Sylvia ChebetIt has been 1,000 days of war in Sudan, and violence continues to escalate with battlefronts shifting from one region to another.
“The intensity and the toll on civilians are worsening in many areas. There has been a pattern of escalating violence, including attacks on towns and civilian infrastructure, and expanding drone warfare,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Communications Coordinator in Sudan Tomas Bendl told TRT Afrika.
Following Khartoum's devastation, fierce battles engulfed Darfur, turning Al Fasher—the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the region before it fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—into an open graveyard.
After the massacre in Al Fasher, Kordofan region became the new epicentre of war, with the paramilitary RSF accused of committing further atrocities there.
A medical group accused RSF militants of killing 13 civilians, including children, in a drone strike in El-Obeid, the capital city of North Kordofan in southern Sudan.
Denouncing the attack as a “massacre,” the Sudan Doctors Network said nine members of the same family were among the victims in the attack that targeted a house in Al-Jallabiya neighborhood in the city.
“This is a full-fledged war crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, and demonstrates the deliberate targeting of unarmed civilians, especially children,” it added.
The Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo-led RSF is fighting the national army under Sudan Transitional Sovereign Council leader Abdel Fateh al-Burhan for control of the country, following a fallout from a lingering power struggle since the ouster of former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Female-headed households
On 26 October 2025, the RSF captured Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state in western Sudan. The violence escalated to unprecedented levels, with satellite images revealing blood-soaked terrain.
Al Fasher’s women and children suffered untold brutality. However it’s the men who bore the brunt of the massacre, with Abu Lulu, an RSF commander nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Al Fasher,” claiming to have killed 2,000 of them all by himself.
“The war finished them (men) off. We have no man or a brother left to stand by us, we’re only women left,” Fatima al-Sayed, a displaced woman in al-Dabba camp says.
It’s a pattern that the militants are said to have repeated in Sudan’s hamlets and cities alike, leaving thousands of women widowed and millions of children without fathers.
With most men killed, captured, or missing, women now head many Sudanese households and are bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis in the country.
“Some women are pregnant and at the same time, responsible for the rest of the children. These people came in very bad nutritional conditions, especially the new arrivals, they honestly needed nutrition for the children below five years old because they were clearly malnourished,” Aisha Abdallah, an executive director of the Sudanese Red Crescent says.
“They are in great need for primary healthcare - the pregnant women, the nursing women and the children themselves,” she adds.
The UN confirms that majority of female-headed households do not having enough food to eat.
"Female-headed households are now three times more likely to be food insecure. Three quarters of these households report not having enough to eat," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters in Geneva.
"Hunger is becoming increasingly gendered," he added, pointing to pre-existing gender inequalities in the country being exacerbated by the ongoing conflict, which began on April 15, 2023.
More than 100,000 are estimated to have fled Al Fasher since the RSF took control there in late October 2025, after an 18-month siege.
The city is now facing famine alongside Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state, which is currently under siege.
“Sudan certainly remains one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies. More than 30 million people need humanitarian assistance and approximately 12 million have been forcibly displaced, according to the UN,” MSF’s Tomas Bendl says.
“The health system is badly weakened, with many hospitals damaged or non-functional, and people facing a deadly mix of violence, hunger, and disease outbreaks, including cholera and measles. Yet international response is drastically underfunded, and access is to most vulnerable populations routinely blocked,” he rues.
OCHA said it is looking to make Sudan the first country to sign an agreement with the United States to receive part of the $2 billion in assistance it pledged at the end of December.
More than 21 million people are currently estimated to be acutely food insecure across the country. Some 34 million people are in need of humanitarian support, half of whom are children, according to the UN.
The biggest challenge for civilians is “survival amid violence: protection, access to food, healthcare, clean water, and safety from attacks,” MSF reckons.
On the other hand, humanitarian agencies are navigating a tough terrain to reach Sudan’s most vulnerable populations.
“Our challenge is the combination of insecurity, direct attacks on healthcare, and obstruction and administrative barriers that delay or block staff and lifesaving supplies — plus a severely underfunded international response,” MSF notes.
Hope amidst despair
In parts of Khartoum, some people are returning. “MSF has seen this, with more than 700,000 people returning to Khartoum city — but return does not mean recovery. Many neighborhoods are heavily damaged, basic services and healthcare are far from meeting needs, and the international response remains very limited,” MSF’s Bendl notes.
“Real hope will require sustained protection of civilians, functioning services, and serious humanitarian support — not just a change in frontlines,” he reckons.
The three Kordofan states—North, West, and South—have seen weeks of fierce fighting between the army and the RSF, since the fall of Al Fasher, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.
Of Sudan’s 18 states, the RSF now holds all five in the Darfur region. The Sudanese army continues to dominate most of the remaining 13 states across the south, north, east, and central regions, including the capital, Khartoum.
