El Obeid is being degraded by drone rather than taken by assault, and the numbers around it are worsening
The fact-finding mission’s freshest line is that RSF strikes on El Obeid between July and August progressively destroyed the infrastructure of a city of half a million. The IPC’s own projection for that same window put 200,000 Sudanese in catastrophic hunger.
OHCHR’s 3 September release states that repeated RSF drone strikes on El Obeid, North Kordofan, “especially between July and August 2026,” progressively degraded essential infrastructure in a city already under severe strain and partial siege. That is the most recent authoritative characterisation available. Earlier in the year the High Commissioner, Volker Türk, told the Human Rights Council the attacks were “relentless”; UN News reports his office documented 15 drone strikes on El Obeid and surrounding areas within three weeks in June, killing at least 45 civilians, in a city of more than half a million residents plus at least 100,000 displaced people, many from El Fasher. NPR quoted Türk warning of the risk of atrocities there: “This is not a drill.” Mona Rishmawi of the fact-finding mission put it more plainly after speaking to residents: “Fear is pervasive.”
The word siege is carrying weight it cannot quite bear. The Security Council Report’s September forecast notes the SAF launched a major offensive in North Kordofan in late July and announced the recapture of the Al Sadarat highway and five towns including Bara, Um Sayala and Gebrat al-Sheikh — SCR’s verb is “announced” — and that the army has since consolidated much of the corridor while the RSF continues to challenge those gains. France 24 reported the army saying it had effectively blocked the siege, with the RSF answering by increasing drone strikes. The hunger data is firmer. The IPC’s February–May 2026 analysis found nearly 19.5 million people, about 41 per cent of the population, in Phase 3 or above, including nearly 135,000 in Phase 5, and projected Phase 5 rising to roughly 200,000 by September across North and South Darfur and South and West Kordofan. Nutrition surveys in Um Baru, North Darfur, found global acute malnutrition of 52.9 per cent.
Assessment: Two things the file resists. First, the direction of travel is not uniform: the previous IPC round recorded an estimated 3.4 million people no longer in Phase 3 or above, following stabilisation in Khartoum, Al Jazirah and Sennar. That number will be misused by both sides — as proof of recovery, or buried. Second, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab’s January imagery of earthworks along El Obeid’s exit routes attributed the construction to the SAF and allied groups, not the RSF; encirclement is not solely an RSF project. Note also that displacement totals do not agree — Reuters says over 14 million, HRW 11.8 million as of September 2025. Date whichever you use.