A drone strike hit a market in central Sudan on Saturday, killing 11 civilians and wounding dozens more, a rights group said, as escalating aerial attacks deepen the toll of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The attack targeted the main market in Abu Zaeima, a paramilitary-controlled town in North Kordofan state, according to the Emergency Lawyers, a rights group that has documented abuses since fighting erupted in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces .
The group said the casualty figures could rise, but did not specify who carried out the attack. Neither side has commented.
Emergency Lawyers said similar drone attacks had struck nearby villages and civilian vehicles less than a day earlier.
Two witnesses told AFP that another drone hit a fuel station later on Saturday in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, which has been partially encircled by RSF forces for months.
A medical source at a hospital there said the facility received four wounded civilians.
The attacks followed a deadly week in the broader Kordofan region.
Nearly 70 people were killed in two separate drone strikes in West and North Kordofan states, according to Emergency Lawyers and a local leader.
Drone warfare has become an increasingly prominent feature of Sudan’s conflict. The UN says that between January and April, at least 880 civilians were killed in drone strikes nationwide.
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 frontline 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.
Having entered its fourth year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million from their homes, creating what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.
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