Drone strike in Sudan’s Nyala kills at least 21, injures 40

A drone strike in Nyala, in Sudan’s Darfur region, has killed at least 21 people and injured 40 others, the AFP news agency reported, citing a medical source and witnesses.

A Nyala resident said the attack took place at about 8pm (18:00 GMT) on Monday at a market in the north of the city, which serves as the de facto capital of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“Twenty-one people were killed in last night’s bombing, and more than 40 others injured,” a medic at Nyala Hospital said on Tuesday.

Another Nyala resident told AFP that the market was frequented by armed men, particularly RSF fighters.

The Sudanese military, which has been at war with the RSF since April 2023, regularly strikes Nyala, where the RSF has declared an administration rivalling the military-backed, internationally recognised government in Khartoum.

The RSF has, in turn, launched strikes targeting Khartoum’s airports, as well as dams and power stations in the government-controlled east.

An RSF drone attack on Tuesday “targeted the al-Markhiyat transformer station, disrupting power supplies for millions across large parts of Khartoum and Gezira state”, a national electricity company told AFP on condition of anonymity.

It followed Monday’s coordinated RSF drone strikes on six power stations, which cut off electricity to millions in the states of Gezira, White Nile, Sennar and Gadarif.

Both the RSF and government forces are increasingly turning to drone warfare.

A government drone attack in a disputed border region between Sudan and South Sudan earlier this month killed more than 150 people.

The war, which began in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 13 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

On Monday, the United States, the European Union and 30 other countries warned of an “alarming deterioration” in food access in Sudan and called for “urgent action” to prevent famine.

In a joint statement released by the US State Department on Monday, the signatories called on the groups fighting Sudan’s civil war “to lift all impediments on humanitarian assistance”.

The war between Sudan’s army and the RSF flared in April 2023, when a dispute over how to integrate the two forces erupted into clashes in the capital, Khartoum.