Photo: Julia Joerin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
At least 80 people were killed when a drone struck a transport hub near a market in the town of Al-Dibab in Sudan’s West Kordofan state on Sunday evening, according to a medical source and a local resident. Most of the dead were villagers who had gathered after the market closed to catch trucks back to their homes.
The attack is among the deadliest single strikes since Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, and it came during a burst of drone attacks across the country that medics and rights groups say has killed more than 160 people since Friday.
Two strikes, 10 minutes apart
Ahmed Abakar Wadi, a resident who helped bury the victims, said the drone hit the hub once and returned about 10 minutes later to strike again. He said he buried around 50 bodies, his own brother among them. He spoke over a satellite link because communications in the area are cut.
Another 47 injured people were driven to the nearest town, Al-Mujlad, where 30 of them later died, a medic said, putting the total toll at 80. The medic, who asked not to be named for his safety, said a separate drone strike on Al-Mujlad wounded four more people.
All of West Kordofan is held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF’s self-declared administration, known as Tasis, and the Sudanese monitoring group Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the attack. The military has not responded to the allegation.
Attacks from both sides
The weekend violence was not limited to one side or one region. According to Emergency Lawyers, an RSF drone hit a gathering of displaced people in Blue Nile state, near the Ethiopian border, on Friday, killing 41, and drone attacks on the army-held capital Khartoum killed three children on Monday.
In Nyala, the RSF’s stronghold in South Darfur, a drone attack early on Monday killed 17 people, including seven RSF officers, medical and RSF sources said. That followed strikes on a livestock market in the city on Friday, which the army said targeted RSF fighters and the RSF said killed 30 civilians.
We are alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting central services.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General
Why it matters
Drones have become the main killer of civilians in the war. Between January and April this year, drone strikes caused at least 880 civilian deaths, more than 80 per cent of all conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan. Kordofan, an oil-rich region linking the country’s west and east, has become a key battleground as both sides fight for territory.
The war started when army chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, fell out over plans to merge the paramilitary into the army. Conflict monitor ACLED has recorded at least 59,000 deaths, though aid groups say the real number is far higher. The UN says about 13 million people have been driven from their homes, and 33.7 million people, including 17.3 million children, need food aid this year.
What happens next
Diplomacy remains stalled. On Friday, the United States asked the UN Security Council to press for a humanitarian truce and to widen the arms embargo on Sudan, but China and Russia opposed expanding it. Last week, senior UN official Rosemary DiCarlo told the council that the warring parties were not moving towards dialogue and appeared to believe they could still win on the battlefield, with no breakthrough in sight.
