More than 500 civilians killed in drone strikes this year in Sudan: UN

2026-03-24 - 13:41

More than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes in Sudan between January and mid-March, with the vast majority killed in the strategic Kordofan region, the United Nations said Tuesday. The UN rights office said it had noted a sharp increase in the use of drones in Sudan’s civil war, underlining “the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas”. “According to information received, over 500 civilians were killed in such strikes from January 1 to March 15,” spokeswoman Marta Hurtado told reporters in Geneva, highlighting that “the vast majority of these civilian deaths were documented in three states in the Kordofan region”. Sudan’s southern Kordofan region is currently the fiercest battlefield in the three-year war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The vast region connects RSF strongholds in the western Darfur region with the army-controlled east. Near-daily drone strikes have killed dozens at a time across the region, where the army has sought to stem an RSF advance, pushing the paramilitaries back towards Darfur and away from the capital Khartoum. “In the first two weeks of March alone, information received shows that over 277 civilians were killed, over three-quarters of whom were killed in drone strikes,” Hurtado said. She said that the “deadly attacks have continued in the past week, as the holy month of Ramadan came to a close”. She highlighted in particular the March 20 attack, on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, on the El-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur state, which killed 70 people, including 13 children, and injured 146 others. “The hospital, including its emergency, maternity and paediatric units, are fully out of operation — further constraining desperately needed access of many in the area to the right to health,” Hurtado said. “Widening drone attacks are spilling across Sudan’s borders, with serious risk of further escalation carrying regional consequences,” Hurtado warned, referring to drone strikes on the Chadian border after an earlier RSF ground offensive. According to the rights office, a drone strike on the Chadian town of Tine on March 18 killed at least 24 civilians and wounded some 60 others. Across Sudan, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and left some 11 million displaced, creating the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises. “We urge all states, particularly those with influence, to do all in their power to end arms transfers that are fuelling the conflict and being used in manifest disregard of the obligation to protect civilians in conflict,” Hurtado said. “There needs to be renewed diplomatic efforts towards an urgent ceasefire to bring the conflict to an end,” she said.