Sudanese army drones killed more than 300 people in two strikes over the weekend and into Monday, hitting a vehicle carrying mourners in West Kordofan state and, a day later, a fuel market in the disputed Abyei region, according to local officials, a war-monitoring group and a Sudanese military source who confirmed one of the attacks to the BBC.
The first strike came on Sunday evening, when a truck carrying roughly 200 mourners was hit as it arrived in the town of Al-Dabab in West Kordofan, an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Sudan War Monitor put the toll from that weekend's West Kordofan strikes at around 150, while separate reporting from AFP, citing a medical source and a witness, described a related strike on a transport hub in nearby Al-Dibab that killed about 80 commuters waiting for trucks home, with dozens more wounded.
A second, deadlier strike followed on Monday, when a drone hit the Amiet fuel market in Abyei, an oil-producing border region claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. Abyei's caretaker information minister, Yohana Akol, told Eye Radio that more than 220 people were killed in that single attack, which local officials said had targeted a known RSF fuel supply point. A military source separately confirmed to the BBC that the army had carried out the Abyei strike, arguing it was a legitimate target, while insisting the military does not deliberately target civilians.
A death toll that keeps shifting
Casualty figures from Sudan's 30-month civil war are notoriously difficult to verify independently, and this weekend was no exception. Some tallies describe the West Kordofan and Abyei strikes as a single, continuous wave that killed more than 300 people combined; others treat the Al-Dabab mourners' convoy, the Al-Dibab transport hub and the Amiet fuel market as three distinct attacks with overlapping but separately counted victims. What is consistent across accounts is that the toll is unusually high even for a conflict that has repeatedly produced mass-casualty strikes on civilian gathering points, and that the Sudanese army has not issued a formal public statement addressing the overall toll beyond the single confirmation given to the BBC.
The RSF-aligned administration that controls much of West Kordofan, known as Tasis, blamed the army for the Sunday strikes. The army itself has made no comment on those attacks specifically, though it has previously said it does not target civilians even as independent monitors have documented a pattern of strikes on markets, funerals and fuel depots in RSF-held territory.
Why Abyei and Kordofan matter
Abyei and West Kordofan sit near the fault line between army-held and RSF-held Sudan, and both have taken on outsized strategic importance since the war began in April 2023: Kordofan's towns control supply routes into Darfur, while Abyei's oil infrastructure and fuel markets have become targets precisely because they sustain RSF operations elsewhere. The result is that civilians living near depots, transport hubs and market days have repeatedly been caught in strikes aimed at degrading the other side's logistics.
The spillover has not stayed inside Sudan's borders. South Sudan's government summoned Sudan's ambassador in protest after the weekend's strikes pushed the regional toll above 300, reflecting growing alarm in Juba that fighting around Abyei — an area whose final status remains disputed between the two countries — could drag South Sudan more directly into the conflict.
We do not target civilians.
Sudanese military source, speaking to the BBC
What happens next
Humanitarian groups operating in both West Kordofan and Abyei have warned for months that aid access to the region is among the worst in the country, making it difficult to confirm casualty figures or deliver emergency care to the wounded. Diplomats involved in on-and-off ceasefire talks between the army and the RSF said the latest strikes were unlikely to immediately derail negotiations, which have stalled repeatedly since late 2023, but acknowledged that an attack of this scale raises the political cost of any side appearing to make concessions in the short term. For now, residents of Abyei and West Kordofan have few assurances that the next market day or funeral gathering will not become the next target.
