Rights group says drone strike kills 11 in central Sudan market

Emergency Lawyers said dozens were also wounded in the strike that came less than 24 hours after similar drone attacks.

A drone strike on a market in central Sudan has killed at least 11 people and injured dozens more, according to a local rights group, as escalating aerial attacks further increase the death toll of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The attack on Saturday targeted the main market in Abu Zaeima, a paramilitary-controlled town in North Kordofan state, according to Emergency Lawyers, which has documented abuses since fighting erupted in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The group said the casualty figures could rise, but did not specify who carried out the attack. Neither side has claimed responsibility.

Emergency Lawyers said the strike came less than 24 hours after similar drone attacks struck nearby villages and a civilian vehicle.

Condemning the attack, it said the repeated targeting of civilians, villages and public transport reflected a blatant disregard for human life and the basic principles of international humanitarian law.

The group added that the continued loss of civilian life should not be treated as routine and called for an end to such attacks, as well as accountability for those responsible.

Two witnesses told the AFP news agency that another drone hit a fuel station later on Saturday in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, which the RSF has partially encircled for months.

A medical source at a hospital there said four wounded civilians had been brought to the facility.

Drone warfare

Nearly 70 people were killed in two separate drone strikes in the West and North Kordofan states over the past week, according to Emergency Lawyers and a local leader.

Drone warfare has become increasingly more common in Sudan’s conflict.

The United Nations said in May that at least 880 civilians were killed in drone strikes nationwide between January and April.

Fighting has intensified in Kordofan and Blue Nile State near the Ethiopian border since the RSF captured el-Fasher last October, the military’s last major stronghold in western Darfur.

Since then, more than 300,000 people have fled front-line areas, including el-Fasher and parts of Kordofan and Blue Nile, according to the UN.

Kordofan, rich in oil and arable land, is strategically significant, linking RSF strongholds in the neighbouring Darfur region to the country’s army-controlled east. The region remains largely contested between the army and the RSF.

Now entering its fourth year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 13 million others, creating what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.