A drone strike struck a wedding party in Sudan’s Darfur region on Wednesday, killing at least 30 civilians, the United Nations said. Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, said the wedding ceremony was in the town of Kutum in North Darfur, where the attack hit civilians including women and children.
The strike was reported as the latest incident in an intensifying drone campaign between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who have been fighting since April 2023. The nearly three-year conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, while aid groups say the overall death toll could be higher.
Dujarric said the United Nations condemned the attack and other attacks against civilians. “We condemn this and all attacks against civilians. Attacks using drones against civilians and civilian objects are unacceptable,” he said during a briefing, according to the U.N. description of his remarks.
Emergency Lawyers, a local rights group, and Resistance Committees in el-Fasher, a grassroots group that has monitored the war, blamed the Wednesday attack on the Sudanese Armed Forces in statements posted on social media Thursday. The statements were issued as the U.N. and other humanitarian monitors continued to document the effects of the broader conflict across Darfur and other regions.
The army did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The clash between the army and Rapid Support Forces has intensified in recent months, with drone strikes also repeatedly reported across other parts of Sudan, according to rights groups and humanitarian organizations tracking the war.
Last week, the drone violence again raised concerns among humanitarian groups when Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said the Rapid Support Forces carried out two drone strikes on al-Jabalain Hospital in White Nile province. MSF said the strikes hit an operating theater and a maternity ward, and that at least 10 people were killed in the attack.
MSF said in response that it was “outraged” by repeated attacks on health care and warned that the violence against medical facilities had escalated dangerously in recent weeks. Esperanza Santos, MSF head of emergencies for Sudan, said health facilities, medical staff and patients “must always be protected,” and called on the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces to stop what she described as a spiral of violence against medical facilities.
In addition to the immediate toll of the wedding strike, analysts and humanitarian workers have previously said that a surge in drone strikes in Sudan’s Kordofan region has harmed civilians and hampered aid operations.