Sudan’s army says it took al-Mazroub, the eighth territorial claim in North Kordofan since March
The SAF announced the capture of what an anonymous military source called the RSF’s largest remaining stronghold in North Kordofan. No independent verification exists, and the RSF has not responded.
On Friday 2 October the Sudanese Armed Forces said they had seized al-Mazroub in North Kordofan, in a statement carried by Al Jazeera and Anadolu. The military said the fighting caused casualties among RSF personnel and heavy losses of combat vehicles, without giving numbers for either side. “The Armed Forces urge citizens in the liberated areas to rest assured and return to their normal lives,” the statement said. SAF Special Forces spokesman Mohammed Deidan told Anadolu, in Al Jazeera’s summary, that the town links North and West Kordofan and that its capture advanced the army’s goal of cutting RSF supply lines. An unnamed Sudanese army source — a belligerent, speaking anonymously — told Al Jazeera that al-Mazroub was the RSF’s largest stronghold in the state. The RSF had issued no response at time of filing.
The claim is the eighth in a seven-month sequence, and the sequence is less linear than either side’s messaging. Sudan Tribune reported SAF and allied Joint Forces retaking Bara — the state’s second-largest city, roughly 45 kilometres east of El Obeid — on 5 March 2026; the RSF seized it back ten days later on 16 March, claiming to have killed 500 soldiers and captured 45 vehicles, figures Reuters said it could not verify. A further SAF and Joint Force advance on 25 July claimed Bara again along with Al-Baraka, Um Sayala, Um Qurfa and Jabrat Al-Sheikh, with officials saying 73 RSF vehicles were destroyed. Claims followed on Hamrat al-Wiz (6 September), eleven named areas (around 17 September), al-Jamama (around 19 September) and Sodari (25 September). Sudan Tribune tied the push to weeks of drone strikes along the Forty Days Road, the desert corridor to Darfur.
Assessment: Read the table, not the latest line. Bara alone has changed hands at least four times since March, which is what a contested corridor looks like rather than a collapsing front. Every entry rests on SAF, Joint Force or RSF statements, corroborated largely by footage on pro-army channels; Minni Minnawi’s habit of announcing Joint Force gains on X before official confirmation inflates the tempo further. The more informative data point is the silence: across four territorial claims in three weeks, no recorded RSF rebuttal surfaced in the outlets reachable today. That is either a paramilitary that has conceded the Kordofan information space, or a gap in our own coverage. Do not yet assume the first.