/
RSS Feed
At least 40 people have been killed in a drone strike that hit a funeral gathering near el-Obeid, a key army-held city in North Kordofan state, Sudan. Officials and activists have blamed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the attack on al-Luweib village on Monday. The RSF has not yet commented.
Witnesses say mourners were gathered in a tent when drones struck. Many victims reportedly died before reaching hospitals in el-Obeid, a strategic hub linking Khartoum to Darfur.
The strike comes amid intensifying fighting in the oil-rich Kordofan region. Around 20,000 people fled to el-Obeid last week after the RSF seized Bara town, 30 km north of the city — the same period when the army lost el-Fasher, its last stronghold in Darfur.
Since the RSF takeover, reports have surfaced of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions, and looting in el-Fasher. The UN says summary executions of civilians have also been reported in Bara. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has warned that these atrocities may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile, famine has been confirmed in el-Fasher after an 18-month RSF siege, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) network. Kadugli in South Kordofan faces similar catastrophic hunger conditions, also under RSF blockade.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for an immediate halt to the violence, warning that Sudan’s humanitarian crisis is “spiralling out of control.”
“El-Fasher and surrounding areas have become an epicentre of suffering, hunger, violence, and displacement,” Guterres said at a summit in Doha.
The United States has proposed a truce, but previous peace talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have repeatedly failed, with both sides unwilling to commit to a ceasefire.
Since the war erupted between the army and RSF in April 2023, more than 150,000 people have been killed and 12 million displaced—a crisis the UN now calls the world’s largest humanitarian disaster.
