At least 28 civilians have been killed in two separate drone strikes in Sudan, according to health workers, as the country’s brutal civil war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) approaches its fourth year.
A strike hit a market in the town of Saraf Omra, in North Darfur state, on Wednesday, killing “22 people, including an infant, and injuring 17 more”, a health worker at the local clinic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The drone hit a parked oil truck, which caught fire along with part of the market,” said Hamid Suleiman, a trader at the market, which serves a remote area close to the border with Chad. It was not immediately clear which side sent the drone.
Another strike hit a truck carrying civilians on a highway in an army-controlled area of North Kordofan, about 500 miles (800km) east of Darfur. The road, which runs east to west through the state capital, El Obeid, and onwards to Darfur, has been the subject of numerous drone attacks from the army and the RSF.
“Six bodies arrived at the hospital yesterday, three of them charred, in addition to 10 wounded,” a source at the hospital in the town of El Rahad told AFP, blaming the RSF for the attack.
Civil war broke out in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on 15 April 2023, when a power struggle between the army and RSF spiralled into open conflict.
Since then, more than 11.6 million people have been displaced, out of a population of about 51 million, in what aid organisations have described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Huge swathes of the country are at risk of famine.
Estimates of the number of people killed in the civil war range from tens of thousands to more than 400,000. More than 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred by the RSF in El Fasher over two days in October 2025.
Meanwhile, the number of civilians killed in drone strikes has increased this year, according to the UN, particularly in the Kordofan region. More than 500 were killed by drones between 1 January and 15 March, Marta Hurtado, the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said this week.
On 20 March, a drone strike on a hospital in East Darfur killed 64 people and wounded 89, according to the World Health Organization. The Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese group that documents civil war atrocities, said it was an army drone.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this story.
