Two recent drone strikes in the Kordofan region of Sudan have claimed the lives of nearly 70 people, a rights group and a local leader reported on Sunday.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that documents abuses in Sudan’s long-running war, said that 10 people — eight children and two women — were killed in a drone strike the day before in the village of Kadam in West Kordofan state.
It said “the victims had fled from the Abu Kershola area in South Kordofan to Kadam in search of safety before being targeted at their displacement site” in West Kordofan, which is under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The group did not identify the party responsible for the attack, but said it “occurred in a civilian area where there are no military operations”, adding it reflected an “expansion of violence to include displacement areas”.
In North Kordofan state, a tribal leader told AFP that 57 people were killed in a drone attack on Friday on the village of Al-Murra, in an area where the army and the RSF are vying for control. The source attributed the attack to the RSF.
On Sunday, the UN’s International Organization for Migration reported that 160 people were displaced from Al-Murra earlier in the week “due to heightened insecurity”.
In recent months, the pace of drone attacks carried out by both parties to the war in Sudan has picked up.
UN humanitarian aid chief Tom Fletcher had said last month that around 700 civilians were killed in such strikes in the first three months of the year alone.
Now in its fourth year, the war between the army and the RSF has killed 200,000 people by some estimates and displaced over 11 million more, while thrusting several areas into hunger and famine.
