War in Sudan: Humanitarian, fighting, control developments, September 2025

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary are currently at the end of their third year, making it the most severe humanitarian disaster in history.

According to estimates, thousands of people have died as a result of war-related diseases and hunger, while thousands more have already been killed as a result of combat alone.

As the humanitarian situation continues to worsen, there were a few important military updates this month:

Military and combat control

• The Sudanese government, which had relocated to Port Sudan, is awaiting the return of its capital, Khartoum.
• Except for El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, where SAF has its final Darfur garrison, the RSF controls the majority of Darfur’s vast western region. According to satellite imagery obtained by the Yale Humanitarian Research Hub, the paramilitary is besieging El-Fasher in an effort to control the entire region. They are erecting massive sand berms around it from the north, west, and east, effectively creating a “kill-box.”
• However, according to analysts, the RSF is moving too slowly and the SAF is moving away from El-Fasher, moving from the north to Bakhit (150 kilometers, or 90 miles) in the direction of El-Fasher.
• According to Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, who was based in Khartoum, an RSF drone killed more than 70 people on September 19 in El-Fasher, making it one of the “bloodiest days in the city since the RSF began its siege in May last year.”
• With the assistance of Abdelaziz al-Hilu’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), RSF also has access to South Sudan via cross-border routes, allowing it to access much of Kordofan to the south.
• However, SAF still has control of El-Obeid, North Korea’s most important city, which it needs to hold to prevent the RSF from posing a threat to central Sudan.
• After months of tense battles that some analysts called “Mad Max-like,” SAF captured a strategic victory in North Kordofan by taking Umm Sumeima, which is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of El-Obeid on September 26 and Bara, which is 62 kilometers (39 miles) north on September 11.

Humanitarian crisis

• More than 1, 000 people were reportedly killed in a landslide in Tarasin in the Marrah Mountains in Central Darfur in early September. On September 4, a Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) official said 370 bodies had been found and buried in a video released on September 4.
• An estimated 260 000 civilians have been encamped by the RSF, including 130 000 children, in locations like El-Fasher and the nearby Zamzam displacement camp, where the famine has spread.
• A total of 24.6 million people, or roughly half of the population, are experiencing acute food shortages, according to the World Food Programme, while 637, 000 are suffering from devastating hunger.
• Due to road closures and bureaucratic obstacles, aid convoys from the UN and other non-governmental organizations rarely travel to Darfur. Both sides are accused of using food as weapons by right-wing activists and activists.
• Sudan’s infrastructure is in danger of developing cholera, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC). More than 5, 000 cases of malaria, typhoid, and dengue fever have been reported in one area of the capital in the past month, according to Hiba Morgan’s report on September 23.
• At least 50 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea as a result of a vessel’s fire in the Mediterranean Sea, which was a refugee for Sudanese refugees trying to flee the conflict.

political and diplomatic developments

• On September 20, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared that “the parties must return to the negotiating table and find a workable resolution to the conflict.”
• Alkhaleej Bank and Red Rock Mining Company, two businesses, were subject to restrictive measures by the European Union. According to the EU Council, Red Rock is “involved in facilitating the production of weapons and vehicles for the SAF,” while Alkhaleej Bank is “owned by companies linked to family members of RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.”
• SAF military commander Abu Aqla Mohamed Kaikal, who defected to the RSF before rejoining it in 2024, and RSF field commander Hussein Barsham, who the council described as “operations that have resulted in mass atrocities, including targeted killings, ethnic violence, forced displacement, and violence against civilians, particularly in Darfur and other conflict-affected regions of Sudan,” were also subject to restrictive measures.
• A three-month humanitarian truce, a permanent ceasefire, a nine-month transitional period, and a broad-based civilian-led government would be the subject of a proposal to end the conflict that has been submitted by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
• All efforts to put an end to the war have so far failed.