Water crisis deepens in El Obeid after RSF seizes key supply hub

December 22, 2025 (EL OBEID) – A weeks-long water outage is gripping much of El Obeid, capital of Sudan’s North Kordofan state, after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the nearby town of Bara in October, severing pipelines that normally carry 40 per cent of the city’s supply, residents and local officials said.

Volunteers running the city’s emergency operations room told Reuters on Monday that pumps at Al-Dankoj and Al-Sidir, the main northern well fields, have been idle since fighting reached Bara, forcing households to rely on untreated well water and raising fears of cholera and other water-borne diseases.

“The northern sources are completely off the grid,” one volunteer said, asking not to be named for security reasons. “People are drawing water from shallow, hand-dug wells inside the city. It’s not safe.”

El Obeid, already hosting more than 160,000 families displaced by Sudan’s 20-month war, needs roughly 70,000 cubic metres of potable water a day, according to North Kordofan’s infrastructure minister, Moawiya Adam. Since the Bara frontlines hardened, the state has managed to supply only about 35,000 cubic metres, mainly from southern boreholes, Adam told local radio on 13 December.

The shortfall has cut per-capita availability to barely 10 litres a day – less than half the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization.

The RSF, which captured the Darfur city of El Fasher on 26 October, has since pushed east into the Greater Kordofan region, a move aid workers say has choked supply routes and accelerated displacement. The United Nations warned last week that the three Kordofan states are now “one of the most acute humanitarian hotspots” in Sudan.

Neither the RSF nor the Sudanese armed forces responded to Reuters requests for comment on the water situation.