Sudan

Geography
Capital	Khartoum
Area	1,861,484 sq km
Location	north-eastern Africa, bordering the Red Sea, between Egypt and Eritrea
Terrain	generally flat, featureless plain; desert dominates the north
Climate	hot and dry; arid desert; rainy season varies by region (April to November)
Resources	petroleum; small reserves of iron ore, copper, chromium ore, zinc, tungsten, mica, silver, gold; hydropower
People
Population	50,467,278 (2024 est.)
Languages	Arabic (official), English (official), Nubian, Ta Bedawie, Fur
Ethnic groups	Sudanese Arab (approximately 70%), Fur, Beja, Nuba, Ingessana, Uduk, Fallata, Masalit, Dajo, Gimir, Tunjur, Berti;...
Religions	Sunni Muslim, small Christian minority
Median age	19.5 years (2025 est.)
Life expectancy	67.8 years (2024 est.)
Urban	36.3% of total population (2023)
Government
Type	presidential republic
Chief of state	Sovereign Council Chair and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces General Abd-al-Fattah al-BURHAN...
Legal system	mixed system of Islamic law and English common law
This archive
Archived items	87
As of	2026-08-25

Sudan as this archive records it. Every line in the reporting sections below is a headline that was collected, with its outlet and date. Nothing here is written by a model: if a claim appears, some outlet made it, and this page does not say whether it is true. The Background section is different in kind: those lines are encyclopedic facts from a reference work, each cited to the source it came from.

Situation as of 2026-08-25

Most recent archived item: Sudan announces it intercepted a drone from Ethiopia - reported by RFI

Most recent archived item: RFI

This page lists 12 archived headlines published between 2026-02-27 and 2026-08-25. It reflects what these feeds reported in that window, not everything that happened.

Background

Encyclopedic context, retrieved from a reference work and archived. It is not war reporting and is not counted as any.

History

Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan, which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old". [1]

Long referred to as Nubia, modern-day Sudan was the site of the Kingdom of Kerma (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.) until it was absorbed into the New Kingdom of Egypt. By the 11th century B.C., the Kingdom of Kush gained independence from Egypt; it lasted in various forms until the middle of the 4th century A.D. [2]

By the eighth millennium BC, people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mudbrick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. [3]

After the fall of Kush, the Nubians formed three Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia, with the latter two enduring until around 1500. [4]

Neolithic peoples created cemeteries such as R12. During the fifth millennium BC, migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture. The population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed a social hierarchy over the next centuries which became the Kingdom of Kerma at 2500 BC. Anthropological and archaeological research indicates that during the predynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically and culturally nearly identical, and thus, simultaneously evolved systems of pharaonic kingship by 3300 BC. The Kerma culture was an early civilization centered in Kerma, Sudan. It flourished from around 2500 BC to 1500 BC in ancient Nubia. [5]

Culture

Sudanese culture melds the behaviours, practices, and beliefs of about 578 ethnic groups, communicating in numerous different dialects and languages, in a region microcosmic of Africa, with geographic extremes varying from sandy desert to tropical forest. Recent evidence suggests that while most citizens of the country identify strongly with both Sudan and their religion, Arab and African supranational identities are much more polarising and contested. Sudan has a rich and unique musical culture that has been through chronic instability and repression during the modern history of Sudan. Beginning with the imposition of strict Salafi interpretation of sharia law in 1983, many of the country's most prominent poets and artists, like Mahjoub Sharif, were imprisoned while others, like Mohammed el Amin (returned to Sudan in the mid-1990s) and Mohammed Wardi (returned to Sudan 2003), fled to Cairo. Traditional music suffered too, with traditional Zār ceremonies being interrupted and drums confiscated [1]. At the same time European militaries contributed to the development of Sudanese music by introducing new instruments and styles; military bands, especially the Scottish bagpipes, were renowned, and set traditional music to military march music. The march March Shulkawi No 1, is an example, set to the sounds of the Shilluk. Northern Sudan listens to different music than the rest of Sudan. [6]

Demographics

In Sudan's 2008 census, the population of northern, western and eastern Sudan was recorded to be over 30 million. The population of Sudan was estimated to be around 50 million in 2024. [7]

