Sudan Nashra: RSF captures Heglig oil field, Juba deploys to protect facilities | Sources in premiership: Ministerial dismissals imminent | Humanitarian collapse in West Kordofan, RSF drone strike kills over 100 in South Kordofan | TSC source: Military, armed movements agreed on mass deployment, recruitment across Kordofan

In a major shift that hands the Rapid Support Forces a powerful economic lever, the paramilitary group seized West Kordofan’s Heglig oil field this week — Sudan’s largest and a critical hub for processing and exporting South Sudan’s crude.

Wary of yet another blow to its oil revenues after Khartoum declared force majeure on South Sudanese crude in 2024, Juba deployed troops to secure the Heglig facilities under an agreement with both Khartoum and the RSF, South Sudanese and RSF sources told Mada Masr.

Beyond the clear economic repercussions for both countries, the RSF takeover complicates prospects for a political settlement to Sudan’s war, a South Sudanese security source said, noting that the military must now recognize a rival entity equipped with both military power and economic assets.

The fall of Heglig marks the military’s second major loss in West Kordofan following the fall of Babanusa earlier this month. With Heglig now under its control, the RSF effectively controls the entire state, where a rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis has taken hold since Babanusa’s collapse.

Residents in Babanusa and nearby towns describe acute food shortages, soaring prices and a healthcare system in collapse. Communities receiving displaced families are sharing meals, pooling resources and bartering scarce supplies. “Everyone is trying to help,” a resident in one of the towns said. But the scale is beyond what the communities can handle as West Kordofan’s administration is virtually absent.

The devastation, deaths and displacement in Kordofan are unlikely to ease. A Transitional Sovereignty Council source told Mada Masr that in lengthy meetings in November, TSC Chair and military Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan agreed with the leaders of the military-allied armed movements that they will deploy across all fronts in the region. Under a protocol negotiated between the sides, the military will provide the groups with weapons, while they oversee popular mobilization and open training camps for new recruits.

Speaking in Omdurman this week, Burhan insisted the solution to the war is “above all” a military one — doubling down on the same 2023 Jeddah Agreement-anchored conditions for a truce. According to the TSC source, these renewed hardline statements reflect the outcome of his meetings with the armed movements. 

The meetings also saw Burhan agree with the armed groups to scale back the ministerial quotas they were granted under the Juba Agreement, the TSC source said, to cut state spending and redirect resources toward accelerating military operations.

This comes as Prime Minister Kamel Idris wages an escalating, though unofficial, campaign against his ministries. Ministerial staff told Mada Masr of sharp disputes, frozen decisions and direct interference by Idris’s office in ministerial affairs. Three sources in his office say up to six ministers may be dismissed from a Cabinet only recently finalized. Some estimate more.

Former officials argue Idris is attempting to assert himself before a government he largely did not choose solidifies its own power bases inside the ministries. But one former official warned that these backchannel maneuvers could backfire, creating “fear paralysis” in an executive branch already under public scrutiny over its performance, as civil servants become too afraid to act.

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RSF captures Heglig oil field, Juba deploys to protect facilities

The RSF took control on Monday of Heglig, Sudan’s largest oil field in West Kordofan, near the border with South Sudan, after the withdrawal of the military into South Sudanese territory.

Recognizing the threat to the infrastructure that carries its crude exports, Juba has moved troops into the area to protect the site, RSF and South Sudanese sources told Mada Masr.

A military source told Mada Masr that the military withdrew from Heglig without a fight to avoid damage to the facilities. The withdrawal was preceded by the evacuation of engineers and field staff, a senior military source said, adding that the operation was conducted with close coordination between Sudan and South Sudan.

Neither the military nor the government has issued any official comment so far.

Heglig is also a critical hub for processing and exporting South Sudan’s crude. Large volumes of South Sudanese oil pass through Heglig’s facilities before being pumped to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. 

An engineering source working at Heglig told Mada Masr that production has effectively been halted since the RSF’s capture, with staff evacuated to safer areas inside South Sudan.

An RSF military source said they are deploying units to protect the oil facilities and prevent the entry of any armed groups, in what they described as an attempt to manage the site without endangering the infrastructure.

The development marks a critical change in the balance of power between the RSF and the military after a string of major military losses in strategic areas, most recently Babanusa. Control over Heglig offers the RSF a strong bargaining chip and an ability to establish lasting influence in the area.

A South Sudanese military source told Mada Masr that Sudanese military troops — including the 22nd Infantry Division that withdrew from Babanusa under the command of deputy division commander Hassan Darmout — crossed into South Sudan and were received in the Aweil area. 

