On Saturday, 20 June, the UN Security Council raised concerns over “the imminent risk of mass atrocities” against the civilians in El Obeid, capital of war-torn Sudan’s North Kordofan state.
The city has been encircled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been at war with its former ruling partner, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), since April 2023.
Amid an increasing build-up of RSF troops around the city, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned on 18 June of an “imminent offensive” with the risk of “serious international crimes.”
The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, is also “alarmed” by the RSF’s “substantial military reinforcements around El Obeid,” said his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, adding, “We must not allow the horrors of El Fasher to be repeated in El Obeid.”
The city of El Fasher was the last major SAF holdout in the vast Darfur region in western Sudan. Laying siege for over 500 days to cut off the supplies of food, medicines, and other essentials, the RSF caused a famine and subjected the population weakened by hunger to repeated bombardment before finally overrunning their defences.
Killing civilians in what is estimated to be tens of thousands, the RSF depopulated the city with a campaign of atrocities which, according to a UN probe, bore the “defining characteristics of genocide.”
After its takeover of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, the RSF consolidated control over the entire Darfur region, consisting of five states, with the exception of some towns on the border with Chad, across which the conflict has begun to spill over.
Following this consolidation in the west, the RSF has been expanding eastward into the Kordofan region, which has now become a main frontline of the war between the SAF and the RSF.
North Kordofan state’s capital, El Obeid, sits on the highway connecting El Fasher to the national capital, Khartoum, to which the SAF-led government had returned only in January 2026, over two and a half years after relocating to Port Sudan in the early days of the civil war.
The RSF has held El Obeid in siege-like conditions for over 18 months and killed scores of civilians with drone strikes over the last 10 days. 500,000 civilians in the city are at risk of suffering mass atrocities if the RSF launches an attack, the UN Human Rights Council warned.
“We cannot allow the repeat of the preventable atrocities we documented in El Fasher,” Türk said, adding, “Let this be a stark warning to the world about an impending human rights disaster and worsening humanitarian situation.”
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