Control over city gives the RSF strategic advantage in its bid to take Darfur capital el-Fasher, located 400km to the west.
Fighting in the Sudanese city of al-Nahud, a strategic city in West Kordofan state acting as a gateway to the Darfur region, has killed 19 people and left 37 wounded, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, in the latest eruption of violence in the brutal two-year civil war.
Local sources told Al Jazeera that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which declared on Telegram that it had “liberated” al-Nahud from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on Thursday, had rampaged through neighbourhoods, looting the market, houses and cars.
Al Jazeera understands that a doctor, a journalist and a police officer were among those killed as paramilitaries overcame the city, held by the SAF since the start of the conflict that has left tens of thousands dead and uprooted more than 12 million.
Control over al-Nahud has become a priority for both the RSF and SAF as fighting between the pair intensifies in Darfur, where 542 people have been killed in the past three weeks alone, according to the United Nations on Thursday.
The RSF has been doubling down on Darfur in recent weeks after losing the national capital, Khartoum, last month, in a bid to seize regional capital el-Fasher, the last major population centre still in the army’s hands, located 400 kilometres (250 miles) west of al-Nahud.
Recent violence in el-Fasher and the nearby refugee camps of Zamzam and Abu Shouk has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee 60km (37 miles) across the desert to the town of Tawila.
As it continues its campaign in Darfur, the paramilitary group has also been inching closer to Khartoum again, shelling the presidential palace in its second attack on the capital in less than a week.
On Saturday, the RSF bombarded the army’s General Command headquarters in Khartoum.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, commenting on the death toll in Darfur and extrajudicial executions conducted by both sides in Khartoum state, said on Thursday that the “horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds”.
The conflict between SAF, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF’s Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo has divided Sudan in two, with the army holding sway in the north and east, while the RSF controls most of Darfur and parts of the south.
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