A drone strike attributed to Sudan’s army killed 53 people at Amiet market in the disputed Abyei district, local authorities said Tuesday, adding to a mounting toll from attacks across the war-torn country.
The strike took place Monday in a region claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. Authorities in Abyei said the army fired 22 munitions at the market, wounding at least 27 people.
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“The casualties comprise vulnerable civilian populations, including women, children, the elderly, local merchants, members of the host Ngok Dinka community, South Sudanese returnees and Sudanese refugees who had sought sanctuary from the broader regional conflict,” the authorities said.
More than 100 people were killed in strikes across Sudan between Sunday and Monday. The country has been engulfed since April 2023 in a brutal conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Both Sudan and South Sudan claim Abyei district, which remains a flashpoint more than a decade after South Sudan gained independence from its northern neighbor in 2011 following decades of conflict.
Parts of the district are controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a breakaway faction of the movement that fought for South Sudan’s independence. The group is divided into two factions, each aligned with a different side in Sudan’s war.
South Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Sudan’s ambassador and condemned the attack “in the strongest terms possible.”
The ministry said the Sudanese army had struck several locations inside the market, which serves as a transit point for goods headed to areas under RSF control.
Fueled by multiple foreign powers, Sudan’s war has produced one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Wave of strikes
The deadliest attack in the latest wave occurred Sunday evening near a market in al-Dibab, a town in the southwestern state of West Kordofan, which is controlled by the RSF.
Residents and medical workers said a drone hit a transport hub where villagers had gathered after market day to secure rides home. The attack killed 80 people, according to their accounts.
Ahmed Abakar Wadi, a resident who helped bury victims, told AFP that at least 50 bodies were recovered at the site, including the body of his brother.
A further 47 wounded people were transported to the nearby town of al-Mujlad. Thirty of them later died from their injuries, a medical source said.
“The drone struck once, and then came back 10 minutes later and struck again,” Wadi told AFP.
The RSF’s self-declared Tasis administration and Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers blamed the army for Sunday’s strike.
The military has not commented on the allegations.
The attack ranked among the deadliest in Kordofan, an oil-rich region that connects western and eastern Sudan and has become a major battleground as the army and RSF fight for control.
Additional strikes were reported in Nyala, an RSF stronghold in South Darfur, and in Khartoum, the capital controlled by the army.
The United Nations estimates that drone attacks across Sudan killed more than 1,100 people during the first half of this year.
