RSF-Led Alliance Claims Capture of Blue Nile Border Town Qeissan
RSF-led Tasis Alliance claims it captured Qeissan, a strategic Blue Nile town near Ethiopia's border, after fierce fighting with Sudan's army. The army hasn't confirmed the loss. It follows Tasis losing nearby Kurmuk in July and comes amid months of shifting control along this key border front.
Sudan's RSF-led Tasis Alliance says its fighters have seized the strategic town of Qeissan in Blue Nile state after heavy fighting with government forces.
The claimed advance marks a new turn on a front that has seen months of intensifying combat. It comes just weeks after government forces pushed through southern Blue Nile and retook the nearby border town of Kurmuk along with other positions.
The Sudan Founding Alliance, known as Tasis, unites the RSF — led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti — with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) under Abdelaziz al-Hilu, several armed Darfuri factions, and various political and civilian groups.
Tasis emerged after its members signed a political charter in Nairobi in February 2025 and went on to set up a rival administration, the Government of Peace and Unity, with Hemedti at its head and al-Hilu serving as deputy chairman of the presidential council. The military-aligned government based in Port Sudan does not recognize this parallel authority.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Tasis said its forces had taken "full control" of Qeissan, a town roughly 170 kilometers southeast of Damazin, the Blue Nile state capital, claiming to have overrun every military position in the town along with a large haul of weapons and equipment still being catalogued. The alliance said it was chasing down retreating army units and inflicting further losses, though it gave no casualty figures.
The army had not confirmed or denied losing the town by the time of publication, and no independent casualty estimates are available. Field sources describe a fluid, fast-changing situation with fighting still underway in several parts of town.
Qeissan's significance comes from its position near the Ethiopian border, in a corridor that has become a flashpoint for control of key supply and movement routes.
The Blue Nile front has heated up considerably in recent months as the RSF and SPLM-N have coordinated joint operations against the army. Qeissan first came under major drone attack in this campaign on February 27, and between March and June alliance forces made repeated attempts to push into the town and sever government supply lines — without success.
Control of southern Blue Nile has swung back and forth repeatedly. Tasis took Kurmuk in March, only for the army to launch counteroffensives in July that recovered the city and other positions, extending government control near the Ethiopian frontier.
This latest claim over Qeissan follows recent army gains further north in North Kordofan, where government forces and allied units recaptured Bara, Umm Sayala and Jabra al-Sheikh from the RSF, reopening the Export Road that links El Obeid and Omdurman.
Qeissan itself has changed hands repeatedly across Sudan's various conflicts. It stayed under army control for the first two years after war broke out between the military and the RSF on April 15, 2023, largely spared from ground fighting. This year, that changed — the town has become one of the key battlegrounds between the army and the RSF-SPLM-N alliance.