Sudan mixes a political roadmap with a cholera emergency in Kordofan

Human Rights Watch accused the United Arab Emirates of training Colombian mercenaries near Abu Dhabi, including at a base in Al Dhafra, to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. Around 21 civilians were reported killed over two days in RSF drone strikes on markets in the North Darfur towns of Al-Tina and Kornoi. The accusation and the market strikes were separate items in the same campaign.

The Sudanese Armed Forces said they had retaken four more towns in Blue Nile after clashes with the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North. Earlier they had announced control of Al-Barka. The army's statements described a push through that region rather than an end to the wider war.

The Sudan Doctors Network accused the Rapid Support Forces of killing 27 civilians in Al-Murra village in the Bara area of North Kordofan on the second day of Eid al-Adha. The National Umma Party reported ten people, including eight children, killed in a drone strike on two civilian vehicles on the Abu Zabad to Al-Fula road in West Kordofan. Tribal clashes in South Darfur between the Beni Halba and Salamat were reported to have killed 50 people.

Health minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim led an emergency meeting after the federal health ministry reported 308 cholera cases and 77 deaths in West Kordofan. The meeting treated cholera as an outbreak inside the war. Army statements about retaken towns did not include a claim that the disease was under control.

The Allied Democratic Forces were reported to have killed more than 100 people during May in Mambasa Territory in Ituri, and a later attack killed at least 19 civilians in North Kivu's Ruwenzori commune. Those Congo figures were a separate conflict from Sudan's cholera count. Together they showed civilian deaths and disease moving at the same time in the region.

A roadmap effort and the casualty lists did not cancel each other out. West Kordofan's 308 cases and 77 deaths were the health numbers on the ministry ledger. Blue Nile was where the army said it had taken more ground, and Darfur was where market strikes and tribal fighting were still being counted.