President Salva Kiir instructed the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces to host the Sudanese soldiers until further arrangements are made in coordination with Sudanese military leadership, according to the source.

The economic repercussions of the Heglig takeover are immediate and clear, a source in Sudan’s Energy and Petroleum Ministry told Mada Masr. Sudan has lost a key portion of its oil output — a major source of revenue used to fund the military and government services, according to the source.

In Juba, a senior government official told Mada Masr that the disruption of oil exports through Sudan deprives South Sudan of critical income and risks triggering a financial crisis affecting the budget, public services and development projects. South Sudan may now be forced to seek less efficient alternative export routes or reduce production, the official said.

RSF control of the field also gives the paramilitary group direct influence over South Sudan’s economy, according to the official, allowing it to use oil as leverage or develop an independent revenue stream.

A South Sudanese security source said RSF control over Heglig opens the possibility of expanding its reach into surrounding areas, including in South Kordofan. The field offers a strategic base for controlling transport and export routes and exploiting other resources in the region.

The takeover, according to the security source, places the Sudanese military in a weakened position and complicates efforts to stabilize conflict areas or reclaim oil fields. 

The political outlook will be more complex, as the military must recognize a parallel entity with both economic and military resources — limiting the state’s ability to reassert full central authority, the source said. This is a particular concern for South Sudan, as it would disrupt its control over oil resources and may force it to intervene directly to keep oil infrastructure safe from sabotage.

South Sudanese forces are now advancing into areas around the Heglig field under an agreement with both the Sudanese government and the RSF to secure the area, the security source said. 

A senior South Sudanese official told Mada Masr that South Sudan’s military chief Paul Nang Majok arrived in Heglig on Tuesday to oversee security measures on the ground.

“We don’t want any damage to these fields or disruptions to oil exports,” the South Sudanese security source said. “This situation is upsetting for us in the South Sudanese government, but the reality in Sudan forces us to activate our joint security agreement.” The source added that the RSF welcomed their arrival.

An RSF source confirmed cooperation with the South Sudanese government to secure the oil sites. South Sudan’s forces have already arrived in Heglig to help protect the facilities, the source said, adding that the RSF supports the initiative and does not object to the presence of “friendly forces” there. The RSF, they said, will maintain part of its force in Heglig and will not withdraw completely from the field.

China’s state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, Heglig’s operator, requested a meeting this month in Juba with the Sudanese government to discuss the early termination of its operations in Sudan after three decades, citing deteriorating security conditions, acts of sabotage and theft, as well as the collapse of supply chains, several media outlets reported.

A military strategic drone targeted RSF positions in Heglig’s Fama area, a field source told Mada Masr. The strike killed and injured dozens of RSF officers and soldiers, as well as allied fighters, including Hamdan Gar al-Naby, a leading figure in West Kordofan’s tribal administration, according to the source.

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TSC source: Military, armed movements agreed on mass deployment, recruitment across Kordofan

Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair and military Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan toured Omdurman on Thursday, where he insisted, in statements to the press, that “the war’s solution is, above all, a military one,” with any other solutions to follow only afterward. 

There can be no truce, he said, without key preconditions: the RSF’s withdrawal and disarmament — the Jeddah Agreement terms he and his circle have doubled down on since late November, when he addressed top commanders at the General Command in Khartoum after Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman urged US President Donald Trump to intervene in Sudan.

Informed Egyptian and Sudanese sources told Mada Masr at the time that Burhan’s pivot back to the 2023 Jeddah talks — a framework that would require substantial revisions — is aimed at appeasing a military establishment determined to see the RSF eliminated, while giving him room to avoid any binding deal that might restrict his options as he capitalizes on the multiplicity of diplomatic tracks.

Burhan’s Omdurman statements, according to a TSC source, are built on an internal understanding reached between the military and leaders of the allied armed movements during lengthy meetings he held in November in Khartoum, the source said. 

The parties agreed on several key points relating to both the truce and ongoing military operations: no ceasefire would be signed as long as the RSF holds Fasher, and the armed movements will be involved in all operations across Kordofan. Under a military protocol negotiated between the sides, the military will provide the armed movements with weapons, while the movements will oversee popular mobilization and open training camps.

According to the source, Burhan also reached an agreement with the armed movements to adjust their position within the government by reducing the ministerial quotas they were granted under the Juba Agreement — quotas they had forcefully defended during the formation of Prime Minister Kamel Idris’s Cabinet. This would allow the dissolution or merger of some ministries to cut expenses and redirect government resources toward accelerating military operations.

