Army claims Hamrat al-Wiz as the question of who holds Kordofan stays unsettled
Sudanese Armed Forces say they expelled the RSF from a highway town in North Kordofan on 6 September and are massing for Sodari. The second half of that is one outlet’s unnamed military sources.
Sudan Tribune, datelined El Obeid, reported on 6 September that the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied formations took Hamrat al-Wiz in North Kordofan, expelling the Rapid Support Forces from a town on the principal highway linking the state to Khartoum. The capture claim is anchored to named, filmed testimony: Malik al-Burof, an SAF field commander, said outside the captured police headquarters that “the army, the Joint Force, and Special Task units have liberated Hamrat al-Wiz and expelled the RSF,” adding that troops would push on toward the RSF’s remaining footholds. It follows a late-July sequence in which the army retook Bara, Al-Baraka and Um Sayala and restored control of the Export Road, pushing RSF units toward the Darfur border. Sudan Tribune also reports near-daily SAF drone strikes on RSF convoys across western North Kordofan.
What comes next is thinner. The same outlet’s unnamed military sources say the army is moving heavy reinforcements through Bara and Jabrat al-Sheikh to assault Sodari, one of North Kordofan’s largest localities and, per a 29 July report from the same sourcing, the gateway to the desert route into Darfur. Two reports, one outlet, unnamed sources both times. Against that, the AEI-linked Critical Threats tracker judged on 20 August that the RSF was counter-attacking SAF’s Kordofan gains. Neither read has been settled by a published map. The cost is documented: Al Jazeera, citing UN figures, reported more than 200,000 people newly displaced in Kordofan as of 20 August, many of them moving toward El Obeid, a city the RSF has itself besieged through 2026.
Assessment: Watch for a dateline, not a communiqué. If Sodari is taken, reporters file from Sodari or Um Badr; if the claim was positioning ahead of a stalled push, the story simply stops being mentioned. Treat the vehicle-count genre with particular suspicion — Sudan’s defence ministry claimed 73 RSF vehicles destroyed at Bara in July, Cairo’s Youm7 claimed 38 destroyed and 27 seized in West Darfur in August, Al Arabiya headlined a defection worth “50 combat vehicles.” Three ownership structures, three round numbers, no independent verification of any of them. The displacement figures, from UN agencies, are the part of this file that has an auditable method.