Sudan Nashra: RSF-armed Salamat, Beni Halba locked in deadly ‘tribal war’ | New wave of RSF violence near Bara kills dozens, communities mobilize to defend villages | RSF-led Tasis establishes Security and Defense Council | Quintet’s Addis Ababa meetings lay bare divisions in Democratic Bloc

Subscribe to our Lens on Sudan newsletter here . Armed with the heavy weaponry that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to distribute among its allies across Darfur, the Salamat and Beni Halba tribes have been locked in days of fighting since late May in South Darfur, leaving a devastating humanitarian toll in their wake. Anti-aircraft weapons, artillery and drones pounded the Kubum locality and surrounding villages and towns, residents told Mada Masr. Homes were burned down with people trapped inside, bodies were left strewn along the roads, and neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. For residents, the scale of the violence has crossed all boundaries governing tribal conflicts. While competition over grazing land, farmland and trade routes has long fueled clashes between the two tribes, the RSF’s reshaping of local power structures across Darfur has turned such rivalries into higher-stakes contests for position within the paramilitary group’s order, a source in the Rizeigat tribal coordination body said. According to the source, the RSF’s division of Darfur into military and administrative zones has increased the political and economic rewards attached to local influence. Tribes aligned with the RSF are granted varying degrees of authority, resources and representation, creating incentives to demonstrate territorial weight. An independent Sudanese human rights observer in South Darfur told Mada Masr that RSF soldiers and officers from both tribes stationed in the area have become directly involved in the fighting. The result, they said, is a “chaotic and highly destructive tribal war” that senior RSF leaders cannot contain through the ordinary chain of command. Farther east, another tribal community has faced its own wave of violence at the hands of the RSF. In North Kordofan’s Dar Hamid tribal lands, RSF fighters launched attacks on villages in the Um Kiredam locality near Bara, killing at least 58 people over three days. The assaults triggered mass tribal mobilization, with residents rallying to defend their villages. Yet even as violence continues to emerge from the system of alliances the RSF has fostered throughout the war, granting allied groups and fighters substantial latitude in exchange for military backing, it is now simultaneously seeking to construct the institutions of a centralized governing authority. This week, the RSF-led administration issued a decree creating a parallel Security and Defense Council. The body has been granted broad authority over security policy and will oversee plans to create a new “national army” incorporating the RSF, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu and other signatories to the parallel government’s founding charter. A former advisor to the RSF leadership told Mada Masr that the initiative is less about military restructuring than about political positioning. The council, they said, serves as yet another institutional facade through which the alliance can present itself as a governing authority rather than a collection of armed groups. That same posturing extended to Addis Ababa this week, where representatives of the Tasis alliance participated in exploratory talks organized by the Quintet Mechanism ahead of a proposed intra-Sudanese civilian dialogue. The initiative sought to bring together actors from across Sudan’s political camps, including the Democratic Bloc, the military-led government’s main political base. But before the talks had even begun, they had already brought into public view a growing rift within the bloc. A Democratic Bloc communications officer told Mada Masr that members initially agreed to participate. That position shifted after Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Eid al-Adha address, in which he sharply criticized political processes hosted abroad. Bloc leaders interpreted the remarks as a clear signal not to attend, the source said. Days later, key figures including bloc chair Gaafar al-Mirghany announced a boycott of the Addis Ababa talks. The Sudan Liberation Movement led by Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi, however, chose to attend alongside allied factions. Speaking to Mada Masr, a spokesperson for Minnawi’s office insisted that participation should not be construed as endorsement for externally driven political processes, stressing that the movement’s involvement was guided by what they described as “non-negotiable national principles.” Yet attendance did not translate into dialogue. According to the communications officer, Minnawi’s camp refused to sit with Tasis representatives, while other groups lodged similar objections. The result was a fragmented process in which organizers abandoned plans for joint discussions and instead convened separate meetings. As political allies of the military debated whether to engage with the Addis Ababa process, Burhan was in Ankara for high-level talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on security and economic cooperation. According to a senior government source informed of the discussions, the visit was designed to operationalize recently agreed upon economic arrangements and establish high-level intelligence coordination personally overseen by Burhan amid concerns over growing Ethiopian logistical support for the RSF. A military source told Mada Masr this week that the RSF and the SPLM-N (Hilu) have been reinforcing their positions in Blue Nile’s Kurmuk since late May, bringing in large numbers of fighters and foreign mercenaries via Ethiopia and South Sudan as they prepare for a battle over one of their most important strongholds and