The Sudanese army killed dozens of women and children in a “double-tap” drone strike on civilians in the Nuba Mountains on Sunday, the group controlling the region has said.
At least 48 people were killed, mostly children and students from the Hakima Health College, with eight left critically injured, making it the deadliest attack on civilians in the Nuba mountains since the civil war erupted in April 2023.
The attack took place in Kumo, a village some 10 kilometres east of Kauda, a farming town that sits in a wide valley, where The Telegraph reported from earlier this year.
The reports come from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a rebel-group that has been fighting the government on and off since 1983, and has now aligned with the anti-government Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“This was not a military target, nor an active combat zone … the strike deliberately targeted non-combatants,” said the SPLM-N in a statement, adding that the army has “a long history of aerial assaults on civilians in the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile, and Darfur.”
“This is not an isolated mistake, nor a battlefield miscalculation. It is part of a pattern of systematic violence against communities outside the central state’s political and military interests,” it said.
The first drone attack drew people to the site before a second “tap” struck minutes later, killing the majority of civilians, independent sources told The Telegraph, citing eyewitness accounts.
Images said to be from the scene show the remains of at least a dozen victims. Some of the bodies are completely charred, having apparently been burnt in buildings. Others, including children, lie dead in the open, some with head injuries and crushed limbs.
The Telegraph has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the images.
Anthony Jamal, food security coordinator at the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in Nuba, told The Telegraph it was “the worst mass killing of innocent civilians” he had ever heard of in the region.
Johannes Plate, CEO of the South Kordofan Blue Nile Coordination Unit (SKBNCU), the NGO which accompanied the Telegraph earlier this year, and organises aid across Nuba, described Sunday’s drone strike as “very concerning”.
He said it seemed “very precise and very targeted”, suggesting that “somebody must have known there were many people there”.
Mr Plate added there are existing foxholes and trenches across Nuba for civilians to shelter in, but warned that drones represent “a new danger,” unlike previous aerial threats.
“Unlike planes, drones are barely audible, and by the time one notices the sound, it is often already too late,” he said.
During the 2011 war, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) used Antonov cargo planes in a major bombing campaign that targeted hospitals and civilian infrastructure, killing and displacing thousands in the Nuba Mountains.
“We have measurements in place for plane attacks, foxholes and trenches, people know about that, but drones, that’s a new danger,” said Mr Plate.
The SAF has not commented on the incident, though local media reports claim the army has recently been targeting SPLM-N training camps and supply depots.
Sudan has been embroiled in a ruinous civil war since April 2023, when open fighting erupted between Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto president, and his former deputy, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the warlord better known as Hemedti.
Violence has forced 14 million people to flee their homes and some estimates have put the death toll at as many as 400,000, according to Tom Perriello, who was the US special envoy for Sudan until this year. The UN has called the war “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.
Last month, a famine was confirmed in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state, which is under siege by the SAF, cutting off food, water and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of people.
It comes as clashes between the SAF and the SPLM-N, who entered an alliance with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in January, are increasing, shifting the epicentre of the war eastwards from Darfur.
The two forces attacked Kartala, in Habila, a locality controlled by the Sudanese Army, some 120km from Kauda, on Thursday and Friday.
The Kordofan states contain Sudan’s main oil fields and act as a buffer zone between Darfur and eastern Sudan, according to the Ayin network, an independent Sudanese media organisation tracking the ongoing war.
The army aims to “seize control of the oil-rich region and as an entry point into the Darfur region, controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF),” it added.
