A drone attack killed 12 people and injured 30 on Tuesday in Atbara in northeast Sudan, a city that had until now been spared the country’s brutal warfare. Much of Sudan has been gripped for nearly a year by a bloody war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Residents were gripped by a “wave of panic due to the shock of the explosion” in Atbara, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) northeast of Khartoum. The bodies of “12 killed and 30 injured” arrived at a hospital in Atbara, a medical source said, updating an earlier toll without specifying whether they were fighters or civilians.
The RSF owns drones but is located some 250 kilometers away from Atbara, on the roads leading out of the capital Khartoum. The paramilitaries now control much of Darfur, a region the size of France that has been cut off from the rest of the country for months.
The new US envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, said military jets on Monday raided the city of El-Fasher in North Darfur, “where thousands of civilians from across Darfur have already fled.” Across the country, both the military and the RSF “continue to obstruct humanitarian assistance and the free movement of civilians,” he wrote on X.