a critical gateway for supply routes running through Ethiopia. With military forces now only a few kilometers away on several fronts, the allies have sought to push back advancing troops. On Wednesday, RSF fighters briefly entered the strategic Baraka area west of Kurmuk before military forces retook it hours later, according to a field source. *** RSF-armed Salamat, Beni Halba locked in deadly “tribal war” Areas belonging to the Beni Halba tribe in South Darfur’s Kubum locality have been set ablaze during clashes with the Salamat tribe, May 31. Photo: @albwabaanews via Facebook. Entire neighborhoods have been burned down, bodies left strewn along the roads and dozens of families forced to flee, as fighting between the RSF-allied Beni Halba and Salamat tribes has spiraled in South Darfur since late May, two residents of the Kubum locality, a Salamat field source, two Rizeigat tribal figures and a Sudanese human rights observer told Mada Masr. Disputes over grazing land, farmland and trade routes have long pitted the two tribes against one another. But according to a source within the Rizeigat tribal coordination body, the RSF has raised the stakes by heavily arming allied tribes and redrawing local power arrangements in areas under its control, intensifying competition among groups vying for influence and representation within the RSF’s military and administrative structures. The latest escalation comes nearly two years after a peace agreement signed in November 2023 — following conflicts that killed hundreds in Kubum — effectively collapsed by mid-2024, giving way to intermittent clashes that steadily grew more violent as advanced weapons supplied by the RSF spread among tribal communities. According to a Kubum resident, the recent clashes saw fighters deploy mortars, DShK machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons and artillery mounted on four-wheel-drive vehicles. The violence soon spilled beyond its epicenter in Kubum, they said, engulfing nearby towns and villages and “turning neighborhoods and farmlands into direct frontlines.” A Salamat field source in the locality said Beni Halba fighters also used RSF-supplied drones, launching strikes against Salamat positions on Monday. The drones targeted gathering points and supply lines on the outskirts of Kubum and in nearby agricultural areas, the source said. Smoke billowed over the targeted sites as successive explosions rippled across the area, spreading panic among civilians. The drone attacks inflicted heavy casualties and destroyed several armed pickup trucks, severely disrupting Salamat operations and ultimately tipping the balance of the fighting in Beni Halba’s favor, according to the source. A Rizeigat notable told Mada Masr that the RSF leadership is biased toward Beni Halba because of the tribe’s kinship ties to the Rizeigat, from which the Dagalos hail, suggesting the paramilitary group has been quietly backing Beni Halba throughout the clashes. A Sudanese human rights field observer active in Darfur and affiliated with an independent organization based in South Darfur’s Nyala told Mada Masr that RSF fighters and officers from the rival tribes stationed in the area have turned the paramilitary group’s weapons and military resources against one another in what they described as overtly retaliatory and ethnic violence. The resulting conflict has devolved into a “chaotic and highly destructive tribal war” that senior RSF leaders cannot contain through the ordinary chain of command. For residents, the battle moved beyond the bounds of what they consider a tribal conflict, with devastating consequences for their communities. A second Kubum resident said the latest round of fighting “crossed all red lines” and tribal conventions. Heavy artillery shells landed indiscriminately in neighborhoods, they said, setting homes on fire while families remained trapped inside. Bodies now lie on the roads and in public spaces, the resident added, as the ongoing exchange of fire and sniper positions prevent families from retrieving and burying the dead. A medical source in Kubum said dozens were killed and injured on both sides. Large parts of the locality have been reduced to rubble as homes, shops and public infrastructure came under fire. Dozens of families were forced to flee, many making the journey on foot toward neighboring localities and border regions under dire humanitarian conditions, they said. Another medical worker operating in field hospitals in South Darfur said staff have struggled to cope with the influx of civilians and fighters suffering severe injuries. Critical shortages of blood supplies, medicines and surgical equipment have compounded the crisis, the source said, while ambulance crews have struggled to reach the wounded amid the fighting, contributing to dozens of deaths that might otherwise have been prevented. According to the source in the Rizeigat tribal coordination body, the conflict cannot be understood solely through the lens of historical tribal rivalries. The RSF’s reorganization of Darfur into semi-autonomous military and administrative sectors has elevated the political and economic stakes of local competition, they said. Under this structure, tribes aligned with the paramilitary group are granted resources, influence and representation, creating powerful incentives for groups to demonstrate their weight. As a result, control over South Darfur and its localities has become a prize in its own right, with both Beni Halba and Salamat seeking to consolidate territorial influence and strengthen their position within the RSF’s order. While the paramilitary group has not issued an official comment on the fighting, its supporters have circulated videos showing military units reportedly en route to intervene and separate the warring sides. *** New wave of RSF violence near Bara kills dozens, communities mobilize to defend their villages RSF fighters