A wave of drone strikes targeting war-torn Sudan's army-held capital Khartoum and two western areas controlled by paramilitary forces has killed more than 160 people since Friday, according to residents, medical workers and paramilitary sources.
A drone strike by the Sudanese army killed 53 people at a market in an area disputed between Sudan and South Sudan, local authorities said Tuesday.
Yesterday, a rare drone attack on Sudan’s capital killed three children Monday, a rights group said, as both sides in the country’s war step up airstrikes that have killed dozens of civilians in the Kordofan region in recent days.
The strike, which the group blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, killed children ages two, four and six in Imtidad Nasser, a neighborhood east of Khartoum’s airport.
The deadliest drone strike hit near a market on Sunday evening in Al-Dibab town in the southwestern state of West Kordofan, which is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that have been at war with Sudan's military since April 2023.
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.
Ahmed Abakar Wadi, a resident who helped bury victims, told AFP at least 50 bodies were recovered at the scene, including that of his brother.
Another 47 wounded people were taken to the nearby town of Al-Mujlad where 30 later died from their injuries, according to a medical source.
"The drone struck once, and then came back 10 minutes later and struck again," Wadi told AFP.
The RSF's self-declared administration, known as Tasis, and the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the attack.
The military has not commented.
The strike was one of the deadliest single attacks in Kordofan, an oil-rich region linking western and eastern Sudan where the army and the RSF have been battling for territory.
Dams targeted
Hours later, early on Monday, another drone attack hit the RSF stronghold of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur.
Medical and RSF sources said 17 people, including seven RSF officers, were killed and 23 wounded when a drone struck the city centre and destroyed two homes.
On Monday morning, violence also reached the capital Khartoum, where a drone strike hit a house in a neighbourhood east of Khartoum airport, killing four people, including three children aged between two and six, according to a medical source.
An army official said Sudanese air defences had intercepted drones launched by the RSF that were targeting the airport and nearby areas.
In eastern Sudan, a military source said on Sunday that air defences also intercepted several RSF drones targeting the Atbara and Setit dams in Gadaref state, about 420 kilometres east of Khartoum.
There is no definitive toll for Sudan's conflict, but aid workers estimate it has killed more than 200,000 people and created what aid agencies describe as the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis.
More than 1,100 people were killed in drone attacks across Sudan during the first half of this year alone, according to the United Nations.
Kordofan—home to oil deposits and the RSF's most powerful paramilitary allies—has come under repeated drone attacks in recent months as the army seeks to roll back RSF gains made last year after the paramilitary group consolidated control over much of Darfur.
On Friday, a drone strike on a cattle market in Nyala, Sudan's second-largest city and the seat of the RSF's self-declared administration, killed 30 people and injured 47 others, according to a medical source.