Al-Atta Promises the RSF Is Finished by December While UN Experts Warn El Obeid Could Be the Next El Fasher
NPR reports UN experts fear large-scale atrocities in North Kordofan’s besieged capital. The army’s chief of staff says the war ends this year. Both statements were made in the same week, about the same city.
NPR published a reported piece on El Obeid on 7 August built around UN experts warning of “a new risk of large-scale atrocities” in the North Kordofan capital — a risk NPR reports they compare to El Fasher last year, when the RSF killed some 6,000 civilians in crimes UN investigators later found bore “the hallmarks of genocide.” Residents describe skies filled with drones, sometimes as many as 40 at a time. The International NGO Safety Organisation records North Kordofan as the state with the highest number of drone attacks in Sudan in 2026, and NPR notes explicitly that both sides use them. More than 100,000 displaced people shelter in camps in and around the city, some facing extreme hunger, with cholera worsening and critical water shortages. Satellite imagery dated 2 August shows a displacement camp there growing rapidly. ACLED’s count, via NPR, is at least 59,000 killed since April 2023, with the true toll likely higher.
Four days earlier, SAF Chief of Staff Yasser al-Atta said the army was advancing on all fronts and aimed to eliminate the RSF before the end of the year, a statement carried by Anadolu on 4 August and by Sudan Tribune on 3 August, tied to gains along the Omdurman–El Obeid road. Sudan Tribune reported on 1 August, citing military sources, that the army was consolidating control of the Export road linking El Obeid to Khartoum despite intense RSF drone attacks. Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi told reporters on 4 August that the army and allied forces had defeated the RSF at Hajar al-Marafieen and Bir Saliba in North Darfur. Against that, the researcher Eric Reeves told NPR this week: “There is no likelihood of a military rescue of el-Obeid.” Esperanza Santos, MSF’s Sudan emergency coordinator, told NPR: “Many families are struggling to meet their basic needs in IDP camps.”
Assessment: The two claims are not in contradiction and reading them as rival propaganda misses the point. Highway consolidation and urban siege relief are different military problems, and al-Atta — who said in April 2023 the war would be over in two weeks, a record The New Arab reports analysts raised against his December pledge — has an incentive to conflate them. Two cautions. The atrocity warning is attributed by NPR to “UN experts” with no named mechanism; until it is pinned to OHCHR, the Fact-Finding Mission or the genocide-prevention adviser, the week’s strongest item has a soft centre. And El Obeid does not appear in the IPC’s confirmed-famine list, which covers El Fasher town and Kadugli. Whether the next round adds it is the number to watch.