Drone strike on wedding kills dozens in Sudan
At least 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed when a drone strike hit a wedding ceremony in a town in Sudan’s North Darfur state, the UN has said.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric condemned the attack on Kutum as “unacceptable” at a briefing on Thursday, saying civilians continue to “bear the brunt” of the escalating violence in the African nation.
“Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected in line with international humanitarian law. In South Kordofan, clashes around the town of Dilling since last Monday have reportedly killed 47 civilians and injured dozens more,” Dujarric said.
Emergency Lawyers, a local rights group monitoring the war, said the drone bombed the gathering on Wednesday and denounced the attack as a “heinous crime.”
Sudan descended into chaos in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the national army (Sudanese Armed Forces, SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This occurred after months of tension between their commanders, army generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemedti’, respectively, over a planned transition to civilian rule. What began in the capital, Khartoum, as a power struggle has devastated the country, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions.
Regional and international peace efforts, including African Union mediation and Saudi–US talks in Jeddah, have repeatedly stalled. Sudanese officials have named Colombians and Ukrainians among mercenaries backing the RSF against the army. Officials have also accused Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates of involvement and recently claimed the European Union has an “incomplete understanding of the complex situation” in the country.
Khartoum has also accused authorities in neighboring Kenya of backing the RSF and has broken ties with the East African grouping IGAD amid mistrust of regional mediation. In July, TASIS, a political coalition aligned with the paramilitary, announced the formation of a rival government months after its members signed a charter in Nairobi. It named Gen. Dagalo as chairman of a 15-member presidential council, a move rejected by the UN and AU.
No party immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Drone attacks have become increasingly common in war, with both the army and the paramilitary accused of targeting civilian areas.
The strike is the latest deadly incident in Sudan’s nearly three-year civil war, which has killed more than 40,000 people, according to UN estimates. The UN refugee agency says the conflict has triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis, with around 15.3 million people forcibly displaced.
The UN human rights office said in March that more than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes across the country from January 1 to March 15, with the majority of the deaths recorded in the Kordofan region.
Last month, the World Health Organization said a drone strike on Al Deain Teaching Hospital in East Darfur killed 70 people, including women, children, and medical staff, rendering a facility serving more than 2 million people out of operation.
