A drone strike on June 6 on the central market of Abu Zaeima town in war-torn Sudan’s North Kordofan state killed 11 people and wounded dozens, said Emergency Lawyers. The rights group added that, given the grievous nature of injuries suffered by some, the death toll could rise.
Two more civilians were killed, and five were injured a day before, when drones struck villages and civilian vehicles in Abu Zaeima.
Emergency Lawyers did not specify which warring party the drones belonged to, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has repeatedly carried out strikes on the Hamrat al-Sheikh locality where Abu Zaeima is located.
Hamrat al-Sheikh is held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war since April 2023 with the national military and former ruling partner, the SAF.
Also expanding south into the states of West Kordofan and South Kordofan, the RSF is seeking control of the region connecting the east to the national capital, Khartoum, which the SAF recaptured in March 2025, to the RSF-controlled western region of Darfur.
Read more:As attacks intensify in Kordofan, fighting once again threatens Sudan’s capital
With the exception of some small, far-western towns on the Chadian border, the RSF consolidated control over the region in late 2025 after overrunning El Fasher city, the last major SAF holdout in Darfur. The mass atrocities it committed against the civilians of the fallen city had all “the hallmarks of genocide” according to the UN.
Read more:A bloodbath visible from space: RSF’s massacres in Sudan’s El Fasher
Since then, it has expanded the fighting westward into the oil-rich Kordofan, which is also abundant in arable land. Both sides have been indiscriminate in their drone strikes, killing civilians.
In only the first four months of this year, drone strikes have killed at least 880 people in the country, amounting to over 80% of the civilian deaths in this period, according to the UN. Over the past week alone, in only two states of North and West Kordofan, drone strikes have killed almost 70 people, Emergency Lawyers said in its statement after the attack on the Abu Zaeima market.
The total death toll of this war, now in its fourth year, has been lost to count after reaching 150,000 as early as June 2024. Two years later, the war continues to rage, further deepening what had already long been the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, which has displaced over 14 million people and plunged over half the country’s population into hunger.
Read more: The war in Sudan is “between two wings of a comprador parasitic capitalist class”
Pavan Kulkarni , June 9, 2026
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