CAIRO (AP) — Massive explosions caused by a drone strike at a market in the Darfur region near Sudan ’s border with Chad on Thursday killed four people and wounded over two dozen civilians, a medical group said.
Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, blamed the strike on the army, saying the drone hit fuel reserves at the Adikong border market in West Darfur, marking the second fatal drone strike in Adikong in less than a month.
Gado Mahamadou, MSF head of mission in Chad, said 23 people were injured, including seven children and four women.
ٍSudan plunged into war in April 2023 after simmering tensions between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and the army broke out into fighting in Khartoum and spread across the country. The devastating war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher.
The Darfur and Kordofan regions became the epicenters of the war, with deadly drone attacks frequently reported in Kordofan. A surge in drone strikes in the Sudanese region of Kordofan has taken a growing toll on civilians and hampered aid operations, analysts and humanitarian workers previously said.
The Sudanese military hasn’t released an official statement about the Thursday strike, but two officials said there were military operations in the area meant to target the RSF. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, warned on Thursday that increasing drone strikes across Sudan “are exacting a growing toll on civilians.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Thursday in a statement that he’s appalled by the increasing drone attacks, citing reports that more than 200 civilians have been killed by drones since March 4 alone in the Kordofan region and in White Nile state.
On Wednesday, a drone blamed on the RSF struck a secondary school and a health care center in southern Sudanin the White Nile province on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people, mostly schoolgirls.
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Associated Press freelancer Yasir Abdalla in Khartoum contributed to this report.