Sudan’s Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi has said that the Sudanese army and allied forces had captured the town of Bara and three nearby areas in North Kordofan State following military operations against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
In a statement posted on Facebook on Saturday, Minnawi said the army, Joint Forces and Popular Resistance had taken control of Bara, Umm Garfa, Umm Sayala and Jabra Al-Sheikh.
“What has been achieved today is not the end of the battle, but the beginning of a new phase of decisive action,” he said.
Minnawi said the forces had inflicted heavy casualties and equipment losses on the RSF during what he described as “precise military operations” that broke the paramilitary group’s defences.
Earlier Saturday, military sources told Anadolu that the Sudanese army and allied forces had seized full control of Umm Sayala near Bara after clashes with the RSF, inflicting what they described as heavy losses on the paramilitary group.
Videos circulated on social media showed soldiers announcing control of Umm Sayala alongside destroyed RSF military vehicles, although Anadolu could not independently verify the footage.
Neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF had issued an official statement on Minnawi’s claims or the reported territorial gains as of 1740 GMT.
The reported advances came a day after Sudanese authorities said the army had regained control of the Burbur area south of El-Obeid following an RSF attack that killed 15 civilians and wounded seven others.
North Kordofan has witnessed intensified fighting in recent months, while El-Obeid has come under repeated RSF drone attacks targeting the city’s main power station, fuel depots and other civilian sites.
Sudan entered its fourth year of war in April.
The war pits the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti.
The SAF is the country’s regular military and has long been the dominant arm of the state.
The RSF, by contrast, grew out of militant groups known as the Janjaweed, infamous for their role in atrocities during the Darfur war of the 2000s.
Witnesses and aid groups have reported mass killings, starvation, and systematic attacks on civilians by RSF.
