The United Nations has issued a "red alert" over el-Obeid, the capital of Sudan's North Kordofan state, where roughly 500,000 people — including about 105,000 already displaced with nowhere left to flee — are trapped as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensify a drone-led siege of the city. The UN human rights office warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe as el-Obeid shapes up as the next major battleground between the RSF and the Sudanese army.
The immediate toll is mounting fast. Ten consecutive days of drone strikes killed at least 50 civilians across el-Obeid and North Kordofan and damaged critical infrastructure, including the power station, disrupting water supplies and hospital services. UNICEF called the situation "particularly alarming" and said drone strikes and other attacks have caused more than 35 child casualties in the state since May, among them at least 18 children killed.
Those local figures sit inside a grim national tally. UNICEF reports that more than 300 children have been killed or injured across Sudan in the first six months of 2026 alone, with Darfur and Kordofan recording the highest levels of child casualties. Sudan's war has now killed at least 59,000 people, displaced about 13 million and left more than 30 million in need of humanitarian aid, with parts of the country in famine.
El-Obeid's importance is geographic. The city controls a key route between the RSF-controlled Darfur region and the army-held eastern regions, and it hosts a government airbase, an oil pipeline and a major gum-arabic market. Analyst Ahmed Ben Omer described it as sitting "at the heart of a network linking Darfur, Kordofan and central Sudan" — which is precisely why both sides are willing to fight for it.
If the RSF takes el-Obeid, it would gain a supply corridor connecting its western strongholds to the rest of the country and sharply erode the army's grip on central Sudan. That is a strategic prize of a different order than the towns that have changed hands elsewhere in the war, and it helps explain the ferocity of the assault.
The UN's reference point is deliberately ominous: el-Fasher, the North Darfur city that endured an 18-month siege from May 2024 before falling to the RSF in October 2025, a collapse accompanied by reports of mass atrocities. The comparison is a warning that the international community saw that disaster coming and failed to prevent it — and that el-Obeid is now on the same trajectory, only with drones compressing the timeline.
The character of this siege is more modern than el-Fasher's. Rather than a slow encirclement, el-Obeid faces a sustained drone bombardment that has already created siege-like conditions and is hollowing out the city's ability to function. Food prices have surged 300 percent and water prices have doubled, squeezing a population that largely cannot leave.
The warnings from UNICEF, the UN human rights office and aid groups such as the International Rescue Committee — which has cautioned that an imminent RSF offensive is pushing North Kordofan toward humanitarian catastrophe — are aimed at forcing action before a full ground assault begins. Whether that pressure produces anything more than statements, after el-Fasher, is the open and painful question.