Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces were accused of killing more than 100 civilians, including 21 children and 15 women, during their May 2025 assault on the strategic city of Al-Nahud in West Kordofan, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. The reported civilian death toll was not independently verified at the time.
The attack came as fighting between the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and the Sudanese Armed Forces intensified across western and central Sudan. Al-Nahud sits on an important road corridor connecting Kordofan with Darfur and had served as a significant military and commercial center.
RSF Takes Al-Nahud as Civilian Death Toll Is Disputed
The RSF said it had captured Al-Nahud and the headquarters of the Sudanese army's 18th Infantry Brigade after fighting in early May 2025. Initial accounts of control were contested, but subsequent independent analysis provided stronger evidence about what happened.
In a May 7 assessment, the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health said satellite imagery and open-source evidence corroborated reports that the RSF had captured Al-Nahud by May 2. The researchers observed damage around the former army brigade facility and the city's main market and also verified footage showing dozens of detained men in civilian clothing in RSF custody.
The Sudan Doctors Network initially reported that more than 100 civilians had been killed during the assault, including 21 children and 15 women. The group also accused RSF fighters of looting the teaching hospital, pharmacies, markets and a medical-supply warehouse, severely disrupting health services.
A day later, Sudan's National Commission for Human Rights put the preliminary civilian death toll at at least 300. That substantially higher figure was attributed to the commission and was not independently confirmed. The RSF did not immediately provide a detailed public response to the specific civilian-killing allegations reported at the time.
A Strategic Link Between Kordofan and Darfur
Al-Nahud's importance extends beyond the immediate battlefield. Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab described the city as a strategic junction on the B-26 road between El Obeid and El Fasher, with additional routes toward Babanusa, Muglad, Alliet and El Daein.
The city is also a regional trading center for livestock and agricultural commodities, including gum arabic, groundnuts and sesame. Damage to its market and disruption of transportation therefore carried consequences for civilians as well as military operations.
The RSF advance followed a major shift in the war after the Sudanese army regained central Khartoum in March 2025. While the army strengthened its position in the capital, fighting continued across Darfur and Kordofan, where the RSF sought to consolidate territory and maintain routes between areas under its control.
Violence Against Civilians Was Escalating Across Sudan
The Al-Nahud attack occurred amid a broader surge in civilian casualties. On May 1, 2025, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the U.N. Human Rights Office had confirmed at least 542 civilian deaths in North Darfur during the preceding three weeks, while warning that the actual toll was likely considerably higher.
That North Darfur figure did not represent the death toll in Al-Nahud, which is in West Kordofan. It reflected a separate escalation around El Fasher and nearby displacement camps, where the RSF was conducting an offensive against areas outside its control.
Weeks before the Al-Nahud assault, attacks on Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps and El Fasher had produced extensive civilian casualties and displacement. In an April 12 statement, the United Nations said more than 100 people were feared dead in attacks around the camps and city, including more than 20 children, while at least nine humanitarian workers had been confirmed killed.
A War Marked by Allegations Against Both Sides
Sudan's war began in April 2023 after tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, erupted into open conflict. The two forces had previously cooperated in Sudan's post-2019 political order and in the October 2021 military takeover before disputes over the country's political transition and the integration of the RSF into the regular armed forces helped drive their confrontation.
Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces and their allies have since faced documented allegations of serious violations against civilians. A U.N. fact-finding investigation later reported evidence of grave abuses by both sides, while documenting additional patterns of violence attributed to the RSF, including attacks on displacement camps, arbitrary detention and widespread sexual violence.
The conflict continued long after the battle for Al-Nahud. Later investigations also reinforced the significance of the RSF's westward campaign: by late 2025, the RSF had captured El Fasher after a prolonged siege, accompanied by extensive reports of civilian killings and other abuses. Those later developments did not change what was known during the May 2025 Al-Nahud assault, but they placed the city's capture within a broader struggle for control across Darfur and Kordofan.
The competing casualty figures from Al-Nahud illustrate one of the central difficulties of reporting Sudan's war: access to many battle zones is severely restricted, communications are frequently disrupted, and initial figures often come from local medical groups, civil organizations or the warring parties. Where independent verification is unavailable, casualty totals and allegations require continued attribution rather than treatment as settled fact.
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