A drone strike in the town of Kutum, located in the north of Sudan’s Darfur region, killed at least 30 civilians on Wednesday. According to the United Nations, both women and children were among the victims.
Local human rights activists blamed the attack on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the national military commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
The SAF is locked in a long and brutal struggle for power with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Burhan and Dagalo worked together on a coup against longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, but then turned against each other in 2023, unleashing a civil war that has killed over 150,000 people, displaced another 12 million, and created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Both sides of the conflict have been accused of atrocities, and both have deliberately attacked civilian targets. The already savage conflict reached new depths of carnage in March, when both sides began making extensive use of drones.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned of a “sharp increase in civilian deaths” due to drone warfare in March, with over 500 civilian deaths linked to drone strikes in Sudan so far this year.
OHCHR condemned both sides in the civil war for using drones to attack civilian infrastructure, including food, power, and hospitals, because each side believes those resources are being used to sustain the enemy’s military forces.
The Sudan Tribune noted on Thursday that Kutum has been under RSF control since early in the civil war, and has recently been subjected to heavy drone strikes by the SAF, including attacks on the local market and hospital. The drone attack on Wednesday’s wedding reportedly destroyed dozens of homes and inflicted over 100 injuries. Local media sources say the death toll could be substantially higher than the 30 killings confirmed by the U.N. so far.
“We condemn this and all attacks against civilians. Attacks using drones against civilians and civilian objects are unacceptable,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Kutum appears to be at the center of a dispute within the RSF, which suspects its local field commander in the town has become disloyal to Dagalo. The Sudan Tribune said the RSF central command sent a “large force” to Kutum to disarm the commander, but he refused to surrender his weapons, and has called upon his local tribal kinsmen for protection.
The United Nations said on Friday that roughly 1.3 million Sudanese refugees have fled into neighboring Chad, overwhelming that country’s humanitarian resources, and draining support provided by the World Food Program (WFP).
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