Port Sudan, Sudan —  Explosions were heard near the army-controlled Sudanese capital Khartoum on Friday, witnesses told AFP, a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said they had agreed to a U.S.-backed humanitarian truce proposal to halt the vicious two-and-a-half year civil war.
Following the RSF’s capture of El-Fasher, the army’s last major stronghold in western Darfur, less than two weeks ago, the paramilitaries appear to be shifting their focus eastward toward Khartoum and the oil-rich Kordofan region.
Khartoum has seen relative calm since the regular army regained control this year, but the RSF — at war with the army since April 2023 — has continued its attacks in several regions, targeting both military and civilian sites.
A resident in Omdurman, part of the greater Khartoum area, told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, that they were awoken “around 2 a.m. (7 p.m. Eastern, Thursday) by the sound of … explosions near the Wadi Sayidna military base.”
Sudanese students shout slogans as they take part in protest against violations committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the people of El-Fasher, in Gedaref city, eastern Sudan, Nov. 6, 2025. / Credit: STR/AFP/Getty
Another resident said they “heard a drone overhead around 4 a.m. before an explosion struck near” a power station, causing an outage in the area.
In army-controlled Atbara, around 186 miles north of Khartoum, a resident said several drones “appeared over the city shortly after 3 a.m.” on Friday.
“Anti-aircraft defenses shot them down, but I saw fires breaking out and heard sounds of explosions in the east of the city,” the resident said, also on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Another Atbara resident told AFP: “I saw 10 drones over the city, and the anti-aircraft defenses were shooting them down one by one, but at the same time, I saw fires in the east of the city.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties, and neither the army nor the RSF immediately commented on the attacks.
Meanwhile, the Sudan Doctors’ Union said that the RSF shelled a hospital in the besieged city of Dilling in South Kordofan on Thursday morning, causing several injuries, some critical.
The shelling “destroyed the hospital’s radiology and medical imaging department”, crippling one of the region’s vital health facilities, the union said.
Dilling has been under RSF siege since June 2023.
Sudan’s grinding civil war has escalated this year, most notably with the RSF first imposing a months-long blockade of El-Fasher while bombing the city’s trapped inhabitants and then pushing in to take control of the city late last month.
Multiple reports by outside monitoring groups suggest large-scale atrocities in El-Fasher since the RSF took the city. The entire war has been marked by allegations of severe human rights violations and war crimes, with the Biden administration accusing the RSF just before President Trump took office of committing genocide.
The U.S. has been working with international partners — and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular, which along with Washington have become known as the Quad — to broker an end to the war.
On Thursday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson in Washington told reporters that the Trump administration was engaging directly with the RSF and the Sudanese army, and they called on both sides to “move forward in response to the U.S.-led effort to conclude a humanitarian truce, given the immediate urgency of de-escalating the violence and ending the suffering of the Sudanese people.”
The U.S. official spoke after the RSF announced that it had agreed to a proposal for a humanitarian truce put forward by the Quad, “in response to the aspirations and interests of the Sudanese people.”
No details of the truce proposal have been confirmed by the Quad nations or the two warring factions in Sudan, and the military-aligned government in Khartoum did not immediately comment on the RSF’s announcement.
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