Deploying more troops freed up from Darfur after the fall of El Fasher, the paramilitary RSF had since intensified attacks on Babanusa, stronghold of the army whose HQ of the 22nd Infantry Division was overrun on December 1.
Consolidating its control over Sudan's Darfur after overrunning the western region's last resisting city of El Fasher and massacring its besieged civilians in late October, the Rapid Support forces (RSF) are advancing eastward.
On Monday, December 1, the paramilitary overran the 22nd Infantry Division of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) - its former ruling partner - in the West Kordofan State's Babanusa, under siege since January 2024.
Located just southeast of Darfur, Babanusa is on the western end of the strategic road to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital until the SAF-led government relocated to Port Sudan in the northeast after this war started in April 2023.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
It is the closest of the major urban centers in Darfur's neighboring Kordofan - the SAF's "gateway" to Darfur from the region, including three states: North Kordofan, South Kordofan, and West Kordofan.
"If Babanusa falls, RSF fighters are expected to turn their attention to Heglig, home to a major oil field and Sudan's last remaining military garrison in West Kordofan," the Center for Development Studies and the Prevention of Extremism reported this June.
Deploying more troops freed up from Darfur after the fall of El Fasher, the RSF had since intensified attacks on Babanusa. The outnumbered SAF troops and local resistance fighters had been cut off even from the "unreliable airdrops" after the RSF shot down a cargo plane early last November. On December 2, they suffered a defeat.
Read: El Fasher's last stand: "The city has fallen, but its dignity has not"
The SAF, however, maintains in a statement on December 2 that its soldiers are still fighting in the city, disputing reports of RSF control. However, the Sudan War Monitor reported that the only surviving brigade of this division has retreated to "the southeastern corner of West Kordofan, along the border with South Sudan", where the Heglig oil field is located.
The attack on Babanusa came on the heels of the rejection by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chief of the SAF and the head of the Sudanese government based in Port Sudan, of the US-backed ceasefire proposal put forth by the Quad.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
The body includes Sudan's regional neighbors, namely the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, alongside the US - all of which have vested interests in the region, leaning on both sides of the warring parties.
"Any immediate ceasefire would freeze frontlines in a manner that effectively ratifies the RSF's territorial dominance across Darfur and parts of Kordofan," the Sudanese War Monitor reported.
Complaining that US President Donald Trump's senior Africa envoy, Massad Boulos, had become "a channel for RSF narratives," Burhan said on Sunday that Boulos was "dictating terms on behalf of the militia's foreign backers." This was mainly a reference to the UAE, a member of the Quad, to which the RSF has been reportedly smuggling the gold it extracts from Darfur, in return for weapons.
Read: A bloodbath visible from space: RSF's massacres in Sudan's El Fasher
