FILE- Members of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum. AP
"I strongly condemn the horrific drone attacks that targeted the United Nations peacekeeping logistics base in Kadugli, Sudan," Guterres said in a statement.
"Attacks targeting United Nations peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law," he added. "Attacks as the one today in South Kordofan against peacekeepers are unjustifiable. There will need to be accountability."
Six United Nations peacekeepers from Bangladesh were killed on Saturday in a drone strike on Sudan's southern Kordofan region, the UN mission said, with Dhaka sharply condemning the attack.
The United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) said "six troops were killed and six injured", including four seriously, when a drone hit their camp in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state.
All of the victims are from Bangladesh, it said.
Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus in a statement said he was "deeply saddened" by the attack, and put the toll at six dead and eight wounded.
He asked the UN to ensure that his country's personnel were offered "any necessary emergency support".
"The government of Bangladesh will stand by the families in this difficult moment," Yunus added.
Dhaka's foreign ministry said it "strongly condemned" the attack.
UN peacekeepers are deployed to Abyei, a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan.
Fires blazing
A medical source had earlier told AFP that the strike on a United Nations facility in Kadugli killed at least six people, with witnesses saying they were UN employees.
"Six people were killed in a bombing of the UN headquarters while they were inside the building," the medical source at the city's hospital said.
Eyewitnesses said a drone had hit the UN facility.
The Sudanese army published a video on its Facebook page showing fires blazing and two columns of smoke rising from the UNISFA base.
The army-aligned government based in Port Sudan issued a statement condemning the attack and accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of being behind it.
In a statement, the Sovereignty Council headed by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan called the attack a "dangerous escalation".
Meanwhile, Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris said that "the terrorist rebel militia has met all the conditions to be classified as a terrorist group", and urged the UN to "bring the perpetrators to justice".
Kadugli, where famine was declared in early November, has been besieged for a year and a half by the RSF.
The RSF militias, accused of crimes against humanity in Darfur and Kordofan, has waged war against the Sudanese National Army since April 2023.
On Friday, the UK imposed sanctions on senior commanders of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces suspected of "heinous violence" in the Darfur hub of El-Fasher, which the paramilitary group captured in late October.
The Foreign Office in London said those targeted include RSF second-in-command Abdelrahim Hamdan Daglo, whose brother Mohammad Hamdan Daglo is the group's leader, as well as three other militia commanders.
They are accused of "mass killings, systematic sexual violence and deliberate attacks on civilians" when the RSF dislodged the Sudanese army from El-Fasher, its last stronghold in the western Darfur region.
The US Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a transnational network that "recruits former Colombian military personnel and trains soldiers, including children," to fight for the RSF in Sudan.
"The RSF has shown again and again that it is willing to target civilians—including infants and young children," said Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley.
In November, rights group Amnesty International also accused Sudanese paramilitaries of committing war crimes in the Darfur town of El-Fasher.
Amnesty said it had collected testimonies from 28 survivors describing atrocities in El-Fasher ranging from the summary execution of unarmed men to the rape of girls and women.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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