Major urban areas: 6.344 million KHARTOUM (capital), 1.057 million Nyala (2023) [8]

This is a significant increase over the past four decades, as the 1983 census put the total population of Sudan, including present-day South Sudan, at 21.6 million. The population of Greater Khartoum (including Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North) is growing rapidly and was recorded to be 5.2 million. Aside from being a refugee-generating country, Sudan also hosts a large population of refugees from other countries. According to UNHCR statistics, more than 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers lived in Sudan in August 2019. The majority of this population came from South Sudan (858,607 people), Eritrea (123,413), Syria (93,502), Ethiopia (14,201), the Central African Republic (11,713) and Chad (3,100). Apart from these, the UNHCR report 1,864,195 Internally displaced persons (IDP's). [9]

Military

Branches: Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF): Ground Force (Sudanese Army), Sudanese Navy, Sudanese Air Force; Rapid Support Forces (RSF); Border Guards; Ministry of Interior: Sudan Police Forces (SPF), Central Reserve Police (CRP) (2025) Personnel: prior to the outbreak of fighting between the SAF and the RSF in 2023, size estimates for Sudan's armed forces varied widely: up to 200,000 SAF; up to 100,000 RSF; up to 80,000 Central Reserve Police (2023) Equipment: the SAF's inventory includes a mix of mostly Chinese, Russian/Soviet, and some domestically produced weapons systems; Sudan has a state-run defense industry, which mostly manufactures copies of foreign-supplied armaments, such as armored vehicles, under license (2025) [10]

Reporting

What the archive holds on this subject, most recent first.

[11] 2026-08-25 - RFI: Sudan announces it intercepted a drone from Ethiopia
[12] 2026-08-25 - RFI: Sudan announces it intercepted a drone coming from Ethiopia.
[13] 2026-08-25 - RFI: Sudan announces it has intercepted a drone from Ethiopia
[14] 2026-08-25 - Africanews: South Sudan: Two UN peacekeepers killed, seven injured
[15] 2026-08-25 - Radio Dabanga: Port Sudan detainees launch hunger strike over ‘endless’ trial delays
[16] 2026-08-25 - Radio Dabanga: US moots expanding Darfur arms embargo to cover drones and all of Sudan
[17] 2026-08-24 - UN News: Security Council LIVE: War, hunger, flooding escalates in Sudan
[18] 2026-08-24 - Al Jazeera: Ambush in South Sudan kills peacekeeping troops
[19] 2026-08-24 - UN News: Two UN peacekeepers killed in South Sudan ambush
[20] 2026-08-23 - Al Jazeera: Video: Thousands of families flee fighting in Sudan’s North Kordofan State
[21] 2026-08-21 - Radio Dabanga: ‘Takaya’ community kitchen closures threaten 50,000 families in Sudan capital
[22] 2026-08-20 - outlet not recorded: Air Quality & Pollen
...and 75 more not listed here.

See also: Timeline: Sudan

Sources

Where a durable link was recorded, it is here. Google News items carry a redirect stub rather than an article and are listed above without one.

Publication history

What changed and when. Computed from the sources each revision cited, not written by anyone.

rev 1, 2026-08-25 — first published from 12 source(s)
rev 2, 2026-08-25 — +1 source(s)
rev 3, 2026-08-25 — +8 source(s)
rev 4, 2026-08-25 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 5, 2026-08-25 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 6, 2026-08-25 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 7, 2026-08-26 — +4 source(s)
rev 8, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 9, 2026-08-26 — +1 source(s)
rev 10, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 11, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 12, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 13, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 14, 2026-08-26 — +1 source(s)
rev 15, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 16, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources
rev 17, 2026-08-26 — rebuilt with no change of sources

Open corrections

Somebody edited this page by hand. The edit was kept and this page was not overwritten — a human correcting us is the best signal this archive gets about being wrong.

2026-08-26 — live revid differs from what we pushed; page refused

How this page is made

Assembled directly from the war archive: no model writes any part of it, so nothing on it can be invented, mis-summarised or attributed to an outlet that did not say it. The cost is that it does not read as narrative - the archive stores headlines, not article text, and this page does not pretend otherwise. The Background section is not from the war archive: those facts are retrieved from a reference work, archived, and cited individually. Background sources: CIA World Factbook (public domain); Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).