At least 31 civilians, including 13 children and 17 women, were killed when a drone attributed to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces struck a crowded market in El Nahud, West Kordofan, according to medical and local sources.
The attack targeted Souq al-Majanin, a busy popular market, on Saturday, August 29, killing several people at the scene and leaving others critically wounded.
Medical sources cited by the Arabic-language Al-Jamaheer newspaper said the death toll subsequently rose to 31 after victims were taken to El Nahud Hospital. The dead were identified as 13 children, 17 women and a police officer.
TASIS Newspaper reported the same casualty breakdown, describing the attack as a massacre carried out by the Islamist-aligned army against a civilian marketplace.
The bombing struck an area packed with shoppers and traders, causing extensive destruction and overwhelming the city’s already limited medical facilities.
El Nahud’s humanitarian emergency room appealed for urgent international intervention to halt air attacks against civilian sites and provide assistance to victims and their families.
A separate report by Rhino Sudan placed the death toll at approximately 60 and said the market was struck twice in succession. According to that account, a second strike hit the area after residents gathered to evacuate those killed and wounded in the initial attack, killing another 29 people.
The higher figure and the reported second strike could not be independently verified. Restricted communications and limited access to conflict zones have repeatedly complicated efforts to establish casualty figures following attacks in Sudan.
Neither the SAF nor the Port Sudan authorities had issued a public response to the allegations at the time of publication.
El Nahud and other parts of Kordofan have increasingly been subjected to drone and air attacks as fighting intensifies between the SAF and forces aligned with the Sudan Founding Alliance, known as TASIS.
TASIS officials have repeatedly accused the SAF of deliberately targeting markets, residential neighbourhoods and other civilian infrastructure in areas outside the control of the Port Sudan junta.
The latest attack adds to mounting concerns over the expanding use of drones in Sudan’s war and the growing number of women and children being killed far from recognised military positions.
The conflict, which erupted in April 2023, has devastated Sudan’s civilian infrastructure, displaced millions of people and left hospitals across Darfur and Kordofan struggling with severe shortages of medicines, personnel and equipment.
