A drone strike hit a gathering of displaced people near the Ethiopian border in Sudan’s Blue Nile state on Friday, October 9, and killed 41 people, according to Emergency Lawyers, a rights group that tracks the war, as reported by the BBC and the Sudan Times. The strike landed in the Abu Shandi area of Wad al-Mahi locality, near a site for people who had fled earlier fighting, the Sudan Times reports.
The toll has climbed and still varies by source. On Friday the Sudan Doctors Network, a local medical group, said 31 civilians died and 19 suffered injuries, Anadolu Agency reported, with four children among the dead and six children and eight women among the injured. Emergency Lawyers later put the death toll at 41, including eight children and numerous women, according to the Sudan Times. UN officials initially reported around 40 civilian deaths, most of them women and children, the Sudan Times says.
Blame remains contested. Emergency Lawyers attributes the strike to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary force fighting Sudan’s army since April 2023, the BBC reports. The Sudan Doctors Network also holds the RSF responsible and calls the attack a war crime and a violation of international humanitarian law, according to Anadolu Agency.
The RSF’s political alliance rejects that account. The Sudan Founding Alliance, known as TASIS, in which the RSF plays a leading role, denied responsibility in a statement from its spokesman Ahmed Tugud Lisan, the Sudan Times reports. TASIS alleges that the drone belonged to Egypt and took off from the police headquarters in Wad al-Mahi, flown by Egyptian technicians, according to the Sudan Times. The alliance calls the accusations an attempt to discredit it after recent military advances in Blue Nile, the paper says. This desk found no public evidence, in the reports it read, that settles who launched the drone, and no Egyptian response to the allegation.
The UN has condemned the attack without naming a culprit. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said it felt “appalled by horrifying reports,” the BBC reports, adding that initial reports suggested women and children made up most of the casualties. Ocha said the area had come “under sustained atttack in recent weeks, displacing thousands of civilians and exposing many more to grave harm,” according to the BBC, which reproduces the statement’s misspelling. The UN called for those responsible to face accountability under international humanitarian law, the Sudan Times reports.
The strike fits a wider escalation in Blue Nile. The state has seen rising violence in recent weeks as the RSF and its ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), launched attacks in several areas, Anadolu Agency reports. On October 3, Sudanese authorities accused the RSF of drone strikes on the governor’s residence and civilian sites in Damazin, the state capital, according to Anadolu.
The national war forms the backdrop. Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces including the RSF have fought a power struggle since 2023, the BBC reports, in a conflict the BBC says has killed hundreds of thousands and driven more than 14 million people from their homes; Anadolu, citing UN and international estimates, gives lower figures of tens of thousands dead and around 13 million displaced. The army controls much of central and eastern Sudan, while the RSF holds the western Darfur region and areas in the south, according to the BBC, which notes accusations that both sides use drone attacks.
Open questions this desk will watch: whether any independent investigator or the UN attributes the strike; whether the toll rises further or gets a firm count of the wounded; whether Egypt responds to the TASIS allegation; and whether fighting around Wad al-Mahi forces more people to flee.
