Drone strike on Nyala market in Darfur kills at least 21, a hospital medic tells AFP

A drone strike on a market in Nyala, the South Darfur city that serves as the de facto capital of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killed at least 21 people and injured more than 40 on the evening of Monday 26 October, according to a medical source quoted by the AFP news agency.

A medic at Nyala Hospital told AFP on Tuesday: “Twenty-one people were killed in last night’s bombing, and more than 40 others injured.” He could not say how many of the victims were RSF fighters. The figures come from that single medical source and have not been confirmed by the United Nations or by either side.

What witnesses described

One Nyala resident told AFP that the market, in the north of the city, was hit at about 8 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT). Another said the market was frequented by young men, particularly RSF fighters. It was not immediately clear who carried out the strike or whether the market itself was the intended target. Neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF was reported to have commented on the attack at the time of writing.

AFP noted that the Sudanese army, which has fought the RSF since April 2023, regularly strikes Nyala, where the RSF has declared an administration rivalling the army-backed, internationally recognised government in Khartoum.

A war increasingly fought with drones

The attack came on a day of further drone strikes elsewhere in the country. Al Jazeera, citing AFP, reported that an RSF drone attack on Tuesday hit the al-Markhiyat transformer station, which a national electricity company source said disrupted power for millions of people across large parts of Khartoum and Gezira state. That followed coordinated RSF drone strikes on Monday on power stations in the states of Gezira, White Nile, Sennar and Gadarif. Those accounts come from the electricity company and were reported without independent confirmation.

The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, condemned the escalation of drone attacks earlier in October. As Geopolitiki reported, his office counted at least 306 people killed and hundreds injured by drone strikes across Sudan in the first three weeks of the month: Sudan drone strikes kill at least 306 in three weeks of October, UN rights chief Türk says.

At the UN in Geneva on 21 October, Switzerland’s State Secretary Alexandre Fasel told a meeting of mediators that the war in Sudan “has become a drone war; it kills mostly civilians”, according to UN News. Neither the Sudanese government nor the RSF was represented at that meeting.

Humanitarian backdrop

On Monday the United States, the European Union and 30 other countries issued a joint statement, released by the US State Department, warning of an “alarming deterioration” in Sudan’s food security and calling on the warring parties to lift all impediments to humanitarian assistance. Earlier Geopolitiki coverage of a separate famine statement is here: Sudan famine warning: UK and 31 partners demand open aid routes as 19.5 million face acute hunger.