Sudan’s military said this month it has seized a key Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stronghold in North Kordofan state, a battlefield gain commanders are framing as a turning point in a civil war that has already displaced 14 million people and pushed nearly 20 million into acute hunger.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) announced on October 2 that it had taken full control of al-Mazroub, a town a Sudanese army source described to Al Jazeera as the RSF’s largest stronghold in North Kordofan. Mohamed Deidan, spokesman for the army’s special forces, told Anadolu that “the Sudanese army has taken full control of al-Mazroub after battles with the Rapid Support Forces,” calling it a step toward cutting off the paramilitary group’s supply lines between North and West Kordofan. In a statement, the SAF said the fighting had inflicted heavy RSF casualties and destroyed combat vehicles, and urged residents of “liberated areas” to “rest assured and return to their normal lives.”

The army followed up days later with a strike it called a “knockout blow” against the RSF and its ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, in Blue Nile state, saying the operation caused “heavy losses in lives and equipment.” The RSF has not publicly responded to either claim.

The fighting in Kordofan has become the war’s second-bloodiest front after the capital, Khartoum. An Al Jazeera analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found roughly a fifth of all recorded attacks since the war began in April 2023 have occurred in the Kordofan region, as the front line shifted there following the RSF’s capture of el-Fasher in Darfur last October. The International Organization for Migration reported in July that displacement across Kordofan had risen nearly two-thirds since February, past 219,000 people.

Despite the army’s recent gains, the broader map of the war remains largely unchanged: the RSF still controls most of Darfur and parts of Kordofan, while the SAF holds Khartoum and much of the north, east and center. South Kordofan remains contested, with SPLM-N forces holding pockets of territory there.

The human cost continues to mount regardless of who holds which town. A UN-backed hunger monitor warned in May that about 19.5 million people across Sudan face acute hunger, with 14 areas in North Darfur, South Darfur and South Kordofan at risk of famine, and roughly 825,000 children projected to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year. The Sudanese pound, meanwhile, has lost nearly half its value in army-held territory since early summer, deepening the economic strain on civilians already living through what aid agencies have repeatedly called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

More than two and a half years after fighting erupted between the SAF and RSF in Khartoum, Sudan’s war has spread to 13 of its 18 states with no negotiated end in sight. Whether the army’s Kordofan offensive marks a lasting shift in momentum, or simply the latest swing in a conflict that has repeatedly changed hands, is likely to depend on battles still to come.

Sources: Al Jazeera, Anadolu Agency