In a stark escalation of Sudan’s grinding civil war, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allies kidnapped more than 150 young men and underage children from a remote gold mine in South Kordofan state, the Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a prominent Sudanese medical advocacy group, reported on Tuesday. The abductions took place on Monday at Al-Zallataya mine near Al-Abbasiya town, northeast of the state capital Kadugli, and were described by SDN as “the first blatant violation of a unilateral humanitarian truce” declared by the RSF only hours earlier.
The SDN, a network of exiled Sudanese health professionals monitoring the conflict’s toll, condemned the raid as a “direct assault on civilians that amounts to war crimes and grave violations of international humanitarian law.” Eyewitnesses told the group that RSF militants, alongside fighters from the al-Hilu faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), stormed the mine, forcibly separating able-bodied young men and boys as young as 12 for recruitment. Families were left in terror as children were dragged away amid gunfire.
The attack came just one day after RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, announced a unilateral three-month humanitarian ceasefire on November 24. In a recorded statement, Dagalo said the truce—intended to halt all hostile actions and allow aid delivery—was prompted by international mediation efforts, particularly from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (the Quad group). However, the Al-Zallataya raid began almost immediately after his announcement, highlighting the extreme fragility of such declarations in a war plagued by repeatedly broken agreements.
The RSF’s partnership with the SPLM-N al-Hilu faction adds further complexity. The two groups formalized an alliance in February 2025 under the “Sudan Founding Charter,” uniting the predominantly Arab RSF with the ethnic Nuba rebels of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Abdelaziz al-Hilu, leader of the SPLM-N faction, serves as deputy to Dagalo in the coalition, which now controls large parts of western and southern Sudan, including many lucrative gold-mining areas like Al-Zallataya. These mines have become a critical funding source for the RSF through extraction and smuggling, but they are also notorious sites of forced labor and child recruitment.
According to SDN, the attackers not only abducted civilians but also looted mining equipment and ransacked Al-Abbasiya’s marketplace, worsening already severe shortages of food and medicine in the area. The group reported that a similar forced-recruitment operation had been carried out by the RSF in the same town just days earlier.
The incident fits into a broader RSF offensive across the Kordofan region that intensified after the paramilitary captured El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, on October 26, 2025. That takeover triggered a humanitarian disaster, with widespread summary executions, sexual violence, and the displacement of tens of thousands. In neighboring North Kordofan, RSF forces overran Bara locality in late October, forcing thousands more residents to flee toward government-held El Obeid.
Sudan’s war, which erupted on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF, has spiraled into a multifaceted conflict involving multiple rebel factions and regional powers. The RSF, which evolved from the Janjaweed militias accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago, now dominates most of western Sudan, while the army retains control of the east and north.
The human toll is catastrophic and almost certainly underreported. Independent estimates place direct combat deaths above 17,000, but when indirect deaths from famine, disease, and lack of medical care are included, the figure likely exceeds 150,000. Over 12 million people—one in every three Sudanese—have been displaced since the war began, creating the world’s largest and fastest-growing displacement crisis. Children make up more than half of the displaced population and face extreme risks of malnutrition, disease, and recruitment into armed groups.
In South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains, where Al-Zallataya is located, famine has already been declared in several areas. Around 700,000 people have been displaced in the state alone since 2023, and access to humanitarian aid remains severely restricted by ongoing fighting and deliberate blockades. Across Sudan, some 30 million people—two-thirds of the population—now require life-saving assistance, according to the United Nations.
International efforts to end the war have repeatedly failed. Multiple rounds of talks in Jeddah, Geneva, and elsewhere have collapsed, and both sides have been accused of systematic atrocities. The United States formally determined in early 2025 that the RSF had committed genocide, imposing sanctions on its leadership. The UN and human-rights organizations have documented thousands of cases of abduction, sexual violence, and ethnic targeting, particularly against non-Arab communities in Darfur and Kordofan.
The abduction of more than 150 civilians from Al-Zallataya mine lays bare the brutal reality on the ground: unilateral ceasefires are meaningless without enforcement, children continue to be weaponized, and families are being torn apart almost daily. As RSF forces push deeper into South Kordofan, threatening to encircle the state capital Kadugli, aid agencies warn of an impending surge in displacement and famine-related deaths. Without urgent, coordinated international pressure—enforced truces, targeted sanctions, and unrestricted humanitarian access—Sudan’s descent risks becoming irreversible.
