Khartoum, Oct 27. (dpa/GNA) – At least 36 people have been killed in a drone strike on a busy market in Sudan, the medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday.
Sudanese armed forces attacked a market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on Monday evening, causing “complete devastation,” MSF said. A second drone strike targeted a residential area.
The MSF-supported Nyala Teaching Hospital, has received 36 bodies so far, 21 of them dressed in civilian clothing, the organization said.
More than 150 injured people have also been treated in the hospital’s emergency department, many suffering from shrapnel wounds and severe burns, including children.
MSF stressed that markets, residential buildings and essential civilian infrastructure, must not be targeted by the warring parties.
A spokesman for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been fighting Sudan’s military for more than three years, put the death toll at 188 civilians, with another 356 injured.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have not commented on the attack.
At least four people were killed and many others injured in a similar drone strike on another market in Nyala on October 16. A recent attack on a market in the Abyei region, near the border with South Sudan, also left at least 80 people dead.
According to the UN, drones have also struck several locations in the capital Khartoum in recent days, including an area near the airport. Drone attacks were also reported in the states of West Darfur, South Darfur and North Kordofan.
Drone strikes have increasingly shaped Sudan’s civil war, killing at least 1,120 civilians in the first half of this year alone, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
Both sides have been blamed for the attacks.
The war between the RSF and the military, which began in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, and displaced more than 14 million, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
GNA