A wave of drone strikes across Sudan has killed more than 160 people since Friday, according to medics and rights groups, in an escalation the United Nations condemned on Monday. The deadliest strike hit a transport hub near a market in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, on Sunday evening, killing 80 people who had gathered after market day to find rides home. On Monday the strikes reached from Nyala in South Darfur to the capital, Khartoum, where a house near the airport was hit and three children were killed, and to a market in Abyei, where at least 19 people were injured. The tolls below are the reporting organisations' figures, published as reported; they have not been independently verified, and the component counts may overlap.
What was the deadliest strike?
The Sunday-evening strike on Al-Dibab, a town in RSF-controlled West Kordofan. A drone struck a transport hub where people gather to travel back to their villages after the market day ends — and struck twice, about 10 minutes apart, according to Ahmed Abakar Wadi, a resident who spoke to AFP by satellite internet connection to circumvent a communications blackout. "50 bodies who I helped bury, one of them my own brother Mohamed," Wadi told AFP. A medical source, who asked not to be named for his safety, said 47 wounded people were taken to the nearby town of Al-Mujlad, where 30 of them later died — bringing the toll to 80 — and that a separate drone strike on Al-Mujlad injured four people. France 24 described the attack as one of the deadliest single strikes since the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023. The RSF's self-declared administration, known as Tasis, and the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the strike. The military had not commented on the strike in the reporting opened for this article.
Where else were people killed on Monday?
In Khartoum, Nyala and the west, and at a gathering of displaced people on Friday. In Khartoum, a drone strike on Monday morning hit a house in the Nasser Extension neighbourhood, just east of the capital's airport: a medical source told AFP that four bodies arrived at the morgue — three children aged between two and six, and one man. Al Jazeera reported the Khartoum toll as three children killed, according to Emergency Lawyers. The UN gave a lower figure for the capital's Monday strikes — one civilian reportedly killed in attacks that targeted several locations, including an area near the airport, with some flights cancelled — and said at least 19 people were injured the same day in a drone strike on a busy market in Abyei, the disputed area on the border with South Sudan. Early on Monday, a drone attack also hit Nyala, the RSF stronghold and capital of South Darfur, killing 17 people, including seven RSF officers, and wounding 23, medical and RSF sources said, according to Al Jazeera. The UN said weekend drone attacks killed at least 19 people, including 10 children, across West Darfur, South Darfur and North Kordofan — a figure that may overlap with the Nyala count. And on Friday, an RSF drone attacked a gathering of displaced people in Blue Nile province, on the border with Ethiopia, killing 41 people, Emergency Lawyers said; the group condemned that strike as a humanitarian tragedy. The News International, counting the wave from Sunday rather than Friday, put the toll at more than 100 killed, according to residents, medical workers and paramilitary sources.
Who is being blamed for the strikes?
Both sides, by different accusers — and neither army nor RSF had answered for the deadliest strike in the reporting opened. Tasis and Emergency Lawyers accused the Sudanese army of the Al-Dibab strike; the military had not commented. Emergency Lawyers attributed Friday's Blue Nile strike, on displaced people, to the RSF. No attribution for Monday's Nyala strike was given in the reporting opened. In eastern Sudan, a military source said air defences had intercepted several RSF drones targeting the Atbara and Setit dams in Gadaref state, about 420 kilometres east of Khartoum, on Sunday; there was no immediate comment from the RSF.
How has the world responded?
With a UN condemnation and a reminder of the war's scale. "We are alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting essential services," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists in New York on Monday. "We condemn all of these attacks unequivocally." Dujarric noted that Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo had urged external actors to stop fuelling the violence and drone usage in a briefing to the Security Council last Friday; on that same Friday, the United States urged the Council to push for a humanitarian truce and expand the arms embargo on Sudan, a widening China and Russia opposed, Al Jazeera reported. The war, now in its fourth year, has killed at least 59,000 people according to the conflict monitor ACLED — aid groups say the true toll is likely higher — and the UN says about 13 million people have been forced from their homes in what aid groups call the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with 20 million people facing acute hunger and a rising risk of famine in parts of Darfur and Greater Kordofan.
This article is drawn from reporting opened and read for this article: Al Jazeera English's October 19, 2026 report (the more-than-160 wave toll, the Monday Khartoum, Nyala and Friday Blue Nile tolls, and the Security Council context), France 24's October 19, 2026 report with AFP (the Al-Dibab witness and medical-source accounts and the Khartoum morgue account), UN News' October 19, 2026 report (Dujarric's statements, the Abyei market injuries, the UN's Khartoum and weekend figures), and The News International's October 19–20, 2026 report (the more-than-100 toll counted from Sunday). All casualty figures are those outlets' figures, attributed to the medics, witnesses, rights groups and officials they cite; responsibility for the Al-Dibab strike is contested, the army had not commented, and no figure here has been independently verified by this site.
