Army says it has taken Al-Khuwai and is moving on En Nahud in West Kordofan

Sudan Tribune, datelined Al-Khuwai, reported on 13 November that the Sudanese army and a joint force of allied armed movements took the West Kordofan town on Friday morning after an operation launched along multiple axes, having first secured Serif Ankoush, about 20 kilometres west on the road to En Nahud. The RSF has held both En Nahud and Al-Khuwai since May 2025. Anadolu Agency carried the same claim the same day in a file by Lina Altawell, adding that the RSF unit commander stationed in the area was killed — but placed the fighting in North Kordofan, not West Kordofan. The two outlets have not been reconciled. Liveuamap logged the Al-Khuwai capture as reported by the Sudanese Resistance Committees, a civilian activist network. Every version traces to military sources, a Joint Force spokesman, or videos posted by participating fighters; Sudan Tribune flagged its own video material as unverified.

Anadolu reported on 15 November, citing unnamed military sources and more fighter-posted video, that on Saturday the army and allied forces took three further areas east of Al-Nuhud — Khamasat, Markab and Umm Oweisha — and were continuing toward the city itself, which Anadolu places about 100 kilometres from Al-Khuway. No second outlet has carried that claim. Al Jazeera, in an analysis published 14 November from Khartoum, framed the campaign as having broken the RSF siege on El Obeid and opened routes toward South Kordofan and the approaches to North Darfur, including the En Nahud–Al-Khuwai road; it identifies En Nahud as a gold-mining site. The military expert Al-Rasheed Mohamed told Al Jazeera that “the military balance in Kordofan is shifting” and that “these developments significantly reduce the RSF’s chances of regaining lost territory,” crediting army air superiority, drone use and changed ground tactics.

The diplomatic track moved in the opposite direction on the same day. On 13 November the Quintet — the African Union, IGAD, the Arab League, the European Union and the United Nations — issued a joint statement on escalating drone attacks, naming strikes in Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, Blue Nile, Gadaref, Gezira, Sennar and the Red Sea. It called for a halt to hostilities and to attacks on civilian infrastructure, “including an end to external support that fuels the escalation,” urged backing for the Quad’s push for a humanitarian truce, and closed: “The guns need to be silenced.” Sudanhorizon, reporting from Addis Ababa on 14 November, added that the Quintet reaffirmed Sudan’s territorial integrity while rejecting parallel governments or structures — the standing reference to the RSF-aligned administration.

Assessment: Read the two documents against each other. The battlefield reporting is one army’s account of its own week, amplified by its own fighters' phone video and by an activist network sympathetic to it; the RSF’s silence is not corroboration, and the North-versus-West Kordofan discrepancy between Anadolu and Sudan Tribune is a reminder of how coarse the geography is in this copy. The Quintet text, meanwhile, is near-identical to statements it issued earlier in the year — party-neutral by design, naming no party as the one striking civilians, and calling for external support to end without saying whose. A force that believes the balance is shifting has the least reason of anyone to accept a truce this month.