Both sides say they hold the same four positions outside El Obeid, and neither command will say

Fierce clashes west and southwest of El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, on Thursday 5 November produced two mutually exclusive accounts, Darfur24 reported from the city on 6 November. The “joint force of armed struggle movements” — the Darfur armed-movement bloc fighting alongside the army — announced it had taken all four of Umm Samima, Kazqil, Al-Hamadi and Abu Qud, saying its troops operated with the army and other allied forces, launching “extensive military operations on the North Kordofan front before conducting clearance operations.” It put the materiel outcome at 40 combat vehicles destroyed and 43 captured with their equipment, with several RSF fighters killed and others fled. RSF fighters subsequently released videos claiming their forces still held the same four locations. Darfur24 notes that neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF had issued any official statement confirming control by the time of publication.

El Obeid is the pivot of the Kordofan campaign: the Critical Threats Project describes it as the SAF’s central Sudan headquarters, and the corridor through North Kordofan links the army’s eastern base to Darfur. For scale, Al Jazeera reported on 1 October that Kordofan’s three states had recorded 2,717 attacks — North Kordofan 1,205, or 44 per cent, South Kordofan 789 and West Kordofan 723, rising to 2,878 with Abyei — and that Sheikan locality, which contains El Obeid, accounted for 497 attacks on its own, 41 per cent of North Kordofan’s total. The same report put IDP returns at about 5.1 million by August 2026. The underlying dataset is not identified in the published excerpt.

Assessment: Note who is doing the claiming. The joint force, not the SAF general command, issued the 40-destroyed, 43-captured tally — and the Darfur movements have a standing interest in advertising their battlefield utility to Port Sudan, where their political weight depends on it. The RSF’s answer was video, which is cheap to post and, without geolocation, proves little. The army’s silence is the most informative element: a general command that had taken four positions on the El Obeid approaches would normally say so. Until either a command statement or geolocated footage lands, treat the encirclement of El Obeid as unchanged.