Sudan's shifting battlefield

SUDAN’S two-year war saw a key development at the weekend with paramilitaries capturing the city of El-Fasher from the army, granting them full control of the vast western Darfur region.

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What began more than two years ago as a power struggle between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has escalated into a brutal fight for territorial control, with the fiercest clashes now concentrated in the neighbouring region of Kordofan.

The army holds the north, east and centre, including the capital Khartoum and Port Sudan - the Red Sea hub which it has made the headquarters of a transitional government.

The RSF controls much of the south and, since last week, the entirety of Darfur in the west, where it has set up a rival administration based in the city of Nyala.

Analysts warn that if current front lines stabilise, Sudan could face de facto partition — its second after the creation of South Sudan in 2011.

And the people of Darfur could again be subjected to bloody massacres in a repeat of the early 2000s, when the region suffered at the hands of the Janjaweed militia - the ancestor of today’s RSE.

Here are the latest battlefield updates in the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven nearly 12 million from their homes, triggering what the UN calls the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.

Darfur: El-Fasher falls