Drone Strikes Push Sudan's El Obeid to Breaking Point
Drone strikes in El Obeid have crippled infrastructure, leaving displaced families and hospitals without power, fuel, or water.
In the strategic city of El Obeid, North Kordofan, thousands of displaced people—including pregnant women and the injured—are enduring severe hardship as fighting between Sudanese forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues. The road into the city is strewn with destroyed fuel tankers and trucks, targeted by drones that have also struck power stations, bridges, and supply routes, according to U.N. reports.
The attacks have crippled essential services. The main power station's transformers lie in ruins, and the city's water supply has been hit, forcing crews to drill boreholes. Hospitals are running on generators that frequently run out of diesel, plunging wards into darkness. In the maternity unit, mothers give birth by solar power, and premature babies in incubators are at risk when electricity fails.
Amna, a displaced woman who gave birth in the city's largest camp, described her ordeal: "My husband was killed while I was four months pregnant, killed in this war. We have been suffering since the day we arrived. We don't have anything. I don't have a bed, I don't have a pan, I don't have a bucket. I don't have any food."
At El Obeid Teaching Hospital, Dr. Muzammil Ahmed al-Safi, the director general, noted that the generator had stopped for ten minutes due to depleted fuel, though staff were working to restart it. In the highly dependent unit, a daughter fanned her incapacitated father as the heat became unbearable without power.
Residents queue for scarce fuel on the black market, and fresh graves are dug daily as the toll mounts. The war, which began in April 2023, has killed at least 59,000 people, displaced 13 million, and pushed much of Sudan into famine. The U.N., U.S., and U.K. have expressed alarm over potential atrocities as the RSF closes in on El Obeid, home to the army's 5th Infantry Division. Last month, the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council approved a measure condemning the escalating violence by the RSF and its allies in and around the city.