ACLED Counts 63 Dead Along the Chad Border as the RSF Burns North Darfur’s Zaghawa Belt

In an expert comment dated 23 July and headlined “Where is Sudan’s frontline moving next?”, ACLED Sudan researcher Ali Mahmoud Ali writes that “ACLED records 63 fatalities across Tina, Karnoi, and Um Baru localities in North Darfur since June 2026.” The commentary describes Rapid Support Forces attacks on roughly ten Zaghawa villages and towns along the western border with Chad, several of them burned, with mass civilian displacement following; the offensive then expanded into Um Baru locality, which RSF forces attacked and seized, drawing in the Darfur Joint Forces backed by the Sudanese Armed Forces. The sequence tracks earlier reporting from Sudan Tribune, which on 5 July described ethnically motivated attacks on six villages near Tine that pushed thousands across the border into Chad, days after Joint Force advances. Middle East Monitor reported similar destruction on 7 July, sourced to survivors rather than independent verification.

The border districts are also where the war’s pattern of striking water has recurred. Sudan Tribune reported on 21 July that at least 21 civilians were killed and dozens injured in a drone strike on a vital water source in the Tina region — an attack the paper said was “likely” carried out by the RSF, a hedge worth keeping. Its correspondent described recent weeks of escalating drone attacks on Tina that have burned markets and civilian vehicles. Some 700 kilometres east, UNFPA’s flash update of 2 July found that near-daily drone strikes on El Obeid have systematically targeted power substations, fuel stations, water facilities and healthcare infrastructure. CNN reported on 20 July that El Obeid, a city of half a million hosting nearly 100,000 displaced people, has faced its most intense RSF attacks yet; Save the Children counted more than 11,000 people, including over 5,500 children, fleeing the surrounding area in a fortnight.

Assessment: ACLED’s figure is the most defensible number on this desk: named researcher, three named localities, an explicit start date. Almost everything else circulating from the border this week is not. The SAF’s own claims — 205 vehicles and four Chinese-made FH-95 drones destroyed in a fortnight, a third FH-95 downed near El Obeid on 20 July — are belligerent battle-damage arithmetic, and the most recent of them reached us only through an unbylined aggregator feed. What the ACLED reading changes is the map: the RSF is now working a Zaghawa constituency whose displacement flows land inside Chad, which makes this a cross-border political problem for N’Djamena, not only a Darfur one.