Drone attack kills six in Sudan’s Darfur

Members of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces during their deadly rampage last year through El-Fasher, in war-torn Sudan’s western Darfur region. (File/AFP)

• Drones have been increasingly used in recent months as fighting continues to rage
• An RSF commander becomes the latest senior defection from the militia to join the Sudanese army

KHARTOUM: A drone attack killed six people on Tuesday in the paramilitary-controlled city of Al-Daein in Sudan’s Darfur region, a medical source and two residents told AFP, as the Rapid Support Forces face a wave of defections.
Drone strikes by both Sudan’s army and the paramilitary RSF have intensified across Sudan in recent months, with some attacks killing dozens of civilians at a time.
A medical source at Al-Daein hospital said six bodies were received after Tuesday’s strike, which also wounded five people, three of them critically. The source did not identify who was responsible.
Two locals said an army drone hit residential neighborhoods in the north and west of the city early on Tuesday. They spoke via Starlink satellite Internet, widely used in Darfur amid widespread communications outages.
An RSF-led alliance accused the Sudanese army of carrying out the attack, saying in a statement that drone strikes began late on Monday and continued into Tuesday morning. The army has not commented.
Sudan’s war between the army and the RSF, now in its fourth year, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered what the United Nations has described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
After the RSF seized control of North Darfur capital El-Fasher, the army’s last stronghold in the region, fighting spread to southern Kordofan and Blue Nile state in the southeast, near the borders with Ethiopia and South Sudan.
But the RSF has faced mounting defections of late.
On Monday, a senior commander in East Darfur, Ali Rizqallah, known as “Savanna,” announced in a video posted on social media that he had split from the force.
Last week, RSF commander Bashara Al-Huweira defected in North Kordofan, weeks after another leader, Al-Nur Al-Quba, said he and his fighters had left their positions in North Darfur and joined the Sudanese army.
In Blue Nile state, where control remains contested, the army said last week it had captured the Keili area, which lies on a strategic road linking state capital El-Damazin to the border town of Al-Kurmuk.
AFP has been unable to independently verify which side controls the area due to access restrictions.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that nearly 50,000 people had fled Blue Nile between January and May, including about 19,000 from Kurmuk alone.