carried out a series of attacks over three days on villages west of Bara in North Kordofan, killing and injuring dozens in one of the state’s deadliest outbreaks of violence in recent months. The attacks targeted the Um Kiredam locality in the Dar Hamid tribal lands. According to a resident of the locality, the most devastating assault came on May 30, when a convoy of around 20 heavily armed RSF vehicles advanced on the villages of Murra, Um Saadoun al-Sharif, Azhaf and Rada. The resident said the assault began without warning as RSF vehicles entered Murra and Um Saadoun al-Sharif and opened heavy fire on homes and civilians. Around 30 people were killed in the first hours of the attack, the source said, before RSF fighters pursued local defense groups into surrounding areas, causing further casualties. The overall death toll rose to 58 following the recovery of 27 bodies in the Azhaf area, according to the resident. The aggression, which began on May 28, prompted a large-scale mobilization under the traditional fazaa system of communal defense, with residents taking up arms to protect their villages and confront the attacking forces, according to a source in the General Union of the Dar Hamid Tribal Regions. The source warned that the security situation remains highly volatile and could escalate further in the coming days, urging the military and security agencies to intervene and provide support against the attacks. As criticism mounted, the RSF announced the formation of a fact-finding committee earlier this week to investigate the incident, while its spokesperson Al-Fateh Qurashy denied responsibility and instead blamed military-affiliated intelligence networks for instigating the violence. *** Strategic area in Blue Nile changes hands twice in one day as RSF looks to ease pressure on Kurmuk The military’s Fourth Infantry Division forces capture a combat vehicle while retaking the Baraka area in Blue Nile state from the RSF, June 3. Photo: @albwabaanews via Facebook. Just days after the military recaptured the strategic Baraka area west of Kurmuk, the RSF launched a renewed assault on Wednesday and briefly seized control of the position before military forces mounted a counterattack and retook it hours later. A field source told Mada Masr that the RSF launched the attack on Wednesday morning with an estimated six groups of combat vehicles. RSF fighters later circulated videos showing their forces breaching military defenses in the area. According to the source, military forces drew the attackers deeper into Baraka before launching coordinated ambushes that scattered the force, inflicting heavy losses. Dozens of RSF fighters were killed and wounded, while 12 combat vehicles were destroyed and six captured, the source said. Military soldiers released footage showing the recapture of Baraka and the damage sustained by the attacking force. In a statement late Wednesday, the military’s Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin said its forces, alongside allied civilian fighters, repelled the attack and secured the area. A military source linked the RSF attack on Baraka to a broader buildup around Kurmuk, saying the RSF and its ally SPLM-N have been reinforcing their positions with large numbers of fighters and foreign mercenaries arriving in waves through neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia since May 23. The battle for Baraka, they said, was the first attempt to ease growing pressure on Kurmuk, especially with the military now positioned within a few kilometers of the city along several axes. The source anticipates heavy fighting in the coming days as the RSF seeks to defend its main stronghold in the region and a key logistical gateway linked to supply routes through Ethiopia. *** Military downs drone over White Nile Military air defense units intercepted and shot down a strategic drone over White Nile State on Friday night after tracking its flight across the skies of Kenana city, the Sudanese Armed Forces said in a statement the following day. The drone crashed in the Hadib area south of Rabak, a security source told Mada Masr. The source described it as a long-range drone equipped with Chinese-made guided missiles and said the incident caused neither casualties nor property damage. White Nile Governor Qamar Eddin Fadl al-Mawla told reporters that the drone was carrying eight missiles and appeared to be targeting civilian facilities and infrastructure within the state. *** Drone strike kills three in Um Rawaba An explosive-laden RSF drone struck a civilian gathering in North Kordofan’s Um Rawaba on Sunday, killing three people and injuring several, according to a local activist. The strike targeted the Nawafil fuel station on the road linking Um Rawaba and Obeid, the activist said. A second drone attacked the Turaify fuel station south of the railway line, though the blast caused only limited damage, they added. The three killed were an engineer and a technician employed by the electricity company, as well as a police assistant working in the civil registry, the source said. Several others suffered minor injuries and were taken to the hospital for treatment. *** RSF-led Tasis establishes Security and Defense Council RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo meets members of the parallel government in Nyala, South Darfur, May 28. Photo: @PresCouncilSudan via Telegram. The RSF-led parallel government took another step in building out the structures of its political project on Sunday, when the Tasis presidential council issued a decree creating a Security and Defense Council tasked with overseeing military and security affairs. Under the decree, Presidential Council head and RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo will chair the new body, with SPLM-N leader Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, who serves as deputy head of the presidential council, acting as his