Burhan’s Thursday statements, the TSC source said, have now become the foundation for both official and unofficial government negotiation tracks, as the US and Egypt attempt to revive ceasefire talks before year’s end. 

A senior diplomatic source at the Foreign Ministry said the US held extensive consultations late last week with the liaison committee that delivered Khartoum’s response to Washington’s November ceasefire proposal — submitted through the Quad, led by US Senior Advisor for African and Arab Affairs Massad Boulos and including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Burhan rejected the proposal in his General Command address, and the Security and Defense Council formed a committee to draft Khartoum’s reply.

However, communication between Khartoum and Washington has not ceased both directly and indirectly through Egypt, the diplomatic source stressed.

A former Foreign Ministry diplomat said Burhan has benefited from the multiplicity of diplomatic channels and the lack of a unified US vision. Washington, he argued, is reluctant to engage too directly for fear of complicating its position with regional allies. Burhan, meanwhile, has opened all possible tracks — a tactic that created divergent, contradictory pathways that the former diplomat believes are all going to fail.

Without agreement between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on how to approach the Sudan crisis, it will be impossible for Washington’s plan to halt the war and secure a humanitarian truce to succeed, according to the former diplomat. The Gulf’s disregard for Egypt’s role further undermines any serious path forward, they said, as Cairo remains involved in Sudan outside Gulf calculations. These discrepancies allow Burhan to tell his domestic allies that the solution is military — a message that fuels RSF ambitions to push back into Khartoum, backed by continuing Emirati support, according to the source.

A senior RSF source told Mada Masr that Burhan’s Omdurman statements are a signal to the international community that he is not serious about negotiations as a way out of the crisis, adding that the RSF intends to force Burhan to “submit to peace willingly or unwillingly,” and that its military operations will continue.

The outlook is increasingly grim, the former diplomat said. Sudan’s economic collapse has reached unprecedented depths, placing crushing pressure on society and on both warring sides. Rapid currency devaluation, institutional paralysis, mass displacement and disintegrating markets are accelerating the country’s slide toward fragmentation — and toward a war economy built on smuggling, extortion and localized control of resources.

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Sources in premiership: Ministerial dismissals imminent

While Prime Minister Kamel Idris speaks publicly of rebuilding state institutions, a very different reality has been taking shape behind closed doors in recent weeks. 

Several accounts from ministerial staff speaking to Mada Masr describe sharp disputes with several ministers, abruptly frozen decisions and direct interventions by Idris’s office in ministerial affairs. Three sources in his office say up to six ministers may be dismissed from a Cabinet only recently finalized. Some suggest the number could be even higher.

An employee in a service ministry said that “unidentified” delegations began arriving in recent weeks from the premiership, entering the archives and requesting copies of internal correspondence without notifying the minister or his staff. Describing a surprise visit in December, the employee said the minister only learned about it after the delegation had left. “The atmosphere has become heavy. People started talking about a deliberate review meant to push [the minister] out,” they said. 

According to the employee, the minister has since suspended three decisions he had already signed, after receiving “indirect” phone calls urging him to hold off.

At an economic ministry, representatives from the premiership walked into an internal meeting, questioning, with an investigative tone, the ministry’s 90-day plan, an employee in the ministry said. Angered, the minister retorted: “This is a ministry, not a military operations room.” 

After the meeting, the minister locked himself in his office and refused to see anyone, only to receive a call from Idris’s office asking him to explain his “tone,” according to the employee. The minister, they said, felt the interaction was designed to expose his vulnerability ahead of a bigger move.

In a ministry overseeing relief work, a financial management employee said they received a brief letter ordering the suspension of two critical grants — including an allocation for medical supplies — with no explanation and no indication of how long the freeze would last. The minister called the move “unprecedented interference,” and staff interpreted it as an attempt to corner him politically and administratively, according to the employee.

In another ministry, an employee said their general director gathered staff and instructed them to organize all files “on the assumption that the minister may be leaving,” a comment that deepened the sense that a shake-up is only a matter of time, they said.

In a sovereign ministry, a legal advisor told Mada Masr that his minister had begun asking, with unprecedented anxiety, whether “the key files are ready if he is dismissed.”

These accounts track with assessments from former officials familiar with government administration. One former minister who served in an earlier transitional period told Mada Masr that Idris’s maneuvers are “a natural part of consolidating control before power centers entrench themselves inside the ministries.” The pattern of early, informal interventions — sudden visits, freezes on decisions —  is “a familiar method in Sudan’s transitions” that precede dismissals, they said.

