Sudan Nashra: Military retakes Bara, RSF loses senior commanders in Kordofan | Fact-finding mission calls out military, RSF again for war crimes | Sudan files new complaint with Security Council over UAE involvement in mercenary deployment | Sudan’s delegation to UN General Assembly reshuffled last minute

After months of operations to reopen the vital road that would let in supplies to the military’s decisive battles in the Kordofan region, the military announced on Thursday that it recaptured the city of Bara.

The breakthrough followed a week-long push across Kordofan fronts, during which several Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanders were killed, including the leader of Bara’s unit and a prominent commander in the sector.

With all regular and allied forces mobilized under the supervision of the Sudanese Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the military is prepared for a large-scale offensive to retake RSF-held areas in Kordofan and push westward into Darfur, two senior military officers told Mada Masr.

As the war is increasingly converging in Darfur, a region already devastated by decades of violence and where the RSF has carved out its own sphere of influence, the UN Security Council’s fact-finding mission for Sudan issued a new report — its second since being established in 2023 — on the war’s violations. Once again, the mission charged both parties to the war with grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, “with most amounting to war crimes.”

Both the mission and rights groups have been urging the UN Human Rights Council to extend the mission’s mandate for another two years to ensure accountability, warning that Sudan lacks independent institutions to investigate abuses and that those who attempt to document crimes are themselves being targeted.

On the diplomatic front, Sudan has again brought the United Arab Emirates before the UN Security Council, filing a new complaint over the deployment of Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the RSF in Darfur. The Sudanese mission said the mercenaries committed serious abuses and described the UAE as “the direct architect of Sudan’s tragedy.”

And while Washington weighs possible entry restrictions on Sudan’s delegation to the 80th UN General Assembly in New York and imposes new sanctions on the government and its allies, the delegation itself has been unsettled by last-minute shifts in leadership and composition as the Cabinet and the Transitional Sovereignty Council recaliberate their share of power.

***

Last minute changes lead to ‘confusion’ for UNGA delegation that could face US entry restrictions anyway

As Sudan prepares for the 80th UN General Assembly in New York, its delegation has been thrown into last-minute reshuffles amid a realignment of authority between the Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) and the newly appointed Cabinet.

This comes amid looming US entry restrictions and new sanctions on the military-led government and its Islamist allies.

TSC Chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had originally been expected to head the delegation, accompanied by General Intelligence Service chief Ahmed Ibrahim Mufaddal and Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim, a senior TSC source and a Foreign Ministry official told Mada Masr. The latter said that Burhan had personally requested the inclusion of Prime Minister Kamel Idris, who was to join him in a wide round of parallel meetings in a major diplomatic push.

But by Friday, Idris publicly announced that he would lead the mission to New York. Two ministerial sources described the disarray as part of Idris’s push to handle the UN file in line with his own vision and away from sovereign bodies. A Cabinet Affairs Secretariat source confirmed that while Burhan was set to lead, Idris requested the file, and no objections were raised.

However, the delegation’s agenda had already been coordinated by ministries and state bodies under the instruction of the TSC before Idris’s appointment, another TSC source told Mada Masr. While acknowledging that the changes could create confusion, the source framed them as part of the ongoing transfer of executive authority from the TSC to the premiership.

Since his appointment in late May, Idris has been facing pressure from the TSC, which effectively derailed his plan for a fully technocratic, non-partisan Cabinet.

The lineup was further altered by the Tuesday resignation of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Omar Siddig, who had been slated to join the delegation, a second source in the Foreign Ministry said.

Burhan had tasked Siddig with preparing the UNGA files, which he submitted to Idris, according to the source. But after being repeatedly passed over for the foreign minister’s portfolio — despite his seniority and speculation that he would be picked for the post — Siddig quit, seeing his role as minister of state merely nominal.

Within days, the Cabinet’s only vacant post was filled as Ambassador Mohie Eddin Salem Ibrahim was sworn in on Friday in Port Sudan as foreign minister. The source said that Idris considered it important for the delegation to project a more “organized image” by appointing a foreign minister rather than sending only a minister of state.

Ibrahim is the fourth to fill the contentious post since the outbreak of war.

Mere hours after Ibrahim’s swearing-in, Idris appeared in an interview announcing he would lead the New York delegation. Asked about Burhan’s withdrawal, the Cabinet Affairs Secretariat source only said that the reasons lay with Burhan’s office. Contacted by Mada Masr, his office confirmed that the UN Assembly was not on Burhan’s schedule but declined to elaborate.

That same day, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim, who also heads the military-allied Justice and Equality Movement. The Cabinet Affairs source said his inclusion in the delegation is unaffected, unless his office states otherwise.