deputy. Other council members and regional governors appointed under previous presidential decrees will also be included in the new body. Beyond its broad mandate over security policies, the council has been tasked with overseeing plans for the creation of a new “national army” that would merge the RSF, Hilu’s movement and other signatories to the parallel government’s founding charter. A former advisor to the RSF leadership who worked within the group’s political apparatus before the war told Mada Masr that the initiative is less about military restructuring than about political positioning. The council, they said, serves as yet another institutional facade through which the alliance can present itself as a governing authority rather than a collection of armed groups. According to the former advisor, the move comes at a moment when the RSF is grappling with the political and humanitarian consequences of battlefield pressures, particularly as prospects of retaking Khartoum have receded. The establishment of the council, they argued, is intended to “buy political time” and reassure key tribal and social constituencies in western Sudan that the alliance remains committed to the political project. But the deeper the RSF’s alliance becomes involved in administrative responsibilities and building state-like institutions, the greater the risk that internal divisions and competing interests within the group will come to the surface, the source said. Another former RSF source familiar with the group’s internal decision-making said the proposal for a national army should be viewed in the context of competing state-building projects on opposite sides of the war. In their view, the initiative seeks to directly counter the accelerating efforts by the Sudanese Armed Forces to integrate allied armed groups and civilian fighters into a unified command structure, presenting the RSF-led alliance as a viable political and military alternative. A source close to RSF Deputy Commander Abdel Rahim Dagalo defended the move, describing it as a carefully considered constitutional and legal step aimed at creating an inclusive mechanism for managing security affairs. According to the source, consultations with civil society figures and community leaders across Darfur over recent months emphasized the need for a representative structure that would incorporate regional governors and RSF-aligned armed groups. The decree was announced on the same day Abdel Rahim Dagalo gave an interview to an RSF-affiliated media outlet in which he discussed a range of political and military issues, including the talks he held in Manama in early 2024 with then-Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the military Shams Eddin Kabbashi. Dagalo said the agreement reached and signed in Manama included provisions for a new national army that would integrate the RSF, but argued the initiative was ultimately abandoned under pressure from Islamists within the military camp. He claimed Kabbashi acknowledged during the talks that the Sudanese Armed Forces could not be considered a truly national military and that decision-making rested not with the military leadership but with what Dagalo described as “the Islamist movement and its militias.” The former advisor argued that the comments were aimed squarely at the military’s current efforts. In their view, revisiting the Manama talks is part of a strategy aimed at politically undermining the military leadership’s credibility and portraying it as having abandoned previous commitments. According to the source, Dagalo is seeking to challenge the military’s efforts to present itself as a unified national institution while deflecting attention away from documented abuses committed by the RSF in Darfur and shifting responsibility for the collapse of humanitarian truces onto the opposing side. *** Quintet’s Addis Ababa meetings lay bare divisions in Democratic Bloc Democratic Bloc leaders hold a press conference before the Addis Ababa talks, June 3. Photo: Nabd News. Sudanese political groups gathered in Addis Ababa on Wednesday and Thursday for exploratory talks organized by the Quintet Mechanism to discuss the “parameters and priorities of a future inter-Sudanese civilian dialogue.” But the ambitious plan to bring together actors from across Sudan’s political and ideological currents ultimately splintered into separate meetings, falling short of placing rival forces around a single table. The debate surrounding participation, meanwhile, further exposed fault lines within the Democratic Bloc — the military-led government’s main political base — over engagement with international initiatives, a dispute that has simmered since the International Conference on Sudan in Berlin in April. The Quintet — made up of the African Union, the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development — had extended invitations to political parties, civil and professional groups, armed movements, established political blocs and emerging coalitions, including the Democratic Bloc and the RSF-led Tasis alliance. According to a communications officer in the Democratic Bloc, the group’s initial position was to accept the invitation. That changed after Burhan’s Eid al-Adha speech , in which he announced plans for a comprehensive political dialogue inside Sudan and dismissed processes held abroad, saying the Sudanese people would not accept the outcomes of “conferences and dialogues held in capitals that are bought and sold.” The communications officer said bloc leaders interpreted the speech as a clear directive against participation. On Tuesday, members of the bloc issued a statement announcing their boycott of the talks, signed by Democratic Bloc chair Gaafar al-Mirghany, Justice and Equality Movement leader Gibril Ibrahim and other senior figures. But absent from the list of signatories was the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi. The