A devastating drone attack carried out by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on a displaced persons camp in the country’s Blue Nile state, which shares a border with Ethiopia, has left at least 41 people dead, according to a Sudanese human rights organization, Emergency Lawyers.
The targeted strike hit the Abu Shandi displacement camp on Friday, marking the latest escalation of violence in Sudan’s ongoing 18-month power struggle between the national army and the RSF paramilitary group.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has publicly voiced its horror at the deeply troubling reports coming out of the region. Initial on-the-ground assessments confirm that the overwhelming majority of those killed and injured in the attack are women and children – a detail that has drawn widespread international condemnation.
Sudan’s brutal civil conflict erupted in April 2023, when tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF boiled over into open warfare over competing claims to state control. To date, the violence has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, forced more than 14 million Sudanese to flee their homes, and created what global aid organizations describe as one of the most severe humanitarian catastrophes on the planet today. Millions of residents across the country now lack consistent access to basic life-saving services, including emergency medical care.
Current territorial control is split between the two warring factions: the national army holds sway over most of Sudan’s central and eastern provinces, while the RSF maintains its headquarters in the western region of Darfur and also controls significant swathes of territory in the country’s south. Independent human rights monitors have documented repeated drone strikes by both sides of the conflict, with civilian population centers and displacement camps regularly bearing the brunt of the violence.
In its official statement, OCHA added that the Abu Shandi area, which was hit in Friday’s attack, has already endured weeks of constant bombardment. This sustained violence has already displaced thousands of additional civilians in the region and left countless more vulnerable to extreme harm, as aid groups struggle to reach affected communities with critical supplies.