33 people reportedly killed in drone strike in Sudan

A drone strike in the west of Sudan has reportedly killed 33 people with local aid groups accusing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rebel group of committing the attack.

The New Arab citing AFP on May 8th reported that the Abu Shouk refugee camp located in the western Darfur region of Sudan was hit by a drone strike causing the deaths of 33 people including at least 14 members of the same family.

An aid group has accused the RSF of launching the attack saying that the Abu Shouk displacement camp “was the target of intense bombardment by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday evening”.

The RSF have launched repeated strike in the Darfur region and have been accused of committing war crimes by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) with whom they’ve been embroiled in a civil war with since April 2023.

The population of the nearby city of el-Fasher has bulged since the start of the war as internal refugees, displaced from nearby towns, villages and camps have sought safety in the city.

However, as such, the city has become a target for the RSF, who have regularly attacked it with drone strikes.

Attacks on the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps – which were home to around 700,000 people when the attacks were launched in April – forced thousands of people to flee to el-Fasher and led to the deaths of hundreds more.

The Abu Shouk and Zamzam camps are very closely located and have therefore suffered simultaneous attacks from RSF forces who have been trying to break down army forces who occupy the city of el-Fasher.

The RSF launched a full-scale siege on the city in March, a situation that was described by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a ‘crisis of staggering scale and brutality”.

Civilians were forced to build rudimentary shelters out of metal sheets and wooden planks after having homes destroyed by RSF fire.

The New Arab/ AFP/ Maghrebi