The death toll from an army drone strike on a market in the Sudanese city of Nyala has risen to 102, a rights group said Wednesday, in the latest deadly attack on the paramilitary stronghold in western Darfur.
Sudan’s military, at war with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, regularly strikes Nyala, where the RSF has established an administration rivalling the army-backed, internationally recognized government in Khartoum.
Witnesses and a medical source initially told AFP the strike killed 21 people and injured 40 others.
The Emergency Lawyers, which has been documenting abuses throughout Sudan’s war, later said the toll stood at 102, with another 113 people wounded, including women and children.
According to the group, a drone struck Tanqonj Market, a busy civilian marketplace where residents gather to buy daily necessities and earn a living.
Residents described devastating losses.
“I lost my 19-year-old son in Monday’s market strike. We buried him alongside more than 70 bodies in a single site,” Hamdan Suleiman, a resident of Nyala’s Doumaya neighborhood, told AFP via a text message.
Another resident, Zahra Hamidan, who sells food in the market, said several workers were killed “next to my food stall.”
Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year, is increasingly being fought through drone attacks, with both sides carrying out long-range strikes that have killed scores of civilians.
In the first three weeks of October alone, drone attacks killed more than 300 people and wounded hundreds more, according to the UN.