Drone strike kills 30 people in Sudan’s Blue Nile region

At least 30 displaced people, including women and children, have been killed and dozens of others have been wounded following a drone attack in southeastern Sudan.

The governor of Wad al-Mahi province told Al Jazeera on Friday that a drone belonging to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) targeted the centre of the province, killing 26 women and four children.

Governor Mahjoub Al-Sheikh described the attack as “cowardly”. He said the drone was launched from “inside Ethiopia”, according to the AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera Arabic’s Sudan correspondent, Wadah Al-Tahir, explained that the attack was the latest in a wave of drone strikes targeting the Blue Nile region and this time Wad al-Mahi province near the city of Damazin was struck.

Friday’s attack was just outside a displacement camp, near an informal gold mining site, where women earn a daily wage using chemicals and their bare hands to clear gold nuggets from the earth extracted by men.

The latest frontline in the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF is the border region with Ethiopia, which is facing its own internal conflict that threatens to escalate.

Sudan has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of harbouring RSF fighters and bases – Ethiopia has denied the allegations.

Local sources say the porous border between the two countries is a key supply line for the paramilitary and its allies, AFP reported.

The RSF launched its offensive towards Damazin but the advance could put the army in a bind, forcing it to defend territory on both the Blue Nile front and in the Kordofan region, where a year of deadly drone strikes has left the two sides deadlocked.

Aid workers estimate that Sudan’s civil war has killed more than 200,000 people since it started in April 2023, creating one of the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced in Blue Nile state this year alone, according to United Nations figures.