UN Warns of New Wave of Atrocities in Sudan’s Kordofan Region

7:01 AM EST, December 4, 2025

CAIRO (AP) — The UN’s top human rights official issued a stark new warning Thursday about Sudan, saying he fears “a new wave of atrocities” amid a surge in fierce fighting in the Kordofan region.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk urged “all states with influence over the parties to take immediate action to halt the fighting, and stop the arms flows that are fueling the conflict.”

Fighting between the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces, also known as the RSF, and the Sudanese military, who have been at war for over two years, has recently shifted to the oil-rich Kordofan region after the paramilitary group took over el-Fasher in Darfur.

According to the U.N. the conflict in Sudan has killed 40,000 people — though some rights groups say the death toll is significantly higher — and has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with over 14 million displaced.

The RSF’s takeover of el-Fasher, the Sudanese’s military’s last stronghold in Darfur, was marked by the executions of civilians, rapes and sexual assaults. Over 100,000 people have fled el-Fasher since October and thousands are feared trapped or believe to have been killed along the way, according to rights groups. The RSF had major gains since then.

“It is truly shocking to see history repeating itself in Kordofan so soon after the horrific events in el-Fasher,” Türk said.

“We must not allow Kordofan to become another el-Fasher,” he said.

He said over 269 people were killed in the town of Bara in North Kordofan in aerial strikes, artillery shelling, and summary executions since end of October, but that the numbers could be higher because telecommunications and internet outages have made numbers hard to verify.

He called for “the restoration of telecommunications to facilitate lifesaving assistance and to allow essential information to flow to civilians.”

His statement said an RSF drone strike on Nov. 3 killed 45 people, mostly women, in a tent in el-Obeid in North Kordofan, and that Sudanese military aerial strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 people, mostly civilians, in Kauda, South Kordofan.

The RSF was run out of Sudan’s capital Khartoum earlier in the year, and for months the fighting has been concentrated in oil-rich Kordofan, a region in southern and central Sudan that controls vital supply lines.

The battle is now centered around the city of Babanusa in West Kordofan province.

The RSF said in a statement Monday that the group took the Sudanese army’s 22nd division headquarters in Babanusa and on Tuesday released videos which it said shows of their fighters in the army headquarters. The Associated Press could not independently verify the statement. The Sudanese military has not commented.

The Sudan Doctor’s network, a group of Sudanese medical professionals across the northeastern African country, warned Wednesday that the clashes are threatening the fate of dozens of women and children who sought refuge in the army headquarters in the last year calling for their protection and to be transferred to safety “without harming them or detaining them arbitrarily on accusations of having relatives in the army.”

It also called for access to the city to provide humanitarian assistance.

Türk also warned that Kadugli and Dilling — towns in South Kordofan gripped by famine — are at particular risk after being under siege by the RSF and allied groups.

The UN migration agency estimates that over 44,000 people have fled the Kordofan region due to the escalation of fighting.