Blue Nile Drone Strike Hits Sudan Displacement Site

A Blue Nile drone strike slammed into the Abu Shendi area of Wad al-Mahi locality in Sudan's Blue Nile state on Friday, hitting ground close to a displacement site packed with families who had fled fighting elsewhere in the region. At least 31 civilians were killed, most of them women and children, and dozens more were injured, some seriously, according to a statement from UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Denise Brown. The casualty figures are preliminary and could still rise.

The people sheltering at the site had been driven out of Geisan locality by recent hostilities, Brown said, and many were gathered near a water facility in Abu Shendi when the strike landed. Families had already survived one displacement and were living in open shelter with little food, water, or medical care when the drone hit. Local reporting has described the surrounding area as a place where displaced women do informal gold-panning work for daily wages, digging and washing ore by hand to feed their households.

A strike blamed on the RSF

Sudanese authorities and the Sudan Doctors Network both attributed the attack to the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese army. The Blue Nile state governor confirmed that a shelter housing displaced people had been targeted and described the attack as a serious escalation against civilians. The doctors' network called the strike a war crime and urged the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, and rights organizations to respond urgently. The RSF did not immediately comment, and the attribution could not be independently verified, as journalists cannot freely report from the area.

The Wad al-Mahi strike was the deadliest in a wave of drone attacks sweeping the region. Earlier in the week, a drone strike in Damazin killed four women, and an airstrike on a World Food Programme convoy killed a driver, cutting off a lifeline to people already facing hunger. That attack, on WFP aid trucks in Sudan's south, was covered here earlier this week. A week earlier, a displacement shelter in El Obeid in North Kordofan state came under attack, killing and injuring civilians, including children. Each strike lands on ground where civilians have already gathered for safety, which is what makes the pattern so alarming to aid workers. The Blue Nile governor told the AFP news agency that the drone was launched from inside Ethiopia, a claim that could not be independently confirmed.

Shelters for the displaced are being hit again

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called the reports horrifying and said the Blue Nile drone strike was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in recent weeks. In her statement, Brown condemned what she described as a flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law and said those who ignore the law must be held accountable. A spokesman for the UN human rights office had warned in May about the growing use of armed drones in Sudan and their deadly toll on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including displacement sites.

Sudan's war began in April 2023 as a fight for control between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, and fighting has intensified since August along the Ethiopian border. According to the monitoring group ACLED, more than 150,000 people have died in the war, and the United Nations says roughly twelve and a half million people have been displaced, making it one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Foreign involvement has already deepened the conflict, the UN has warned. Blue Nile state has seen continuous attacks in recent weeks that have displaced thousands more and exposed civilians to direct harm. Sudan has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of harbouring RSF fighters and bases along the porous border, a claim Ethiopia has consistently denied.

Brown's statement pressed for more than condemnation. The Blue Nile Civil Society Initiative had earlier warned that tens of thousands of people displaced from Geisan were living in Wad al-Mahi amid severe shortages of food, water, shelter, and healthcare, even before Friday's strike. With casualty lists still being compiled and the front line moving toward Damazin, aid agencies say the families who survived the attack now face the same question they have faced every week of this war: where to go next.