At least 28 civilians were killed in Sudan on Thursday after two separate drone strikes struck a market in Darfur and a road in the Kordofan region, health workers confirmed.
On Wednesday, a strike hit a market in the North Darfur town of Saraf Omra, killing 22 people including an infant and wounding 17 more. A vendor at the scene, Hamid Suleiman, said the drone struck a parked oil truck, which ignited and set part of the surrounding market ablaze.
Some 800 kilometres east, another drone struck a truck travelling on a North Kordofan road in territory held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). A medical source at the hospital in El-Rahad told AFP that six bodies were received, three of them severely burned, alongside ten wounded. The victims were travelling between the army-controlled towns of El-Rahad and Um Rawaba. The source blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the attack.
Health workers reported the deaths to journalists via satellite internet, the only means available given an ongoing communications blackout across much of the country.
The United Nations says more than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes between January and mid-March alone, with the Kordofan region accounting for the majority of those deaths. Repeated UN appeals for restraint have yielded no results, as both the army and the RSF continue near-daily strikes on civilian areas.
The single deadliest recent attack came on 20 March, when strikes hit El Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur, killing at least 64 people, including seven women and 13 children, and putting the facility’s emergency, maternity and paediatric units entirely out of service.
The violence has also crossed international borders, with a drone strike on the Chadian border town of Tiné on 18 March killing at least 24 civilians and injuring around 70 others.
The war between the army and the RSF, which began in April 2023 between the two former allied factions, has killed tens of thousands and displaced around 11 million people, creating what the UN describes as the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.
NewsGhana previously reported on the RSF drone strike that killed dozens of children at a kindergarten in Kalogi, South Kordofan.