Even if Sudan settles its internal disorder, the mission may not be able to cross into the US. In what the Associated Press described as another step of the Trump administration’s tightening visa policies, an internal US State Department memo, seen by the Associated Press, indicated that potential travel and other restrictions — still under consideration — could soon be imposed on four delegations attending the UN General Assembly, including Sudan’s.

***

Sudan brings UAE to UN Security Council again

Sudan has once again taken its fight with the United Arab Emirates to the UN Security Council, filing a new complaint focusing on the involvement of Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the RSF in Darfur.

Sudan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Al-Harith Idris submitted the complaint this week to Security Council President Sangjin Kim and UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres. The letter, a senior diplomat in Sudan’s permanent mission to the UN said, lays out “troubling and well-documented evidence” of direct Emirati involvement, including the recruitment, financing and deployment of foreign mercenaries to fight with the RSF.

Video shows Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the Rapid Support Forces in an attack on Fasher, August 12. Courtesy of Mjtby Othman on Facebook.

The letter described the interference as a grave violation of Sudan’s sovereignty and international humanitarian law and a direct threat to regional peace and security.

To “counter the Emirati aggression,” a senior diplomat in the Foreign Ministry told Mada Masr, Khartoum is working to build a broader international and African diplomatic front, particularly after large-scale violations in Fasher.

According to the letter, evidence shows that between 350 and 380 Colombian mercenaries — mostly retired soldiers and officers from the Colombian military — were recruited through UAE-based private security companies. Among them, Idris named Global Security Services Group, chaired by Emirati national Mohamed Hamdan al-Zaabi and headquartered in Abu Dhabi, and A4SI, co-founded by retired Colombian colonel Alvaro Quijano and operating out of the Emirati city of Al-Ain.

While contracts described their work as “security and protection services,” Idris’s letter says they were flown directly to Sudan to fight alongside the RSF, operating under a formation called the Desert Wolves.

The document says the mercenaries were flown from the UAE to Bosaso in Somalia, then to Benghazi, Libya under the supervision of officers aligned with Libyan National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar, before being moved overland through Chad into Sudan.

Between November 2024 and February 2025, Khartoum says, at least 248 flights were chartered from the UAE to smuggle mercenaries, weapons and military equipment into Sudan. The first group of 172 Colombian fighters allegedly arrived in Fasher in November 2024, with further deployments concentrated in Darfur, where they took part in the siege and assaults on the city.

According to the letter, the mercenaries were deployed across multiple fronts — Khartoum, Omdurman, Gezira, White Nile, Sennar, Blue Nile, Kordofan and Darfur — operating drones, artillery and armored vehicles while participating in direct combat.

The Sudanese mission said their attacks resulted in serious violations, including extrajudicial killings.

The document described Abu Dhabi as “the direct architect of Sudan’s tragedy” and urged the Security Council to circulate the complaint as an official document, investigate and condemn the UAE, classify the RSF a terrorist organization and hold perpetrators accountable.

Sudan’s standoff with the UAE first spilled into the open in November 2023, when Assistant Commander-in-Chief Yasser al-Atta accused Abu Dhabi of financing and arming the RSF, labeling it a “mafia state.”

Khartoum soon took to the international stage, filing complaints with the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council, before severing diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi in May. A few months later, the UAE banned all trade with Sudan.

In April 2024, Sudan asked the Security Council to convene an urgent session on what it described as “the UAE’s aggression against the Sudanese people.” The two missions exchanged memos, with the UAE dismissing the claims as “baseless and misleading.” The council took no action to condemn the UAE.

Nearly a year later, Sudan attempted to initiate proceedings at the ICJ, accusing the UAE of violating the Genocide Convention in relation to abuses against the Masalit community in West Darfur. But in May, the court dismissed the case, citing lack of jurisdiction.

Throughout, the UAE has consistently denied the accusations. Its Foreign Ministry and diplomats described Sudan’s complaint as “merely a tenuous attempt by the Sudanese Armed Forces [...] to deflect attention from the catastrophic conflict in Sudan and from their own responsibility toward it,” while insisting Abu Dhabi supports the Sudanese people and a peaceful resolution to the war.

Amid the standoff, the UAE has remained engaged in diplomacy on Sudan, joining the US-led Quad alongside Saudi Arabia and Egypt. However, Khartoum insists that no direct talks with the Gulf state would take place unless it halts all military assistance to the RSF.

***

Military retakes Bara, RSF loses senior commanders in Kordofan

The military’s months-long campaign to retake Bara culminated on Thursday with the city’s recapture — a pivotal gain that paves the way for fully reopening the Saderat Road, a vital link between North Kordofan and Omdurman that would channel supplies to sustain the military’s push westward toward Darfur.

The battle lasted several hours and involved several military units supported by allied forces, a military source told Mada Masr. The RSF sustained heavy losses and left behind large stockpiles of weapons and military equipment.

Both the military and its allied armed movements’ joint force announced the recapture, with the latter claiming they destroyed the RSF’s Group 449, which had been controlling Bara.

Plans are now underway to secure the remainder of Gabra al-Sheikh locality, Um Gerfa and nearby villages to fully reopen the Saderat Road, before moving on to Mazroub, Sodary and eventually Darfur, according to the military source.

Military celebrations in Bara after its recapture, September 11. Source: @YAS50IR on X

Bara’s recapture followed a string of advances earlier in the week: Um Sayala was retaken on Sunday, and on Monday the military deployed to eastern villages and the Um Dam Haj Ahmed area, which had been left without military presence, a field source told Mada Masr.

On Tuesday, drone and artillery strikes on areas around Bara destroyed RSF vehicles and weapons depots and killed several senior RSF figures, among them Brigadier Al-Naem, the commander responsible for Bara’s operations, who was killed alongside seven of his officers during a meeting in the Um Kiredam area, west of Bara, the military source said.

Fighting in Kordofan has escalated sharply in recent weeks, with large deployments of military and allied troops — backed by heavy weaponry and air cover — pressing to regain RSF-held territory as part of a broader push toward North Darfur’s Fasher.

To the south of Obeid — the military’s forward operational hub in the Kordofan battles — clashes broke out on Sunday. A field source from the mobilized fighters supporting the military told Mada Masr that the armed forces captured Rayyash and Kazgil before RSF forces attempted to retake the area the next day. Their attempt failed, and RSF commander Maken al-Sadig, one of the group’s most prominent leaders in Kordofan, was killed.

Sadig was among the last influential commanders in the region to join the RSF after the war broke out. He had played a key role in both battlefield operations and recruitment, and follows a string of notable Misseriya RSF leaders — including Galha Rahma Mahdi, Taj Youssef Folajang and Shirya — who have been killed in the Kordofan battles over the past months.

In the RSF-held town of Abu Zabad, a resident said the hospital received more than 50 wounded RSF fighters evacuated from the Kazgil clashes, some in critical condition. The RSF raised its alert level and imposed a curfew in the town, they said.

All current ground operations are geared toward lifting the siege on Fasher under the supervision of Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and advanced operations rooms in Kordofan and northern Sudan, a senior officer in the military’s General Command told Mada Masr.

According to another senior military officer, the military has fully mobilized fighters and equipment to clear Kordofan, lift the siege on Dalang, Kadugli and Babanusa and move on to Fasher. Specialized artillery brigades, they added, have yet to be deployed.

Preparations for a large-scale offensive, particularly along the Kordofan and desert axes, have already been completed, a field source said, though they declined to provide details amid escalating clashes in North Kordofan.

An RSF commander in the Kordofan sector, however, told Mada Masr that their forces are countering heavy offensives in North Kordofan, dismissing claims by the military and allied armed movements as disconnected from developments on the ground.

In the besieged Fasher, the military and allied forces repelled an RSF attempt on Thursday to advance on the city’s northeastern front, a military source said. It was the second such attack in a week. RSF forces had attempted a similar push on Monday but were also thwarted.

South of Fasher, in South Darfur’s Nyala — the RSF’s main stronghold and the seat of its parallel government sworn in late August — military airstrikes hit the government secretariat, destroying the building and setting off massive explosions that shook the city, an RSF source told Mada Masr. Similar strikes, the source said, hit positions in Zalingei, Central Darfur, causing civilian casualties.

***

US sanctions military-allied Islamists as Quad presses for ceasefire, new transition

While Sudan’s delegation to New York faces the prospect of entry restrictions, Washington imposed new sanctions on Friday against the military-led government and some of its Islamist allies.

On the same day, the US-led diplomacy track on Sudan urged a permanent ceasefire and a new transitional process — a course that clashes with Khartoum’s pursuit of a military resolution and its own newly-formed transitional government. The group cast the ruling alliance as “extremists groups [...] linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim, who leads the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the main factions in the joint force backing the military. Sanctions were also imposed on the military-allied Bara bin Malik Brigade.

Ibrahim, one of Sudan’s most influential figures, has held the finance portfolio since 2020, following the Juba peace deal with the Revolutionary Front, and retained his post after both the 2021 coup and the outbreak of war in 2023. He is among the few figures to have kept their ministerial position after Idris’s appointment as prime minister.

