More than 160 people have been killed in a wave of drone attacks across Sudan in recent days, according to medics and the civilian-rights monitoring group Emergency Lawyers — a deadly escalation in a civil war that has increasingly been fought from the sky. The strikes have hit markets, transport hubs, displaced people's gatherings, dams and even the capital, Khartoum, where three children were killed. The story is trending per news coverage.
The figures come from medical workers and rights monitors in the conflict zone and are reported by AFP and Al Jazeera-linked outlets. They are not a consolidated, independently verified national casualty count: communications restrictions in the war zone make it hard to establish the exact circumstances of each strike, and reports do not always distinguish people killed at the scene from those who died later in hospital. What is not in doubt is the pattern — drone attacks by both sides of the war are killing civilians at a sharply rising rate.
The deadliest strike: Al-Dibab market day
The worst single incident happened on Sunday evening, 18 October, near a market in Al-Dibab, a town in the southwestern state of West Kordofan currently controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Residents and medical workers said a drone struck a transport hub where villagers had gathered after market day to find rides home. They put the initial death toll at 80.
Another 47 wounded people were taken to the nearby town of Al-Mujlad, where a medical source told AFP that 30 of them later died from their injuries. The RSF's self-declared administration, known as Tasis, and Emergency Lawyers both accused the Sudanese army of carrying out the strike. The allegation has not been independently established, and it is not a finding by an investigating authority.
Blue Nile: 41 displaced people killed
Two days earlier, on Friday 16 October, an RSF drone struck a gathering of displaced people in Blue Nile province, near the border with Ethiopia, killing 41 people, according to Emergency Lawyers. The group condemned the strike, calling it a humanitarian tragedy. The province sits on the war's eastern edge, where people fleeing the fighting have clustered in makeshift camps — places with no defence against attack from above.
Nyala: drone hits the RSF's own stronghold
Early on Monday 19 October, a drone attack hit Nyala, the RSF stronghold and capital of South Darfur. Medical and RSF sources said 17 people were killed, including seven RSF officers, and 23 were wounded. The strike showed that no side's territory is safe: drones are now reaching deep into areas each side considers its own.
Khartoum: three children killed
On the same day, drone attacks in and around Khartoum killed three children — aged two, four and six — in the Imtidad Nasser area east of the airport, according to Emergency Lawyers. The group blamed the RSF; the RSF had not publicly commented on the allegation at the time the reports were published.
Dams under attack in the east
In eastern Sudan, a military source said on Sunday that air defences had intercepted several RSF drones targeting the Atbara and Setit dams in Gadaref state, about 420 kilometres east of Khartoum. There was no immediate comment from the RSF. The dams are critical infrastructure — hitting them would threaten both electricity and irrigation water for surrounding farmland — and the attempted strikes suggest the drone war is expanding from people to the infrastructure that keeps the country running.
The UN: "alarmed" by the drone strikes
The United Nations condemned the attacks on Monday. "We are alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting central services," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The UN's alarm reflects a broader trend. Sudan's war, which erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known as Hemedti — has displaced around 13 million people and left the country in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. In recent months both sides have relied increasingly on unmanned aircraft, and civilian casualties have climbed with them. Elsewhere in Africa, humanitarian agencies are stretched thin by overlapping emergencies, and Sudan's is among the most under-funded.
Why drones changed the war
Drones have reshaped Sudan's battlefield in two ways. First, they reach places neither side's ground forces can — remote towns, markets, camps and dams hundreds of kilometres behind the front lines. Second, they have made the distinction between military and civilian targets blurrier: a transport hub after market day is, in practice, a crowd of civilians, and military analysts elsewhere have noted how cheap unmanned aircraft are rewriting the rules of war.
Both the army and the RSF have faced accusations over specific strikes. Emergency Lawyers and the RSF's Tasis administration blamed the army for Al-Dibab; the RSF was blamed for the Blue Nile and Khartoum strikes. Independent verification is scarce, which is why the monitors describe their figures as reported rather than confirmed.
What happens next
There is no sign the drone war is slowing. The strikes on dams in the east raise the risk of attacks on civilian infrastructure — water, power, food supply — that would deepen the humanitarian crisis for a UN system already under severe strain. Medics in West Kordofan are still treating the Al-Dibab wounded, and the death toll from this wave may still rise.
For now, the documented facts are these: a week that began with a market-day gathering in Al-Dibab and ended with children killed in Khartoum, more than 160 reported dead, and the United Nations publicly alarmed. As the war grinds toward its fourth year, the weapon that defines it is no longer the tank or the fighter jet — it is the drone, and its victims are overwhelmingly civilians. Sources: AFP via Ghanamma (19 October 2026); Al Jazeera via Gyalchi Sarshog (20 October 2026); London Daily News (20 October 2026); Tru Express (20 October 2026); Mwenendo News (20 October 2026); Emergency Lawyers; Stephane Dujarric, UN spokesperson.
The same drone campaign has devastated the disputed border region, where a strike on Abyei's Amiet Market reportedly killed 153 people and drew UN condemnation.
The atrocities extend beyond drone strikes: a BBC investigation found that Sudan's RSF deliberately targeted El-Fasher's hospitals, in what the UN warns may amount to war crimes.