Sudan drone attack kills 24 civilians

A drone attack by a paramilitary group hit a vehicle carrying displaced families in central Sudan Saturday, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, a doctors’ group said, a day after a World Food Program aid convoy was targeted. 

Saturday’s attack by the Rapid Support Forces occurred close to the city of Rahad in North Kordofan province, said the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s ongoing war. The vehicle was transporting displaced people who fled fighting in the Dubeiker area, the group said in a statement. Among the dead children were two infants.

Several others were wounded and taken for treatment in Rahad, which suffers severe medical supplies shortages, like many areas in the Kordofan region, the statement said.  The doctors’ group urged the international community and rights organisations to “take immediate action to protect civilians and hold the RSF leadership directly accountable for these violations.” There was no immediate comment from the RSF, which has been at war against the Sudanese military for control of the country for about three years.

Sudan plunged into chaos in April 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country, leaving tens of thousands dead and millions displaced.

WFP aid convoy attacked

An attack on Friday on a WFP aid convoy in North Kordofan province, which killed one and wounded several others, said Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. Brown said the convoy was heading to deliver “life-saving food assistance” to displaced people in the city of Obeid in North Kordofan when it was struck. The attack burned the trucks and destroyed the aid, he said.

“Attacks on aid operations undermine efforts to reach people facing hunger and displacement,” he said in a statement. Last week, a drone strike hit close to a WFP facility in the Blue Nile province, wounding a WFP worker, Brown also said. Emergency Lawyers, an independent group documenting atrocities in Sudan, blamed the RSF for the attack, while the Sudan Doctors Network called it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a full-fledged war crime.”