Sudan army says it repelled major attack in Blue Nile region

Sudan’s war is spreading across the map, not settling on one front. The Sudanese army’s Fourth Infantry Division said it repelled a large-scale attack by the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North on Al-Barka in southern Blue Nile, while separate fighting in South Darfur left about 350 people dead in clashes between the Beni Halba and Salamat tribes over five days.

The Blue Nile battle underlines why the front matters beyond the immediate combat. Al-Barka sits in a state that borders Ethiopia and South Sudan and serves as a gateway to central Sudan, making it important for trade routes, supply lines and military movement. The army had seized Al-Barka on May 25 as part of an advance toward Kurmuk, after fighting escalated from March, when RSF and SPLM-N forces launched a broader offensive and captured Kurmuk and surrounding areas. Reports from the front have described heavy drone use on both sides and the displacement of thousands of civilians toward Ad-Damazin.

The Darfur violence shows a different but equally dangerous layer of the conflict: communal fighting in areas where state control has weakened. The clashes began in late May in Kubum locality and spread to Wastani and Mirkindi after a herder was killed in Al-Juraif. One account said an assault on a water collection point near Kubum on May 30 killed more than fifty people and pushed thousands of civilians toward Edd Al Fursan, while villages and homes were burned in the fighting.

Darfur Region Governor al-Hadi Idris Yahya appealed from Nyala on June 2 for the Beni Halba and Salamat to halt the violence and restore calm. He warned that the fighting had spread fear among civilians and threatened social peace in Darfur, where local disputes now carry the same mass-displacement consequences as battles between organized armed forces.

Taken together, the two flashpoints point to a war that is becoming more decentralized and harder to contain. Blue Nile and South Darfur are far apart, but both are feeding the same crisis: broken authority, repeated displacement, worsening aid access and civilians trapped between armed actors. Since the war began in April 2023, reporting in June 2026 has described more than 150,000 deaths and over 12 million displaced, a scale that makes every new front a national emergency.