Sudan’s army says it took 11 areas in western North Kordofan, and no one has confirmed it
The SAF general command’s account of a push toward the Darfur border is uncorroborated by any third party, and the RSF has said nothing. If it holds, the siege framing that dominated the first half of 2026 is obsolete.
On Thursday 17 September the Sudanese Armed Forces general command announced that its troops and allied forces had taken 11 areas in North Kordofan after fighting with the Rapid Support Forces: Kajmar, Sharshar, Al-Baniyah Al-Kurayniyah, Al-Qulay’at, Awlad Hazmah, Magwildat, Rayshan, Al-Qaa, Ghabat Al-Laqad, Al-Kukaiti and the area around Al-Mazrub. The offensive targeted RSF positions near Sodari, Umm Badr and Hamrat al-Sheikh in the west of the state; SAF said it pursued retreating fighters toward the Darfur border and is sweeping west of the state capital, El Obeid. Sudan Tribune places the push along the Forty Days Road, the desert corridor linking Kordofan to Darfur, and reports it follows weeks of SAF drone strikes along that route. An unnamed general command spokesperson said operations would continue until state authority is restored and civilians protected. Sudan Tribune states the RSF did not immediately respond and that it could not independently verify the account.
The claim sits on top of a real July shift. On 25 July SAF and allied forces retook Bara — North Kordofan’s second city, roughly 45 km east of El Obeid — along with Al-Baraka and Um Sayala, a sequence Ahram Online reported the following day from the General Command’s own announcement. Mutawakil Ali Wakeel, spokesman for the Joint Force, confirmed on the record that Al-Baraka, Um Sayala, Um Qurfa, Jabrat Al-Sheikh and Bara had been secured by the army, the Joint Force, Qashan forces and supporting troops. Sudan Tribune’s analysis at the time held that Um Sayala, near the export road to Omdurman, opened a supply corridor into El Obeid. Military officials, unnamed, told the same outlet 73 RSF armoured vehicles were destroyed at Bara — a battle-damage figure supplied by the winning side and worth nothing more than that. Minni Minawi, governor of the Darfur Region, praised this week’s advance on X.
Assessment: The useful thing here is not the 11 place names, which may or may not survive contact with satellite imagery, but what they retire. In January the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab was warning of an imminent RSF siege of El Obeid; by 6 July Al Jazeera was asking whether the city would be Sudan’s next el-Fasher. Any copy still running that frame is describing a battlefield that changed in late July. Note too the sourcing chain: Sudan Tribune’s own 18 September backgrounder misdates the Bara capture to late June, contradicting its reporting of 25 July. Small errors compound in a war covered largely through belligerent statements. Treat RSF silence as data, not as concession.