Kurmuk Falls as Rapid Support Forces Reach Ethiopian Border

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces entered Kurmuk, a border town in Sudan’s Blue Nile state on the frontier with Ethiopia, on Thursday, August 13, as the Sudanese army pulled out of the town. Allied fighters from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, a rebel group that fights alongside the paramilitary force in that state, entered alongside them. The assault opened in the early morning hours with drone strikes on positions in and around the town, followed by a ground push from the direction of the Ethiopian border.

Kurmuk is the second town in Blue Nile state that the Rapid Support Forces have captured in a week. Kaisan fell on August 11. Two towns in seven days have pushed the front line toward Sudan’s southeastern corner, where the country’s territory meets both Ethiopia and South Sudan.

What does Kurmuk mean on the map of the war?

The town sits on the border route linking Ethiopia to Blue Nile state and the wider Nile valley. It lies less than 140 kilometers from Damazin, the state capital, and about 160 kilometers from the Roseires Dam, one of the country’s main sources of electricity.

In a statement issued the same day, the Rapid Support Forces said it had inflicted losses on the army and seized weapons. “We inflicted heavy losses on the soldiers in Kurmuk, forced them to retreat and seized weapons and ammunition,” the statement said, without giving a death toll. Footage posted online showed fighters from the group celebrating their entry into the town.

Kurmuk’s local administration gave a different account the same day. In a statement issued several hours later, it said the town had not fallen without a fight:

For the past three days the town had been under intense attack, including drone strikes and artillery shelling.

The administration added that the attacks came from what it described only as the regional neighborhood, without naming any specific country, and said the army had defended the town, its residents and its public institutions.

A town that changed hands three times this year

The Rapid Support Forces already held Kurmuk once, in March 2026, before the Sudanese army retook it in July. Thursday’s advance marks the third change of control over the same town in five months. The army has made no public statement on the loss of either Kurmuk or Kaisan.

The capture of the two Blue Nile towns comes after Sudanese army gains in Kordofan, the central region where most of the fighting has taken place since the army lost its last stronghold in neighboring Darfur late last year.

Kordofan, an attack with more than 250 vehicles

On the same day Kurmuk was lost, the Sudanese army said it had repelled an attack on Jabrat al-Sheikh in North Kordofan. The army’s statement said the attack involved more than 250 combat vehicles and was launched from three directions, following nearly two days of troop buildup by forces that had arrived from Darfur.

Jabrat al-Sheikh is a key transport hub in the region. Control of the town would open the way for pressure on El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, and on Omdurman, on the doorstep of Khartoum.

A day earlier, on Wednesday, the Rapid Support Forces carried out coordinated drone strikes on five army-held towns spread hundreds of kilometers apart. Two people were killed in El Obeid, where the city market came to a halt.

A war entering its fourth year

The conflict began in April 2023, when tensions between the military leadership under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces commander General Mohamed Dagalo, over a plan to fold the paramilitary force into the regular army, erupted into open fighting.

Since then, about 14 million people have been displaced. The United Nations estimates that roughly 20 million people in Sudan lack a secure food supply, and humanitarian organizations put the death toll at more than 200,000. It is the largest displacement and hunger crisis in the world.

The two towns in Blue Nile state changed hands two days apart, along the route leading to Damazin and the Roseires Dam. The army has stayed silent on both losses for now.