Drone Attacks Kill More Than 160 Across Sudan as UN Condemns Civilian Deaths

In a Nutshell

• More than 160 people have been reported killed in drone attacks across Sudan in recent days. Emergency Lawyers, a group monitoring violence against civilians, said three children were killed in an attack on Khartoum on Monday, while more than 160 people were reported killed in western regions since Friday. Both the Sudanese army and the RSF have been blamed for drone attacks as their use has increased in recent months.
• The deadliest recent attack killed 80 people near a market in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, on Sunday evening. Residents and medical workers said a drone struck a transport hub where villagers had gathered to find rides home after market day. Another 47 people were taken to nearby Al-Mujlad for treatment, where 30 later died of their injuries, according to a medical source cited by AFP. The RSF’s self-declared administration, Tasis, and Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the strike.
• An RSF drone attack killed 41 displaced people in Blue Nile state on Friday, near Sudan’s border with Ethiopia, according to Emergency Lawyers, which condemned the strike as a humanitarian tragedy.
• In South Darfur, a drone attack struck the RSF stronghold of Nyala early Monday, killing 17 people, including seven RSF officers, and wounding 23, according to medical and RSF sources.
• The Sudanese military said its air defences intercepted RSF drones targeting the Atbara and Setit dams in eastern Sudan’s Gadaref state on Sunday. The dams are about 420km east of Khartoum. The RSF had not immediately commented on the reported attack.
• The UN condemned the deadly attacks on Monday. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said the UN was alarmed by continued drone strikes killing civilians, including children, and disrupting essential services.
• Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023 after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, fell out over plans to integrate the paramilitary force into the army. The war is now in its fourth year and has killed at least 59,000 people, according to conflict monitor ACLED, although aid groups believe the actual toll is higher. In June, Hemedti was sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes.
• The war has displaced about 13 million people, according to the UN, creating what aid groups describe as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Some 33.7 million people, including 17.3 million children, urgently need food support this year, while an estimated 825,000 children face severe acute malnutrition.
• The United States urged the UN Security Council on Friday to push for a humanitarian truce and expand the arms embargo on Sudan. China and Russia opposed widening the embargo.