KHARTOUM: A drone strike on a market in Nyala, the de facto capital of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in western Darfur, killed 21 people and wounded at least 40 others, a medical source and witnesses told AFP on Tuesday.
A Nyala resident said a market in the city’s north was struck by a drone at about 8pm (1800 GMT) on Monday. Another resident said the market was frequented by young men, particularly RSF fighters.
“Twenty-one people were killed in last night’s bombing, and more than 40 others injured,” a medic at Nyala Hospital said, although he was unable to identify how many of the victims were RSF fighters.
Sudan’s military, which has been at war with the RSF since April 2023, regularly carries out strikes on Nyala, where the paramilitary group has declared a rival government to the army’s internationally recognised administration in Khartoum.
The war is now being fought primarily using drones, with both sides launching sophisticated attacks across the country that have killed dozens of civilians at a time.
In the first three weeks of October alone, drone strikes killed more than 300 people and injured hundreds more, according to a United Nations tally.
Since the war began, it has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and triggered the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.