A general view shows a large plume of smoke due to an RSF militia drone strike in North Kordofan, Sudan. Anadolu Agency
Health workers in two cities, 800 kilometres (500 miles) apart, reported the latest deaths to AFP on Thursday via satellite internet connection to get around a communications blackout.
Repeated pleas from the United Nations to curtail drone attacks and protect civilians have fallen on deaf ears, as Sudan's National Army, which is battling the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia that launches near-daily strikes, killing dozens at a time.
On Wednesday, one such RSF militia strike hit a market in North Darfur state's Saraf Omra town, killing "22 people, including an infant, and injuring 17 more", one health worker at the local clinic told AFP.
"The drone hit a parked oil truck, which caught fire along with part of the market," said Hamid Suleiman, a vendor at the market, which serves Saraf Omra and the surrounding towns in the remote Darfur area.
Hundreds of kilometres to the east, far from the RSF's strongholds in Darfur, another drone strike set fire to a truck travelling on a North Kordofan road in army territory.
"Six bodies arrived at the hospital yesterday, three of them charred, in addition to 10 wounded," a medical source at the local hospital in El-Rahad told AFP, blaming the RSF militia for the attack.
The civilians were travelling between the army-controlled towns of El-Rahad and Um Rawaba.
Hundreds killed
Since April 2023, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has killed tens of thousands and uprooted some 11 million, creating the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis.
The UN says more than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes between January and mid-March alone, particularly in the Kordofan region, currently the war's fiercest battlefield.
The marked increase in drone warfare shows "the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas", the UN rights office said.
Days before the Eid al-Fitr holiday, a drone strike blamed on the RSF militia killed 24 people in the Chadian town of Tine, as fears mount of spiralling regional spillover.
In an interview with France24, Chad's information minister Gassim Cherif Mahamat said the army had been deployed along the entire 1,300-kilometre desert border, and that N'Djamena was planning a "proportionate response" in the event of a new attack.
The UN's new special envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, began his first visit to the country this week "in support of peace", he said.
The UN has repeatedly advocated for a truce and called on member states to refrain from foreign interference, to little result.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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