The former minister noted that the current ministers “were not his choice — other actors intervened in their appointment,” leaving Idris with limited political and administrative leverage.

From the earliest days of Idris’s tenure, the Cabinet formation became a confrontation between entrenched power centers and the model Idris was trying to impose on a fragile, fragmented executive apparatus weighed down by years of war. 

Pressure from the Transitional Sovereignty Council and the armed movements signatory to the Juba Agreement derailed Idris’s plan for a fully technocratic, non-partisan Cabinet. A source on the Cabinet nominations committee previously told Mada Masr that the political balancing act of the ruling coalition had the military, its allied armed movements and Burhan weigh in on Idris’s choices.

Since then, Idris has been confronted with a growing backlog of pressing issues, from worsening humanitarian conditions and collapsing services, to the absence of clear plans for rehabilitating war-damaged areas, sharpening public scrutiny of Idris’s performance.

A former administrative advisor to a previous cabinet told Mada Masr that while the current government inherited an already “broken” administrative apparatus, the way Idris is handling it “may be more dangerous than the problem itself.” 

Unannounced inspections and decision freezes without official memoranda, they explained, create what they called “fear paralysis,” in which civil servants avoid taking any step for fear of being held accountable later. This approach, they said, reproduces the very crisis past transitional governments sought to escape: running ministries through indirect signals and parallel channels instead of official decision-making mechanisms.

According to the advisor, the converging testimonies suggest that Idris is driven by three main goals: assembling a fully aligned team operating under his direct vision, dismantling the informal networks that have embedded themselves in ministries for years — often referred to internally as “parallel administrations” — and reshaping the equation with the military by replacing figures seen as extensions of old power structures. Yet these same objectives are fueling early collisions between the premiership and ministers who increasingly feel they are being managed through pressure tactics rather than official channels, the advisor said.

As some ministries brace for dismissals they now consider almost certain, three sources in Idris’s office spoke of six ministers being removed in one sweep. Other estimates suggest a broader reshuffle involving up to nine portfolios, according to the three sources. According to a ministerial source, many interpret this move as an attempt by Idris to leave a strong imprint before the new government settles in, yet others fear it could open the door to a deeper internal clash, especially if influential actors perceive the changes as threats to their interests within the state apparatus.

Amid these tensions, a ministerial source said the Cabinet has issued Circular 18/2025 on Monday, instructing several ministries to begin preparing for relocation from the temporary administrative capital of Port Sudan back to Khartoum. 

The order, forwarded by the Cabinet secretariat, applies to the ministries of justice, agriculture, irrigation, minerals, animal resources and fisheries, infrastructure and transport, communications and digital transformation, education, higher education and scientific research, human resources and social welfare, religious affairs and endowments, culture and information, and antiquities and tourism.

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US sanctions network recruiting Colombian soldiers for RSF

On Tuesday, the United States announced sanctions against a network it says has been recruiting former Colombian military personnel and sending them to Sudan to fight for the RSF, in addition to training fighters — including children — according to a statement from the US Treasury Department.

The department said the measures target four individuals and four entities in Colombia and Panama, accusing them of running a “transnational network” that has facilitated the arrival of hundreds of ex-Colombian soldiers in Sudan since September 2024. Their roles, the statement noted, included infantry and artillery missions, operating drones and vehicles, and providing military training.

The department also noted that Colombian fighters took part in the RSF offensive to seize North Darfur’s Fasher in late October. “[The RSF] subsequently engaged in mass killings of civilians, ethnically targeted torture and sexual violence,” the statement read.

The Department of Treasury restated the US’s demand that external actors cease providing financial and military support to Sudan’s warring parties.

Sudan had raised the issue last year, filing a complaint with the United Nations Security Council against the UAE over the deployment of Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the RSF. According to the letter submitted by Sudan’s permanent representative to the UN, evidence shows that hundreds of Colombian mercenaries had been recruited through UAE-based private security companies since November 2024 and deployed across multiple fronts, including North Darfur’s Fasher.

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Large-scale humanitarian collapse in West Kordofan, Babanusa residents unreachable

Babanusa has become the epicenter of a fast-deepening humanitarian collapse in West Kordofan State after falling under RSF control, a local source familiar with the city’s service conditions told Mada Masr. “Everything is deteriorating faster than the city can endure,” they said.

Two years of siege and fighting have emptied out central Babanusa, but when the city fell, the surrounding neighborhoods and areas were hit by a rapid humanitarian deterioration.

