Last weekend’s offensive came within 500 km of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Sudanese rebels over the weekend said they attacked five areas in North and South Kordofan States, widening an anti-government offensive in one of their most audacious acts in years, AFP news agency reported yesterday, April 28, 2013.

Abdel Wahid Mohammed al-Nur who heads a faction of Darfur's Sudan Liberation Army, described the offensive as a significant shift in the war in Sudan, adding that they were heading to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. A regional political expert said the attacks might have been timed to coincide with the failure of peace talks last week between South Kordofan rebels and the Sudanese government.

Reuters news agency said rebels from Sudan's Darfur region launched a dawn attack on the city of Um Rawaba on Saturday April 27, 2013, taking their fight closer to the capital Khartoum. The attack marks the biggest push by the rebel alliance that is seeking to topple President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Fighting had hitherto been limited mainly to remote regions of Darfur and South Kordofan and Blue Nile States that border South Sudan.

The Justice and Equality Movement, JEM, that launched an unprecedented assault on Khartoum in 2008, said the rebel alliance stormed Um Rawaba in North Kordofan State, about 500 km south of Khartoum. Sudan's army said late on Saturday that it had restored security in the state's second largest city. It accused insurgents of destroying a power plant, petrol stations and a telecommunications tower.

Army spokesman, al-Sawarmi Khalid, told Sudan’s SUNA State news agency that the defeated rebels had withdrawn and the army was pursuing elements that had fled in different directions. JEM spokesman, Gibril Adam Bilal, said forces from the group had only withdrawn from the centre of Um Rawaba after Sudanese warplanes launched air strikes.