At least 40 people killed in attack on mourners in Sudan: UN

An attack on a funeral in the key city of El Obeid in Sudan's central Kordofan region has killed 40 people, the United Nations' humanitarian office said.

The statement did not specify what day the attack took place or who was behind it, but it came as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had appeared poised to launch an offensive on the city, with army troops also gathering in a a bid to repel them.

"The security situation in the Kordofan region continues to worsen," the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday.

The three Kordofan states — North, West, and South — have recently witnessed fierce clashes between the Sudanese army and the RSF militias.

The paramilitary group also captured Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on October 26 and carried out massacres of civilians, according to local and international organisations, triggering warnings that the takeover could cement a geographic partition of the war-torn country.

Since April 2023, the Sudanese army and the RSF have been locked in a civil war that has killed thousands of people, displaced millions of others and led to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.