The army says it has taken Al-Mazroub; the drones say the front has not moved

The Sudanese army said on Friday 2 October that it had captured Al-Mazroub in North Kordofan after fierce clashes, in a months-long campaign fought alongside allied formations including the Joint Force and aimed, Sudan Tribune reported, at severing the RSF supply corridors linking Darfur to central Kordofan. Al Jazeera Arabic carried the army statement describing “heavy losses in lives and vehicles” inflicted on the RSF, without a figure; no RSF comment was retrieved. Al Arabiya reported on 3 October that Umm Kuraydim is the last crossing point between North and West Kordofan, the state that forms the RSF’s forward defence for Darfur. In the same report Mutawakil Wakil, spokesman for the Joint Forces — a SAF-aligned party — said RSF fighters had killed 23 civilians in the Umm Badr area. That figure rests on one belligerent spokesman, carried by two Saudi-owned channels. The direction of travel is nonetheless notable: AEI’s Africa File of 18 June assessed that the RSF was setting conditions and organising logistics for an offensive on el-Obeid itself.

What is verifiable is what lands. An RSF drone struck a university dormitory in El Obeid on Thursday 1 October, killing five civilians and wounding 47, according to a Sudanese medical network cited by Sudan Tribune; Reuters imagery from 3 October shows debris inside the College of Development and Technological Sciences. UNFPA recorded in July that drone attacks on El Obeid had become near-daily, part of a campaign to impose siege-like conditions on a city whose siege the army formally lifted on 23 February 2025. The pattern now extends east. On 4 October the RSF-allied SPLM-N said allied forces had captured Al-Kadalou, a border zone in Roseires locality near the Blue Nile capital; the military said it had repelled the advance. Neither claim is verified. The day before, Sudan Tribune reported loitering munitions hitting Ed Damazin at dawn, the third such attack in about two weeks, and an unnamed Sudanese government source told Al Jazeera that drones had damaged the Blue Nile governor’s home without injuring him.

Assessment: Ground gains in Kordofan are announced by the side that makes them and measured in towns; the RSF’s answer is measured in airframes, and it does not require holding ground. That asymmetry is why a SAF advance toward Umm Kuraydim and a near-daily drone campaign against el-Obeid are not contradictory readings of the same war. Hold the Al-Kadalou claim and counter-claim as the week’s cleanest example of a claim that is not yet an event. And connect it to Friday: the measures the Council may or may not renew cover Darfur and say nothing about the drones now reaching Roseires, 700 kilometres from the territory the embargo names.