movement ultimately sent representatives to Addis Ababa, as did several of allied groups in the bloc. A spokesperson for Minnawi’s office told Mada Masr that participation should not be interpreted as an endorsement of externally sponsored political processes. Rather, the source said, the movement entered the discussions guided by “non-negotiable national principles” and remains committed to a Sudanese-led dialogue conducted inside Sudan. Among those who attended was Democratic Bloc media chief Amin Dawoud, who, speaking to Mada Masr, maintained that attempts by some parties to walk back previously agreed upon positions did not alter decisions formally adopted by the bloc’s leadership and political bureau. But while present in Addis Ababa, representatives affiliated with the Democratic Bloc shared the venue with Tasis, with whom they refused to hold direct discussions. This forced organizers to abandon plans for joint sessions and instead hold separate meetings, according to the communications officer. The same dynamic played out when the opposition Sumud coalition declined to participate in discussions alongside the military-aligned National Forces Coordination, the communications officers said. Speaking to Mada Masr, Sumud spokesperson Bakry al-Jack nevertheless maintained that the coalition’s decision to participate was “out of a desire to reach a broad consensus” on the composition of a preparatory committee that the Quintet hopes will steer a political process aimed at ending the war. Representatives of the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid Nur were also in attendance. Together with Sumud, they form the core of the Declaration of Principles Forces, an emerging alliance that seeks to position itself as an alternative center of political gravity. A senior Sumud member previously told Mada Masr that the alliance’s second leadership conference in Nairobi in late May was partly intended to coordinate positions ahead of the Quintet talks. After the group consolidated its structure and finalized its charter during the conference, the source said the next phase would involve parallel engagement with both Tasis and the Democratic Bloc. In practice, that appears to have already begun. According to the Democratic Bloc’s communications officer, Sumud held a separate session with the bloc’s attending members under the Quintet-sponsored meetings. *** Burhan in Ankara Military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meet at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, June 2. Photo: The Turkish Presidency in Arabic via Facebook. Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair and military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan arrived in Ankara on Tuesday for high-level talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on joint security and economic cooperation, a TSC source told Mada Masr. A senior government source informed of the closed-door talks said the visit was primarily designed as a platform to operationalize a package of urgent economic deals recently reached between Khartoum and Ankara, while also hammering out high-level intelligence arrangements personally overseen by Burhan to reassess and respond to the rapid developments in the Horn of Africa. According to the source, growing Ethiopian logistical support for the RSF has made closer coordination with Ankara — given Turkey’s extensive footprint and leverage in East Africa — a strategic necessity. Burhan’s visit comes on the heels of Prime Minister Kamel Idris’s trip to Ankara in late May, where he met Erdogan as part of his foreign tour and discussed bilateral cooperation, humanitarian assistance and Sudan’s reconstruction needs. According to a source at the Sudanese Finance Ministry, the two countries have recently signed a series of economic agreements, including memoranda of understanding aimed at facilitating trade, securing supply chains for strategic commodities and petroleum products, expanding cooperation in the energy and infrastructure sectors and reactivating exceptional banking arrangements. Turkish aid assistance has also expanded, according to a source at the Sudanese Red Crescent Society. In addition to food aid, support delivered through the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency and Turkish humanitarian organizations now includes hospital rehabilitation projects, medical supplies and life-saving medicines, shelter assistance and scholarship and training programs designed to help sustain Sudan’s healthcare workforce. A diplomatic source at the Foreign Ministry said Ankara’s expanding role has been coordinated with a number of regional actors who view Turkey as a stabilizing force capable of helping prevent the collapse of Sudan’s state institutions. Others in the region remain wary about a heavier Turkish security and intelligence role in Sudan, according to the source. Some actors, they said, fear deeper involvement could alter regional power balances and undermine their plans to influence the country’s political and military order. Turkey significantly upgraded its involvement in Sudan following the fall of Fasher in October 2025, expanding its support for the Sudanese military. An Egyptian official told Mada Masr at the time that Ankara is pursuing in Sudan a strategy similar to the one it adopted in Libya in 2020 against the Libyan National Army — an intervention that effectively froze the war along distinct eastern and western spheres of influence and ultimately cemented Ankara’s influence in Tripoli. *** Subscribe to our Lens on Sudan newsletter here . The post Sudan Nashra: RSF-armed Salamat, Beni Halba locked in deadly ‘tribal war’ | New wave of RSF violence near Bara kills dozens, communities mobilize to defend villages | RSF-led Tasis establishes Security and Defense Council | Quintet’s Addis Ababa meetings lay bare divisions in Democratic Bloc first appeared on Mada Masr .