Sudan Army Retakes Highway as Fighting Near El-Obeid Intensifies

Khartoum: Sudan's army has regained control of a key highway linking the capital Khartoum with the flashpoint city of El-Obeid, two military sources told AFP on Monday.

Their rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have for months amassed troops around El-Obeid, attempting to encircle it ahead of an apparent large-scale assault.

They have now been pushed west, off the 400-kilometre (250 mile) highway that connects Khartoum with the largest city in the embattled Kordofan region.

El-Obeid lies at a key crossroads: its north-south highway runs from Khartoum to the rest of Kordofan, while its east-west axis connects RSF strongholds in the Darfur region to army-controlled central and eastern Sudan.

The highway to Khartoum remains closed to civilians, who have for most of the war relied entirely on the eastern road to the White Nile, where the RSF regularly launches deadly drone strikes.

The army advance "opens a second supply route to El-Obeid and beyond", said one of the sources, both of whom requested anonymity because they are not authorised to brief the media.

The war between the army and the RSF -- former allies before they fell out in a power struggle -- erupted in April 2023 and has since killed over 200,000 people, aid workers estimate.

It has also caused the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

In El-Obeid alone, a city of about half a million people which the UN says has doubled in sized because of displacement, only a fraction have reliable access to food.