get one liter of water for two or three days.”
He added that a drone had hit a primary school and killed three children, which had caused trauma among other children, many of whom no longer dared go to school.
“One of the mothers said three of her children cannot sleep because always they are in fear of something happening again,” he said, adding that Plan International tried “to provide psychosocial support” for people scared of drones that could hit a classroom at any time.
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El Obeid: trading hub in the desert
El Obeid is a strategically important location. The city is a trading hub in the middle of the desert on the only major route between Sudan’s capital, Khartoum — which is controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — and the western Darfur region, large parts of which are under the control of the RSF. Since the war began in 2023, the city has been captured by the RSF and recaptured by the army and allied militias many times.
El Obeid is currently controlled by the army, which has some 13,000 soldiers stationed there, and has been on the front line since fighting shifted from Darfur to Kordofan at the beginning of the year. The RSF has deployed troops to about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) beyond the city limits, and has been using drones to bomb civilian infrastructure.
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‘Hallmarks of genocide’
Analysts, aid organizations and the United Nations have warned that the RSF could soon capture El Obeid. They fear a similar scenario to that which unfolded in the city of El Fasher in the neighboring state of North Darfur in October 2025, when the RSF began by bombing infrastructure before storming the city after an 18-month siege.
Earlier this year, a UN Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva detailed atrocities in the capture of the El Fasher and identified “hallmarks of genocide.”
A joint appeal issued by several human rights organizations warned that an escalation of the situation could lead to a repeat of atrocities and human rights violations, as documented in El Fasher. “We are alarmed by the ongoing hostilities around the city, including frequent drone strikes,” said Pekka Haavisto, the UN secretary general’s personal envoy for Sudan, in June: “These are already affecting the civilians and affecting humanitarian aid to the city. Any further escalation of the situation would place thousands of people at risk.”
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Schools and hospitals turned into barracks
Adam Mousa Eshag, director of the Sudanese organization Darfur Victims Support Organization (DVS), is currently based in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. He is in constant contact with people in Sudan and El Obeid for his research, for which he also spoke to SAF soldiers. He explained that one reason the RSF was bombing schools is that SAF soldiers had turned classrooms into barracks.
He said that this was also the case in El Fasher, when the army “used schools and even hospitals as barracks.” He said soldiers were repeating this scenario in El Obeid and that was “the problem,” as when the RSF attacked, “civilians paid the price” because they were being used as “human shields.”
Francesco Lanino, deputy country director of Save the Children in Sudan, said the drone strikes targeting schools and IDP camps were causing severe trauma. “We met several children who refused to talk,” he said, reporting on a recent visit to the Tawila IDP camp near El Fasher. “It’s hard for them to understand why all of this is happening.”
This article was translated from German.
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