Sudanese Army Drone Strikes Kill More Than 200 at a Funeral Convoy and Markets: 150 Dead in West Kordofan and 73 at an Abyei Market as South Sudan Summons Sudan's Ambassador in Protest
Sudan's army has been accused of launching several drone strikes that have reportedly killed more than 200 people, including dozens travelling to a funeral, according to BBC News. The death toll from strikes in two areas of West Kordofan state on Sunday evening was 150, sources told the Sudan War Observatory, which tracks the conflict that erupted in 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). According to compiled reporting of the observatory's account, a truck carrying about 200 mourners was hit as it arrived in Al-Dabab, killing 145 people, and a tent where mourners had gathered was also struck, killing five more, with about 150 people injured; army drones also bombed a market in Al-Mujlad the same evening, where casualties were not yet known.
In Abyei, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan, 73 people were killed when drones hit a market on Monday, the region's information minister Yohana Akol Ngor said; the strike took place at around 11:30 local time on Monday at the Amiet Common Market, about 10km from Abyei town. A military source told the BBC the army had carried out the Abyei attack, saying the market was a fuel supply site for the RSF. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said Ameth Bek Hospital in Abyei town had taken in more than 20 wounded people, including several in critical condition and patients with burns. The army has not responded to the allegation that it carried out the West Kordofan strikes, but says it does not attack civilians even when it believes RSF fighters are among them.
Abyei is jointly administered by South Sudan and Sudan, and both claim ownership of the oil-rich region in a dispute that has remained unresolved since South Sudan's independence in 2011. South Sudan has summoned Sudan's ambassador to lodge a formal protest, and there are fears the conflict could spill across the border. "We are alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting essential services," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Monday, adding that 20 million people faced acute hunger. The BBC said the war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than 14 million from their homes, and that despite a partial arms embargo, foreign countries have been supplying both the army and the RSF with drones, which are increasingly becoming the weapon of choice in the conflict.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 阿卜耶伊行政区地图资料图，为争议地区位置图、非袭击现场。图：AT0fishIul 作，CC BY 4.0，经维基共享资源。 / File map of the Abyei Administrative Area; not a scene from the strikes. Map by AT0fishIul, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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