Drone attack by paramilitary group in Sudan kills 24, including 8 children, doctors’ group says

This is a locator map for Sudan with its capital, Khartoum.

CAIRO — A drone attack by a notorious paramilitary group hit a vehicle carrying displaced families in central Sudan on Saturday, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, a doctors’ group said, a day after a World Food Program aid convoy was targeted.

Saturday’s attack by the Rapid Support Forces took place close to the city of Rahad in North Kordofan province, said the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s ongoing war. The vehicle was transporting displaced people who fled fighting in the Dubeiker area, the group said in a statement. Among the dead children were two infants.

Several others were wounded and taken for treatment in Rahad, which suffers severe medical supplies shortages, like many areas in the Kordofan region, the statement said.

The doctors’ group urged the international community and rights organizations to “take immediate action to protect civilians and hold the RSF leadership directly accountable for these violations.”

There was no immediate comment from the RSF, which has been at war against the Sudanese military for control of the country for about three years.

Sudan plunged into chaos in April 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country, leaving tens of thousands dead and millions displaced.

WFP aid convoy attacked

A drone attack on Friday on a WFP aid convoy in North Kordofan province killed one and wounded several others, said Denise Brown, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan.

Brown said the convoy was heading to deliver “life-saving food assistance” to displaced people in the city of Obeid in North Kordofan when it was struck. The attack burned the trucks and destroyed the aid, she said.

“Attacks on aid operations undermine efforts to reach people facing hunger and displacement,” she said in a statement.

Last week, a drone strike hit close to a WFP facility in the Blue Nile province, wounding a WFP worker, Brown also said.

Emergency Lawyers, an independent group documenting atrocities in Sudan, blamed the RSF for the attack, while the Sudan Doctors Network called it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a full-fledged war crime.”

Massad Boulos, a U.S. adviser for African and Arab affairs, condemned the attack on X and called for holding those responsible accountable.

“Destroying food intended for people in need and killing humanitarian workers is sickening,” he said. “The Trump Administration has zero tolerance for this destruction of life and of U.S.-funded assistance; we demand accountability.”

The British minister for international development and Africa, Jenny Chapman, called the attack on the WFP convoy “disgraceful.”

“Civilians are starving,” she wrote Saturday on X. “Aid workers and humanitarian operations bringing vital food should never be targeted.”

In a strongly worded statement Saturday, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry blasted the RSF for its recent drone strikes, including on the vehicle of displaced families, the WFP convoy and on a hospital in Kordofan that killed 22 people.

The Saudi statement called for the RSF to stop their attacks on civilians and aid convoys, and called out foreign parties that continue to “deliver illegal arms, mercenaries and foreign fighters” -- an apparent reference to the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused by rights groups and U.N. experts of arming the paramilitary group. The UAE has denied the accusations.

Famine report portrays a grim picture

In recent months, Kordofan has become a flashpoint in the war and the army managed to break the RSF siege of two major cities in the region earlier this year.

The devastating war has so far killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher.

It created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with over 14 million people forced to flee their homes. It has fueled disease outbreaks and pushed parts of the country into famine that still spreads as the war shows no sign of abating.

In a report released Thursday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said famine was found in two more areas in the western region of Darfur where famine was confirmed for the first time in a displacement camp in August 2024.

The report warned that acute malnutrition is expected to worsen in 2026, with a 13.5 per cent increase in cases of acute malnutrition in children under five and pregnant and breastfeeding women -- from 3.7 million children and women in 2025 to nearly 4.2 million in 2026.

Severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous and deadly form of malnutrition, is expected to increase to 800,000 cases, up 4% from 2025, it said.

Mohamad Abdiladif, country director for Save the Children in Sudan, said children were already dying from hunger-related causes in many part of Sudan.

“Every day we hear devastating stories of parents selling the last of what they own simply to keep their children alive from one day to the next,” he said.

Samy Magdy, The Associated Press