SAF Sources Say They Bombed the Libya–Egypt Border Triangle Mada Masr Reported Shut in April

The New Arab reported on 7 August that military sources in the Sudanese army told it the army had launched airstrikes against the RSF near the Sudan–Libya–Egypt border, described as a key path linking the paramilitary to outside support, and that in fighting in West Darfur the army killed RSF Major General Madhi Adam Ismail while repelling an offensive. Every element of that is an anonymous SAF source describing SAF operations to a single outlet, including a claimed enemy general killed; no RSF confirmation was located. Mada Masr reported on 2 April that the same border triangle corridor was effectively closed after Egypt cautioned eastern Libyan leaders against using it to move RSF shipments, with strategic value shifting toward the Zaghawa border areas with Chad. Either the corridor reopened, or one of the two accounts overstated its case.

Leena Badri, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told The New Arab the army has in recent days attempted to cut off outside supplies to the RSF, and that footage and images of Pakistani weapons in Sudanese army hands — following reports of an Islamabad–Khartoum arms deal brokered by Saudi Arabia — indicate confidence that international backing is holding. She noted the RSF still controls much of West and South Kordofan and retains the ability to mobilise recruits and external support. Separately, FDD’s Long War Journal reported on 6 August that the RSF had announced a recalibration of its forces; the piece is illustrated with an RSF media department image of a recruitment committee meeting a Fur tribal delegation.

Assessment: The Pakistani channel is the thread worth pulling, and it is currently the weakest sourced: Badri’s reading of open-source imagery layered on prior reporting, unverified here. If a Saudi-brokered Pakistani pipeline into Port Sudan is real, Riyadh stops being a mediator in this war and becomes a supplier, which changes who can convene a ceasefire. Two other cautions. The New Arab is Qatari-owned and unsympathetic to Abu Dhabi; that does not make the reporting wrong, but the sourcing is one-sided. And on the week’s evidence the highest-casualty drone strike was the army’s — at least 35 killed at a court in RSF-held North Darfur on 2 August, per Emergency Lawyers via Al Jazeera, 37 in CFR’s count of the same event.