NAIROBI — A drone strike hit a displacement shelter in Sudan’s Blue Nile state on Friday, killing dozens of people who had fled fighting in the area, in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in recent weeks of the country’s civil war.
The strike targeted the Abu Shandi area of Wad al-Mahi locality, where displaced families from Geisan had taken refuge around a water facility. Casualty figures were preliminary and varied: U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said at least 40 people were killed, most of them women and girls, in what he called “horrifying reports.” The Sudan Doctors Network said 31 people were killed, including four children, and 19 were injured, including six children and eight women. The Blue Nile state governor reported dozens killed and 26 wounded.
The doctors’ network and the governor blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for the strike, but the claim could not be independently verified. News organizations cannot freely report from the area, and the RSF did not immediately comment.
The attack is the deadliest in a recent wave of drone strikes in the region. Earlier this week, a strike in Damazin killed four women, and an airstrike on a World Food Program convoy killed a driver.
Sudan’s war, which began in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF, has killed more than 150,000 people according to the ACLED monitoring group, and displaced about 12.4 million, the United Nations says. Fighting has escalated since August near the Ethiopian border, and humanitarian agencies warn civilians are bearing the brunt.
