Nine civilians killed in Sudan drone attack: medic

KHARTOUM: Nine civilians were killed in a drone attack Wednesday, a medical source told AFP, two days after paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said he had “unleashed” his Rapid Support Forces.
The latest attack took place in North Kordofan, where the RSF is attempting to encircle the city of El-Obeid ahead of what UN monitors fear will be a bloody large-scale assault.
“Nine civilians were killed and 14 others were injured as a result of a drone strike by the RSF on the village of Al-Jamama in North Kordofan State on Wednesday morning,” the medical source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
On Tuesday, the Emergency Lawyers group, which documents abuses in the war, said RSF fighters had committed “violations against civilians in the Al-Jamama area ... including assaults on civilians and homes, and looting and vandalism targeting the Al-Jamama market.”
Since April 2023, Dagalo’s war against his former ally, army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and plunged Sudan into the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.
His forces have committed atrocities — including ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and summary executions — according to survivor testimony and United Nations reports.
On Monday, addressing his fighters, Dagalo declared: “From today, I no longer hold the reins, I have released the reins to you.”
The RSF, which arose from the Janjaweed militia which in the early 2000s committed mass atrocities in the volatile Darfur region, consolidated control of Darfur last year, in an attack the UN said bore “the hallmarks of genocide.”
They have since pushed to seize the neighboring region of Kordofan, but were for months stuck in an apparent stalemate with the army as both exchanged deadly drone strikes, killing more than 1,000 civilians so far this year.
On Sunday, after an advance across North Kordofan state, the Sudanese army managed to push the RSF west, off the 400-kilometer (250-mile) highway that connects Khartoum with El-Obeid, two army sources told AFP this week on condition of anonymity.
For months, each side — both of which have been accused of atrocities during the conflict — has sought to cut each other’s supply lines around El-Obeid, which sits at an important crossroads.