Wave of Aerial Attacks Leaves More Than a Hundred Dead as Sudan’s War Grinds On

Residents across parts of Sudan have spent the past several days burying the dead after a concentrated series of drone strikes claimed more than one hundred lives. The attacks, which began over the weekend and continued into Monday, hit both the army-controlled capital of Khartoum and several areas held by the Rapid Support Forces in the west of the country. The toll adds to the already catastrophic human cost of a conflict that has run for more than three years with no clear end in sight.

The single deadliest strike took place Sunday evening in the town of Al-Dibab in West Kordofan, territory under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. A drone hit a roadside gathering point where people who had finished shopping at a local market were waiting for transport home. Survivors described the aircraft returning roughly ten minutes later to strike the same location a second time. Local residents who helped recover bodies said around fifty people were killed immediately at the site. Another forty-seven wounded individuals were taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Al-Mujlad; roughly thirty of them later died from their injuries, bringing the total for that single incident to about eighty. One man who lost his brother in the attack told journalists that people had simply been standing together after a normal market day when the first explosion hit.

Hours later, another drone struck the city center of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur and a major stronghold of the Rapid Support Forces. Medical and local sources reported seventeen people killed, among them seven officers belonging to the paramilitary group, with twenty-three others wounded. The strike destroyed two homes in the process. In Khartoum itself, which remains under the control of the regular army, a drone hit a residential house east of the airport early Monday morning. Four people died there, three of them children between the ages of two and six.

Both sides in the war have pointed fingers at the other. The Rapid Support Forces' self-declared administration and a Sudanese human rights group that tracks civilian harm accused the army of carrying out the market-area attack in West Kordofan. The army, for its part, has previously claimed that its own air operations target only military positions and command centers. Independent confirmation of who launched each individual drone remains difficult; the aircraft themselves leave little public trace once the explosions are over, and both forces have access to similar unmanned systems supplied or built with outside help.

The growing reliance on drones has changed the character of the fighting. Early in the war, which began in April 2023 when the army and the Rapid Support Forces turned on each other after a failed power-sharing arrangement, most casualties came from ground clashes, artillery, and conventional airstrikes. Over the past year, however, unmanned aircraft have become one of the leading causes of civilian death. They can be launched from relatively safe distances, loiter over target areas, and return for second passes. Markets, bus stations, displacement camps, and ordinary houses have all been hit. Humanitarian workers say the pattern makes it nearly impossible for civilians to find any reliable place of safety, because the threat can appear without the warning that larger aircraft or advancing ground forces sometimes provide.

The broader context is grim. The United Nations and aid agencies describe Sudan as the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis. More than twelve million people have fled their homes. Large parts of Darfur and Kordofan face the risk of famine. Hospitals that still function are overwhelmed, and many medical facilities have themselves been damaged or abandoned. Each new wave of drone strikes further disrupts the fragile networks that still move food, medicine, and people between towns.

Neither the army nor the Rapid Support Forces has shown any public willingness to pause the fighting for serious negotiations. Outside powers continue to supply weapons, ammunition, and technical support to one side or the other, even as international calls for restraint grow louder. For the families now preparing funerals in Al-Dibab, Nyala, and eastern Khartoum, those diplomatic statements offer little immediate comfort. The drones that arrived over the weekend did not distinguish between soldiers and the civilians who happened to be standing nearby after market day or sleeping in their houses. The death toll of more than one hundred in a matter of days is only the latest measurement of a war that continues to consume the country from the air as well as from the ground.