Sudan’s army says it holds al-Mazroub as El Obeid behind the front line keeps failing

The Sudanese Armed Forces General Command said on Friday 2 October that its troops and allied forces had taken full control of al-Mazroub in western North Kordofan after “fierce battles,” claiming casualties and heavy combat-vehicle losses inflicted on the Rapid Support Forces. Mohamed Deidan, spokesman for the army’s special forces, told Anadolu: “The Sudanese army has taken full control of Al-Mazroub after battles with the Rapid Support Forces,” calling the advance a major turning point in the Kordofan fighting. The General Command statement, carried by Al Jazeera English, urged “citizens in the liberated areas to rest assured and return to their normal lives.” Anadolu and Eastleigh Voice place the town roughly 90 km west of Bara, on the link between North and West Kordofan; Asharq Al-Awsat notes it came one week after SAF retook Sodari, also in North Kordofan.

Two things are missing from the record. The first is the RSF, which issued no comment on al-Mazroub that this desk could retrieve, and no denial. The second is verification: no satellite work, humanitarian access report or third-party assessment of SAF control has surfaced in the 48 hours since the announcement. A Sudanese army source told Al Jazeera that al-Mazroub was the RSF’s largest stronghold in North Kordofan — an unnamed source from one belligerent, characterising the value of its own gain, and a line already being reproduced by aggregators without that qualifier. Meanwhile Security Council Report’s October forecast records that El Obeid, the regional capital the westward advance is meant to insulate, has roughly doubled in population from displacement inflows, remains under siege-like conditions, and is facing worsening water shortages, a cholera outbreak and mounting reports of sexual violence.

Assessment: The pattern is the story: Sodari, then al-Mazroub, two announcements in seven days, both from the same General Command, neither tested by anyone outside it. That does not make them false — SAF has been advancing in Kordofan — but it means the public map of this war is currently being drawn by one party’s press office. Note also the structural tilt in the available record this weekend: RSF and Tasis made no retrievable statement on any front, so the volume of SAF claims is partly a function of who is talking, not of who is winning. The harder question nobody has answered is whether El Obeid is being relieved or encircled. Ground taken 90 km west does not deliver water into a city with cholera.