Eight displaced civilians—four of them children—were killed and at least seven others wounded when two warplanes belonging to General al-Burhan’s army (SAF) bombed Osama Bin Zaid and Al-Wifaq primary schools in Abu Zabad on Thursday, the town’s Emergency Room said.
Both schools have housed hundreds of internally displaced people since the war began last year. Witnesses said the aircraft also hit adjacent homes; no military targets were in the area.
The dead include Maryam Balila al-Wakil, 45, and Scertaera al-Basha Hassan, 60, both originally from Habila, along with teenagers Nasreen Mirghani Ahmed and Hanan Qadim, 19; Ismail Abdel Hamid al-Haj and Ibrahim, 16; Mustafa Abdel Hamid al-Haj, 5; and Mustafa Ibrahim Mustafa, 12.
Those injured range in age from five to 49. Local doctors say more casualties could emerge as families search the debris.
The strike came less than a month after warplanes hit a girls’ secondary school in the same city. Human-rights monitors say the repeated targeting of IDP shelters and education facilities may amount to war crimes under international law.
Abu Zabad’s Emergency Room urged an immediate international investigation and called on aid agencies to protect civilians amid what it called “a widening campaign against non-combatants” in West Kordofan.
