Drone Strike Kills 80 Near Sudan Market, Witness Says

A drone strike near a market in southern Sudan killed 80 people Sunday evening, most of them commuters waiting to travel home after the market closed, according to a witness and a medical source who spoke to The Guardian.

The attack struck a transport hub in al-Dibab, a town in West Kordofan state, the Guardian reported. It is among the deadliest single strikes since Sudan's civil war began in April 2023.

What happened in al-Dibab on Sunday?

Ahmed Wadi, a witness who used a satellite internet connection to get around a communications blackout, told the Guardian the drone struck twice, 10 minutes apart, "on a transport hub where people gather to travel back to their villages after the market day ends." Wadi said he helped bury "50 bodies who I helped bury, one of them my own brother Mohamed."

Wadi said 47 other people were transported to the nearest town, al-Mujlad, for treatment. A medical source there, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity for his safety, said 30 of those victims later died of their injuries. "A total of 80 people were killed in the drone strike on al-Dibab, and another drone strike on al-Mujlad injured four who are currently being treated," the medic said.

Who is blamed for the strike?

The Tasis administration, the governing body declared by the Rapid Support Forces, accused the Sudanese armed forces of carrying out Sunday's strike, according to the Guardian. All of West Kordofan state is under RSF control, the outlet reported. The Guardian's account does not include a direct response from the Sudanese armed forces regarding the al-Dibab strike itself.

The accusation follows a separate episode three days earlier. After drone strikes hit a livestock market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, on Friday, the Sudanese armed forces said they had killed RSF fighters, the Guardian reported. The RSF disputed that account, accusing the military of killing 30 civilians in the same strikes. The conflicting claims from the two sides over the Nyala attack illustrate a pattern in a war where both the army and the paramilitary group have repeatedly disputed each other's casualty figures and targets.

How deadly is the drone war in Sudan?

Drone warfare has intensified sharply this year. Between January and April, drone strikes accounted for at least 880 civilian deaths, more than 80% of all conflict-related civilian deaths recorded in Sudan during that period, the Guardian reported. The figures point to a shift in how the war is being fought, with aerial strikes increasingly supplementing or replacing ground combat in contested regions.

The broader conflict, which erupted in Khartoum in April 2023 amid a power struggle between the Sudanese armed forces under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced many more, according to the Guardian. The outlet reported the fighting has been fueled by foreign powers, though it did not name which governments or detail their involvement in the al-Dibab strike.

What is the situation for survivors now?

The Guardian's reporting describes a town cut off from standard communications, with Wadi relying on satellite internet to relay information about the dead and wounded. The 47 people moved to al-Mujlad for treatment represent a fraction of those affected; with 30 of them later dying, the overall toll from the twin strikes rose through the day as medical staff worked to stabilize the injured, according to the medical source cited by the Guardian.

No information in the available reporting indicates whether an independent investigation into the strike has been opened, or whether either the Sudanese armed forces or the RSF has formally claimed or denied responsibility for the al-Dibab attack specifically, as distinct from the broader accusation leveled by the RSF-aligned Tasis administration.

The Guardian's dispatch, filed using a workaround for the local communications blackout, remains the primary account of the attack's scale and circumstances. Additional casualty figures or official statements from either side of the conflict were not available in the material reviewed.