40 Drones at a Time: El-Obeid Under Siege as U.N. Warns of Second Darfur-Style Massacre

Residents of el-Obeid describe looking up and counting drones. Sometimes there are 40 in the sky at once, according to a 25-year-old aid worker who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because of the danger to her safety.

She said the strikes are indiscriminate. People get killed at home, walking to school, shopping at the market. Her own uncle was killed by a drone strike while burying a neighbor who had been killed by a drone strike days earlier.

That is the war in Sudan right now, more than three years after fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The conflict has produced what aid groups call the world's largest humanitarian crisis, displacing millions of people across the country and the region.

El-Obeid is the capital of North Kordofan state and sits on a strategic corridor south of Khartoum, on the route toward Sudan's western Darfur region. That location has turned it into a key battleground. According to data from the International NGO Safety Organisation cited by NPR, North Kordofan has recorded more drone attacks than anywhere else in Sudan in 2026. Both the army and the RSF have used drones in the conflict.

Echoes of el-Fasher

U.N. officials are drawing a direct line between what's happening in el-Obeid now and what happened in el-Fasher last year, when RSF fighters killed an estimated 6,000 civilians. U.N. investigators later concluded those killings bore what they called "the hallmarks of genocide."

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, put it bluntly last month: "This is not a drill. It is a red alert that needs to land on the desks of heads of state and government around the world. Their phones should be running hot in the coming days and weeks, with ideas on how to prevent atrocity crimes in el-Obeid and in other places in Kordofan."

It's also, by definition, a warning about something that hasn't happened yet. No mass killing on the scale of el-Fasher has been confirmed in el-Obeid as of now. What's documented is the siege tactics, the drone strikes and the deliberate targeting of infrastructure that preceded the el-Fasher massacre, now reportedly being repeated.

Water as a weapon

In el-Obeid, a city of roughly 500,000 people, the RSF has been hitting water distribution points, according to NPR, causing severe shortages. That's the same tactic used in el-Fasher before the killings there.

The water shortage has created what U.N. Women's East Africa director, Anna Mutavati, called a "deadly gamble" for women and girls. Many now try to collect water at night, believing darkness offers cover from drone strikes overhead. Mutavati said that instead, "these women and girls have been harassed, raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence — all while trying to access water."

A cholera outbreak is also spreading in parts of the region, adding disease to the list of threats facing a population already living under bombardment and water scarcity.

What's actually being proposed

Türk's public statement is notable for what it doesn't include: a specific plan. He's calling on governments to act, but the NPR report doesn't cite any concrete military, diplomatic or humanitarian intervention that's been announced by the U.S., the U.N. Security Council, the African Union or any other body in response.

The U.S. and other Western governments have imposed various sanctions on RSF-linked individuals and entities since the war began, but there's no indication in current reporting of any new enforcement action tied specifically to the el-Obeid siege. Whether that changes depends on whether Türk's warning generates the kind of urgent diplomatic response he's asking for, or whether, as happened with el-Fasher, warnings arrive well ahead of any action capable of stopping the violence.

Does anyone with actual leverage over the RSF or the Sudanese military move before or after the next mass casualty event? El-Fasher's killings happened after months of documented warning signs. El-Obeid is now sitting at that same point in the timeline.