Drone Attacks Across Sudan Escalate, More Than 160 People Reported Killed

More than 160 people have been killed in a wave of drone attacks across Sudan in recent days, according to medics and rights groups, in one of the deadliest escalations since the country's civil war began in April 2023. The United Nations has condemned the strikes.

The deadliest single attack came on Sunday evening in Al-Dibab, a town in the southwestern state of West Kordofan, which is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Residents and medical workers said a drone struck a transport hub where villagers had gathered after a market day to find rides home, killing 80 people. Another 47 wounded people were taken to the nearby town of Al-Mujlad, where 30 later died of their injuries, a medical source told AFP. A witness said the drone struck twice, ten minutes apart, and that he helped bury 50 bodies, including his own brother.

On Friday, a drone hit a gathering of displaced people in Blue Nile province, near the border with Ethiopia, killing 41 people, according to Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese group that documents violence against civilians, which called it a humanitarian tragedy.

Early on Monday, a drone struck Nyala, the RSF stronghold and capital of South Darfur, killing 17 people, including seven RSF officers, and wounding 23. In Khartoum, drone attacks on Monday killed three children, Emergency Lawyers said. The military, meanwhile, said its air defenses had intercepted RSF drones targeting the Atbara and Setit dams in eastern Sudan.

Both sides in the war — the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF — have been blamed for the attacks. The RSF's self-declared administration, known as Tasis, and Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the Al-Dibab strike; the military has not commented on that allegation.

The violence reflects how thoroughly drone warfare has transformed the conflict. Both factions have sharply increased their use of unmanned aircraft in recent months, extending the war's reach to markets, transport hubs and displaced communities far from the front lines, and driving civilian casualties upward.

The human backdrop is already catastrophic. The United Nations says some 33.7 million people in Sudan need urgent food support this year, in what has become one of the world's largest humanitarian crises. As the latest strikes show, the danger for civilians now comes not only from ground fighting but, increasingly, from the sky.

The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, which erupted in the capital in April 2023 before spreading nationwide, has displaced more than 12 million people, according to UN agencies — the world's largest displacement crisis. Aid groups say fighting has repeatedly severed the roads and ports that move food into besieged regions, and they warn that the spread of drone strikes to market towns and gathering points is removing some of the last places civilians considered relatively safe.

Source: Al Jazeera