EL FASHER — Rapid Support Forces tightened their offensive perimeter around the North Darfur capital of El Fasher this week, displacing approximately seventy thousand additional residents from the city’s eastern and southern outskirts as humanitarian-corridor negotiations in Jeddah remained at impasse over the question of monitoring authority and convoy security.

The latest displacement, recorded by United Nations field-monitoring teams operating from Zamzam and the larger displacement camps west of the city, brought the total population of the El Fasher displacement complex above one-point-eight million for the first time since the renewed offensive cycle began in late March. Field-monitoring teams said the displaced households arriving over the past week were in substantially worse physical condition than earlier displacement waves, with severe-malnutrition prevalence in arriving children measured above twenty-three percent.

A senior World Food Programme official, in a Friday-afternoon briefing from Port Sudan, said the agency’s operational capacity to respond to the El Fasher displacement remained “severely constrained by access” and that the program had been unable to move significant additional caloric tonnage into the displacement-camp complex since the corridor talks broke down in early May. The official said current pipeline reserves in the camp complex were adequate for approximately three weeks of full rations under existing population estimates.

The Sudanese Armed Forces’ garrison in El Fasher continued to hold the city’s central districts through the week, with the country’s army chief saying in a Friday-morning broadcast that the garrison would continue to defend the city “until victory.” The garrison’s positions have been reinforced by approximately two thousand additional regular-army personnel deployed from Khartoum over the past three weeks, according to assessments by independent military analysts who reviewed deployment patterns from open-source sources.

The Rapid Support Forces have maintained their offensive posture against the city’s outskirts despite international pressure for a humanitarian pause. RSF commander Hemedti, in remarks delivered at a Friday-evening commanders’ conference in El Geneina, characterized the El Fasher operation as “the decisive front of the entire war” and said the force’s operational tempo would be maintained “until the SAF garrison is defeated.” Hemedti said his forces would observe humanitarian corridors “subject to operational realities.”

The Jeddah humanitarian-corridor talks, hosted by Saudi Arabia and the United States with United Arab Emirates participation, broke down in early May over the question of whether corridor convoys would be monitored by an international observer mission or by the parties themselves. Sudanese Armed Forces negotiators demanded an international monitoring mission with operational authority to verify cargo and disposition; RSF negotiators rejected the international-monitoring proposal as a “violation of Sudanese sovereignty.”

Saudi mediators have continued shuttle diplomacy between the two parties throughout the past two weeks, with a senior Saudi official having traveled to both Khartoum and El Geneina during the week of May 5 to test alternative monitoring frameworks. A senior Saudi foreign-ministry official, contacted Friday afternoon, said the kingdom was prepared to “extend the mediation effort indefinitely” but acknowledged that the substantive gap between the parties had not narrowed in the past month.

The African Union’s Friday-afternoon statement on the El Fasher situation called for an “immediate cessation of offensive operations” and renewed the AU’s call for the parties to accept a corridor framework supervised by an AU-United Nations joint mission. The statement, signed by AU Commission Chair Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, characterized the situation in El Fasher as “approaching the threshold of mass atrocity” and called for the United Nations Security Council to take up the question at its scheduled June session.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a special-attention briefing Friday afternoon noting that the El Fasher complex’s population had now exceeded the carrying capacity of the existing camp infrastructure by approximately forty percent, with new arrivals being placed in informal settlements lacking access to potable water, sanitation, or organized food distribution. The OCHA briefing said the situation was “at the threshold of a public-health emergency that the agency would not be able to respond to under current access conditions.”

A senior State Department official, asked Friday afternoon about the U.S. position on the Jeddah process, said the United States remained “fully engaged with the mediation effort” but had not committed to specific next-step proposals if the current impasse persisted. The official said the administration’s near-term focus was on “preserving the diplomatic track” while continuing to provide bilateral humanitarian assistance through alternative routes.

A senior UAE foreign-ministry official, in remarks delivered Friday afternoon at a regional security forum in Abu Dhabi, said the kingdom’s view of the Jeddah process was that the parties had “not yet reached the point at which the costs of intransigence outweigh the costs of agreement.” The official said the UAE expected the process to continue but anticipated that the underlying military trajectory would shape the parties’ negotiating postures more than any external pressure could.

The next round of Jeddah corridor talks is tentatively scheduled to resume the week of May 25, contingent on both parties confirming attendance. Saudi mediators are continuing pre-talks consultation with both sides through the intervening period.