A drone strike triggered massive explosions at a market in Sudan’s Darfur region near the border with Chad on Thursday, killing four people and injuring more than two dozen civilians.
According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the drone struck fuel reserves at the Adikong border market in West Darfur, marking the second deadly drone attack in the area in less than a month.
Gado Mahamadou, MSF’s head of mission in Chad, said 23 people were wounded in the blast, including seven children and four women.
Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when tensions between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the national army escalated into full-scale fighting in Khartoum before spreading nationwide. The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to United Nations estimates, though aid groups believe the true toll could be far higher.
The Darfur and Kordofan regions have become the epicentres of the violence, with repeated drone strikes increasingly affecting civilians and humanitarian operations.
The Sudanese military has not issued an official statement on the Thursday attack, although two officials said operations were underway in the area targeting RSF fighters. Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned on Thursday that escalating drone strikes across Sudan are taking a heavy toll on civilians.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also condemned the surge, noting that since March 4 alone more than 200 civilians have reportedly been killed by drones in Kordofan and White Nile state. A separate drone attack on Wednesday in White Nile province, blamed on the RSF, struck a school and health centre, killing at least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls.