CAIRO — A drone strike blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces hit displaced people beside a shelter site in Blue Nile State near the Ethiopian border on Friday, killing at least 30 people, most of them women and children, according to local officials, the United Nations and a rights group, Al Jazeera and the Associated Press reported.
The governor of Wad al-Mahi province, Mahjoub Al-Sheikh, told Al Jazeera the drone killed 26 women and four children, calling the attack “cowardly,” and said it had been launched from “inside Ethiopia,” according to AFP. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Denise Brown, said preliminary information indicated at least 31 civilians were killed and dozens injured, while the monitoring group Emergency Lawyers put the toll at 41, including eight children, the AP reported. An RSF spokesperson did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.
“Condemning these senseless killings is essential, but there must also be accountability for this flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law,” Brown said in a statement. She said the victims had been displaced by recent fighting in Geissan and Kurmuk localities and that a similar attack on a displacement shelter in El Obeid, North Kordofan, a week earlier had killed and wounded civilians, including children.
The strike hit just outside a displacement camp near an informal gold mining site, Al Jazeera said. The border region with Ethiopia has become the latest front line in the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF; Sudan has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of harboring RSF fighters and bases, which Ethiopia denies. Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced in Blue Nile State this year, according to U.N. figures. The war, which began in April 2023, has killed at least 150,000 people according to the conflict monitor ACLED, the AP said, while aid workers cited by Al Jazeera estimate more than 200,000 deaths.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Associated Press, UN OCHA (ReliefWeb)
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