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A deadly drone strike hit a market in central Sudan on Saturday, killing 11 civilians and wounding dozens more as escalating aerial attacks deepen the toll of a severe humanitarian crisis.
The attack targeted the main market in Abu Zaeima, a paramilitary-controlled town in North Kordofan state.
The Emergency Lawyers, a rights group that documents abuses, reported the strike and warned that the casualty figures could rise, though they did not specify who carried out the attack.
Neither the Sudanese army nor the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has commented on the incident.
The rights group noted that similar drone attacks had struck nearby villages and civilian vehicles less than a day earlier.
Later on Saturday, another drone hit a fuel station in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, which RSF forces have partially encircled for months. A medical source at a local hospital confirmed that the facility received four wounded civilians following that secondary strike.
These attacks follow a devastating week in the broader Kordofan region, where two separate drone strikes killed nearly 70 people in West and North Kordofan states.
Drone warfare has become an increasingly prominent feature of the Sudanese conflict, and the UN reports that drone strikes killed at least 880 civilians nationwide between January and April.
Fighting has intensified in Kordofan and Blue Nile states near the Ethiopian border since the RSF captured El-Fasher last October, which represented the military’s last major stronghold in western Darfur.
Since that capture, more than 300,000 people have fled frontline areas, according to UN data.
Kordofan remains largely contested between the army and the RSF, holding immense strategic significance due to its rich oil reserves, arable land, and its position linking RSF strongholds in Darfur to the army-controlled east.
Now entering its fourth year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, creating the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.