Residents reached during brief windows of mobile connectivity described severe food shortages.

In the neighborhood of Magatea, one resident said his family’s flour and oil are nearly gone. “We now stretch a single meal across the whole day. The children cry from hunger at night,” he said.

A resident of the Sahafa neighborhood said she has not been able to find bread for three days. Families, she added, have started relying on bartering whatever little they have. “We survive by sharing. Without that, many people would already be starving,” she said.

Health services have collapsed as well. The main hospital has stopped receiving critical cases, while a medical worker operating in a small field clinic said the facility is “completely out of service” after running out of fuel and losing part of its staff. “People arrive with severe injuries and we have to turn them away. We are working with almost nothing. Emergency care is provided unsafely. Any wound today can turn into something far worse because we can’t disinfect,” they said. A resident who transports the injured on a motorcycle added that “a lot of these cases could be saved if a functioning hospital existed.”

The greatest fear now surrounds dozens who have been out of contact since fighting intensified around the eastern neighborhoods.

“There are areas no one can enter. We have no idea what’s happening to our people there,” a resident in the south said. “The network comes on for 10 minutes a day. We try to send quick messages, but there’s no reply.” 

Another resident said some families have gone more than 24 hours without any word from their relatives. “It’s not only the fighting we fear. It’s the hunger and thirst inside the homes,” they said.

Surrounding towns have become chaotic centers of displacement. A resident of Fula said the influx is “far beyond the town’s capacity,” with schools packed and people now sleeping in public squares. “Everyone is trying to help, but the numbers are bigger than any group’s capacity,” he said. 

“We divide the aid until the portion is smaller than a meal,” a volunteer in Muglad said.

Prices of basic goods have surged to unprecedented levels in Lagawa and Debab. Fuel costs have more than doubled in a week, disrupting water pumps and halting transport.

A farmer in Lagawa’s outskirts said going to the fields has become “a serious risk,” warning that this threatens the winter farming season and heightens the possibility of hunger in the months ahead.

Roads between villages are now unsafe, and moving aid requires temporary local agreements or long detours that take hours. “The state effectively has no functioning administration,” a local administrative source said, noting that daily complaints receive no response on the ground. 

“People have been left to fend for themselves,” he said. “There is no authority capable of intervening.”

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Over 100 killed in RSF drone attack in South Kordofan

The South Kordofan town of Kalogi came under a deadly RSF attack on Thursday in which drones struck a preschool, a hospital and residential areas, killing and injuring dozens, including many children and women.

Five residents described the shock of the attack’s first moments, when drones fired directly at a preschool before moving on to hit the hospital and other civilian gathering points. Panic spread as families fled toward the outskirts while others found themselves trapped.

“We heard a huge explosion, then screaming and wailing. Children were running in every direction. Families tried to protect themselves, but there was nowhere safe,” one resident told Mada Masr.

The hospital receiving the wounded was itself hit during rescue efforts, according to a second resident, forcing ambulance services to halt. Residents were left to transport the injured on motorcycles and donkey carts to homes or nearby areas, fearful the drones would return. 

A member of the emergency crews said women and children were the most affected, and that many of the wounded received no immediate treatment. Some died en route to safer areas.

A source in the local government secretariat said initial figures put the death toll at 114, with 71 wounded. A medical source in Kalogi said they reported an initial count of 43 children among the dead, while the UN said on Monday that 63 children had been killed. Three local paramedics warned that the toll was likely to rise as more affected areas are accessed.

Homes were burned, food supplies destroyed and drinking water sources damaged, plunging the town into an acute humanitarian crisis.

In the aftermath, hundreds of people from eastern and central Kalogi fled to surrounding areas in search of temporary shelter. 

Government and international reactions were swift. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack as a “heinous crime” aimed at “inflicting the greatest number of casualties among civilians," urging the international community to take immediate action. The African Union also condemned the assault and called for independent investigations into violations.

The RSF has issued no statement acknowledging or denying responsibility.

A source in South Darfur’s government said the RSF’s targeting of a civilian town sends a deliberate message of intimidation to neighboring communities, with the aim of depopulating these areas and converting them into zones of displacement or military control.

The source warned that the coming period may bring a higher death toll as more information surfaces, along with the near-total collapse of basic services, heightened risks of disease and malnutrition, and growing fractures among local communities.

The UN Security Council convened a closed session on Monday at the request of Denmark and the United Kingdom. According to a diplomatic source at Sudan’s UN mission, the session was focused on the situation in Kordofan and the RSF’s continuing violations.