Sudan Conflict: El-Obeid in RSF

Sara, a 27-year-old university student, was in a busy gas station in El-Obeid, on the frontline of Sudan’s civil war, when she was struck by drones without warning.

She says the station was lit before everything went dark. “Injured people, blood, burnt cars and smashed cars in front of us.”

We have given the student’s real name to her safety in the city, the latest flashpoint in the three-year war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Sarah told the BBC on the phone that she was lucky to escape the attack, but was injured.

“I was outside the car when the second missile hit, so I got shrapnel on my leg and arm.”

Currently under military control, El-Obeid – the capital of North Kordofan state with a population of around 500,000 – is one of the largest military bases in central Sudan.

But the army has been unable to counter drone attacks, with 27 hitting the city in June, the highest monthly total since the conflict began, according to the Crown Attack Monitoring Group.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said 15 drone strikes between June 6 and 28 killed 45 people and injured 41 others.

He said the city has been under siege for 18 months and executions, kidnapping, torture and sexual assaults are taking place on the roads used by people fleeing the conflict.

“El-Obeid’s signs are clear and unmistakable: another human rights abuse is taking place in Sudan,” Turkey said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the US-based Yale University Humanitarian Research Laboratory, told the BBC that el-Obeid was strategically important to the warring factions, with the west of the country controlled by the RSF and the east largely in the hands of the military.

“If you control El-Obeid, you control the road to the capital Khartoum and (twin city) Omdurman, so the army has to defend El-Obeid,” he said.