El Obeid, Sudan – October 31, 2025 – In the arid expanses of Sudan's North Kordofan state, a fresh wave of terror has unleashed one of the war's most harrowing exoduses yet. More than 4,500 civilians, many clutching infants and meager belongings, have poured out of the besieged Bara locality toward the relative sanctuary of El Obeid city, fleeing relentless attacks and brazen violations by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Sudan Doctors Network, a coalition of frontline medical professionals navigating the chaos, issued a stark warning on Friday via a post on the social media platform X, painting a picture of desperation amid a conflict that shows no signs of mercy.
"North Kordofan State is witnessing a rapid exodus from the Bara locality toward El Obeid city due to the deteriorating security situation and the continued violations committed by the Rapid Support Forces against civilians," the network stated, underscoring the scale of the crisis. Field reports compiled by the group reveal that at least 1,900 of the displaced have trickled into El Obeid, Sudan's third-largest city and a vital hub in the oil-rich Kordofan region. The remainder—over 2,600 souls—languish en route, exposed to the merciless October sun, grappling with acute shortages of food, potable water, and even basic shelter. Eyewitness accounts describe families trekking dozens of kilometers on foot, dodging sporadic drone strikes and RSF checkpoints where summary executions have become alarmingly routine.
This latest surge in displacement compounds an already catastrophic toll. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency tracking the human cost of Sudan's unraveling, reported on Thursday that an additional 1,100 people fled Bara in the preceding 24 hours alone, pushing the four-day total to a staggering 35,620. "These numbers reflect not just movement, but survival," said IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli in a briefing from Geneva. "People are leaving behind homes, livelihoods, and loved ones buried in shallow graves. The pace of this flight is unprecedented in Kordofan, signaling a tipping point in the region's stability."
The trigger for this panic traces back to October 25, when RSF forces, emboldened by their recent seizure of el-Fasher in neighboring North Darfur, launched a ferocious offensive on Bara. The city, a strategic crossroads linking Darfur's volatile west to Khartoum's central corridors, fell swiftly after days of artillery barrages and ground assaults. Sudanese authorities, aligned with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), confirmed at least a dozen deaths and scores of injuries from an RSF drone strike on the Zareibat Sheikh El Borai area, a densely populated civilian enclave. But the violence has transcended battlefield tactics, veering into what human rights monitors describe as systematic terror.
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) issued a chilling communiqué on Friday, documenting "appalling reports of summary executions and other serious violations" in Bara following its capture. Victims, often accused without evidence of aiding the SAF, have been dragged from their homes and shot at close range. "In Bara, we are seeing a pattern: men and boys targeted for perceived loyalties, women subjected to sexual violence as a weapon of control," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. His office corroborated accounts of at least 38 civilians executed in the nearby village of Umm Dam Haj Ahmed on October 29, part of what the Sudan Doctors Network branded a "barbaric act" emblematic of the RSF's "ethnic cleansing and genocide campaign."
These atrocities echo the horrors unfolding in el-Fasher, just 200 kilometers west, where the RSF's October 26 takeover has unleashed what activists call a "true genocide." Human Rights Watch (HRW) verified videos from the city's outskirts showing RSF fighters executing bound prisoners, with one chilling clip capturing a soldier declaring, "We are here to kill," before firing five rounds into a pleading man. Estimates of civilian deaths in el-Fasher alone exceed 2,000, including mass killings at a children's hospital and displacement camps like Abu Shouk, where a drone strike on a mosque sheltering IDPs killed 75. Over 26,000 have fled the city in days, many trekking to Tawila amid reports of rape, looting, and forced recruitment. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies mourned five Sudanese volunteers killed in Bara, with three more missing—humanitarian workers now prime targets in a war that spares no one.
North Kordofan's plight is inseparable from the broader civil war that erupted on April 15, 2023, when simmering rivalries between SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—once coup allies—ignited into open combat. What began as a power struggle over military integration has morphed into a proxy-fueled inferno, with the RSF, evolved from the infamous Janjaweed militias of the Darfur genocide, accused by the U.S. in January 2025 of committing genocide. The United Arab Emirates has been implicated in arming the RSF with drones, while Russia backs them via Wagner-linked mercenaries; the SAF, meanwhile, draws support from Egypt and Sudan Liberation Movement factions.
By late 2023, the RSF dominated Darfur and pushed into Khartoum and Kordofan. The SAF clawed back momentum in 2024, retaking Omdurman and Khartoum's Presidential Palace by March 2025, but recent RSF gains—el-Fasher's fall after an 18-month siege, Bara's overrun—signal a perilous shift. Fighting now rages in West and South Kordofan, with RSF offensives in Babanusa and Abu Gubeiha opening new fronts. SPLM-North rebels, allied with the RSF since February 2025, have redeployed from Darfur, bombarding SAF positions and exacerbating civilian flight.
The human ledger is apocalyptic. UN estimates peg the death toll at over 40,000, though U.S. assessments whisper of 150,000—a figure that climbs daily with unverified massacres. Displacement has shattered records: 12 million uprooted since 2023, including 8.8 million internally displaced and 3.5 million refugees, birthing the world's largest such crisis. Famine grips North Darfur, with cholera claiming 1,600 lives between August 2024 and May 2025 amid ruined infrastructure. In Kordofan, wild grass sustains the starving; infants perish from malnutrition at rates unseen since the 2003 Darfur war.
International mediations—the Jeddah Declaration, IGAD talks—lie in tatters. On October 30, Arab nations condemned RSF "horrific violations" in el-Fasher, while UN chief António Guterres decried "large-scale atrocities" in Kordofan as a "horror" demanding urgent intervention. The OHCHR's Fact-Finding Mission, extended to October 2026, urges an arms embargo and prosecutions at the International Criminal Court, where Darfur crimes simmer unresolved.
Yet, amid the carnage, glimmers of defiance endure. In El Obeid's makeshift camps, volunteers from the Sudan Doctors Network distribute dwindling antibiotics, while displaced women form self-defense committees against RSF incursions. "We flee, but we do not break," one mother, Aisha Hassan, told reporters, her toddler swaddled against the chill. "This land is ours; the killers will answer one day."
As RSF convoys snake toward El Obeid, analysts warn Kordofan could become the war's next charnel house—a gateway to central Sudan if unchecked. With 30 million Sudanese—two-thirds of the population—in need of aid, the world watches a nation hemorrhage. Peace talks falter, but the displaced march on, their footsteps a thunderous indictment of a conflict that devours without end. The IOM's Msehli summed it grimly: "Sudan is not just at war with itself; it is at war with humanity's future."