Under Ibrahim’s leadership, JEM abandoned neutrality in August 2023, playing a key role in forming the armed movements’ joint force, which has supported the military in battles across eastern and central Sudan and is pivotal on the Fasher front as well as in the Kordofan and desert axes.

The Bara bin Malik Brigade, estimated at 20,000 fighters, is among the most prominent Islamist-aligned units fighting with the military.  The brigade is led by Mesbah Abu Zeid — arrested in Egypt in August — who rose to prominence during the ongoing war. Bara bin Malik has also been deployed in the decisive North Kordofan battles.

The brigade is considered part of the military’s reserve forces and operates under its command structure.

Announcing the sanctions, the US Treasury said they were aimed at curbing Islamist influence in Sudan and countering Iranian regional activity. “Sudanese Islamist groups have formed dangerous alliances with the Iranian regime,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John K. Hurley. “We will not stand idly by and allow them to threaten regional and global security.”

The measures follow earlier rounds of US sanctions: in 2023, sanctions were imposed on Islamist leader Ali Ahmed Karti, as well as on RSF leaders and affiliated companies, most notably Al-Junaid mining company. In 2024, OFAC targeted Mirghani Idris Suleiman, then-director of the Defense Industries System, for leading military arms procurement efforts. In January, both Burhan and RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo were sanctioned in successive orders.

A military source in the Bara bin Malik Brigade told Mada Masr that the sanctions are, in effect, targeting the military itself, since the brigade operates under the Armed Forces command and follows its laws, regulations and orders regarding combat and armament. Burhan formalized this chain of command in August, issuing a decree that brought all irregular armed groups fighting alongside the military under the Armed Forces Act.

Within JEM, a senior figure in its leadership said the sanctions would not affect the movement’s military operations or the efforts Ibrahim is leading. The source argued that the measures lack factual basis, and accused Washington of encouraging the RSF to commit further crimes against civilians, particularly in Fasher and the broader Darfur region. They added that the sanctions were driven by “the UAE’s grudge”, which they said “incites against anyone who obstructs its project in Sudan.”

Alongside the sanctions, the Washington-led Quad on Sudan also addressed the military-led government. Calling for a three-month humanitarian truce, the group’s foreign ministers — of the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE — said it should immediately pave the way to a permanent ceasefire and a transitional process within nine months. “Sudan’s future cannot be dictated by violent extremist groups part of or evidently linked to the Muslim Brotherhood,” the statement released on Friday read.

In Khartoum, a senior Foreign Ministry official said the government views the US targeting of its finance minister as irresponsible and ill-intentioned. “The military’s victories and the popular support it receives, as well as the government’s exposure of daily RSF crimes, should send a clear signal to the international community and reveal the gap in international decisions,” the official said. They added that equating the military with the RSF is unacceptable, and insisted that ending the war hinges on halting Emirati support for the RSF.

***

Independent fact-finding mission report calls out military, RSF again for war crimes

The UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission for Sudan released a new report last week concluding that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF have committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, “with most violations amounting to war crimes.”

The 18-page report, titled A War of Atrocities, covers October 2024 and July 2025 and draws on 257 interviews, video evidence and documentation from civil society groups and international and regional bodies.

The mission determined that both sides carried out war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, hostage-taking and deliberate attacks on civilians and essential facilities. The military was further found responsible for indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery in populated areas, unlawful executions and desecration of the dead.

Both sides also engaged in collective punishment, with civilians targeted based on their perceived affiliation with the other side.

The RSF was found to bear additional responsibility for crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution on ethnic grounds, sexual slavery and extermination.

The report highlighted the RSF’s siege of Fasher, where hundreds of thousands remain trapped and cut off from food and medical supplies, determining that the group is committing the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare. Combined with the destruction of humanitarian convoys and facilities, these actions, the report said, may also amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.

The Human Rights Council established the fact-finding mission in October 2023, tasking it with investigating all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed during Sudan’s war. Its mandate, renewed through October 2025, follows an earlier 2024 report that had already established both the military and RSF’s responsibility for indiscriminate attacks, torture, restrictions on information anc communication, obstruction of aid and — on the part of the RSF and allied militias — large-scale sexual violence, pillage and ethnically targeted killings.

With atrocities continuing, the mission and international human rights groups are urging the HRC to extend the mission’s mandate for another two years to ensure accountability and end impunity. Sudan’s own National Commission of Investigation, established by presidential decree in July 2023, is limited to investigating RSF crimes. By excluding abuses committed by the military and its allies, it lacks independence and credibility, given the military’s implication in the violations as established in the reports.

The mission’s 2024 report found that lawyers and other individuals supporting documentation and accountability for the violations committed were subjected to harassment, detention and torture by both the military and the RSF.