Drone attack kills 8 displaced people in southern Sudan: witnesses

Eight people were slain on Wednesday as they escaped the besieged Sudanese city of Kadugli in South Kordofan state, the new epicenter of the nation’s protracted conflict, according to witnesses who spoke to AFP.

Kurkal, which is controlled by the army but has been encircled by their enemies, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), for over eighteen months, was the site of the strike. Kurkal is located approximately fifteen kilometers (nine miles) north of Kadugli, the state capital.

“A drone struck some displaced people from Kadugli when they arrived in the village of Kurkal” where they had fled, said one eyewitness who left the state capital with the victims, adding that all those killed were women.

The source and a second eyewitness, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, recounted seeing eight bodies after the attack.

Since dislodging the army in October from the western city of El-Fasher, its last toehold in the Darfur region, the RSF has turned its sights to resource-rich Kordofan.

The region forms a crossroads between army-held territory in the north, including the capital Khartoum, and RSF-held Darfur in the west.

Communications in the area have been cut, and the United Nations declared a famine in Kadugli last month.

According to accounts gathered by AFP, many inhabitants of the city have resorted to foraging in the forest for nourishment.

The humanitarian situation is “extremely bad”, a World Food Programme source told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that many residents had tried to leave, but poor security conditions made such departures dangerous.

On Monday and Tuesday, 460 people fled Kadugli due to growing insecurity, according to the International Organization for Migration.

And over the 10 days leading up to Tuesday, about 1,850 displaced people from South Kordofan, mostly women and children, arrived in the neighbouring army-controlled state of White Nile after walking for days “to flee RSF attacks on civilian areas”, according to a local official.

The war in Sudan, which broke out in April of 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions more, and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.