Sudan paramilitaries shell El-Obeid, hospitals hit

KHARTOUM: Sudan's paramilitary rapid support forces shelled El-Obeid on Friday, hitting two hospitals and residential neighbourhoods of the key southern city, witnesses and an army source said.

"The militia attacked residential areas of the city with heavy artillery," says an army personnel, adding that they had hit the Social Insurance Hospital and the city's army hospital.

Witnesses close to the social insurance hospital confirmed it had come under bombardment.

El-Obeid, a strategic city 400 kilometres (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum which is the capital of North Kordofan state, was besieged by the RSF for nearly two years before the regular army broke the siege in February.

It was one of a series of counteroffensives by the army that also saw the army recapture Khartoum earlier this year but the city has continued to come under RSF bombardment.

El-Obeid is a key staging post on the army's supply route to the west, where the besieged city of El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast Darfur region still under its control.

The RSF and the army have clashed repeatedly along the road between El-Obeid and El-Fasher in recent weeks.

On Thursday, the paramilitaries said they retaken the town of Al-Khoei, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of El-Obeid, after the army recaptured it earlier this month.

The war between the army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million since it erupted in April 2023.

The United Nation says the conflict has created the world's biggest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the centre, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.