A drone attack on a busy market in western Sudan has killed 11 people and wounded dozens more, including children, near the country's border with Chad.
The attack on Adikong market occurred on Thursday, igniting fuel reserves and sending flames through the area. Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, treated more than 20 of the wounded at a hospital it supports across the border in Adre.
MSF described it as the second deadly drone attack on the same area in less than a month. The United Nations warns that the country's rapidly escalating air wars have claimed more than 200 civilian lives in little over a week.
Regional Context
Drones have become a key weapon used by both sides in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that began in April 2023. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said he was appalled by the scale of intensifying aerial assaults on civilians in the war.
Turk warned that more than 200 people had been killed by drones across the Kordofan region and White Nile state since March 4 alone. He stated, “It is deeply troubling that despite multiple reminders, warnings and appeals, parties to the conflict continue to use increasingly powerful drones to deploy explosive weapons in populated areas.”
In West Kordofan, at least 152 civilians were killed in strikes attributed to the Sudanese Armed Forces, including about 50 when a market and hospital were struck simultaneously in al-Muglad on March 4.
International Response
Mukesh Kapila, professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, told Al Jazeera the increase in the rate of the drone attacks was significant. He said their use now appeared to be “accelerating” into “a preferred weapon of war, particularly on the RSF side”.
Kapila pointed to the pattern of targets — hospitals, water points, markets and displacement camps — as evidence that the intent was “to spread terror” with strikes increasingly used to project power well beyond active front lines.
The war has now produced more than 1,000 documented drone attacks since April 2023, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project. The human cost of nearly three years of war has caused what has been called the world’s largest humanitarian emergency.
Source: Al Jazeera
