Terror from the skies: drones are redefining warfare in Sudan, and massacring its civilians

The first drone struck the busy transport hub near a market in Al-Dibab as hundreds of people gathered to board trucks to take them back to their homes. Ten minutes later on the evening of 18 October, a second drone hit the same site in the town in West Kordofan state, Sudan. At least 139 people were killed in what is known as a 'double-tap' attack, designed to maximize casualties by killing and injuring emergency responders, volunteers and bystanders on top of the original victims.

Eight days later, a drone hit a busy market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence in Sudan, put the death toll from that attack at 103. 'I lost my 19-year-old son,' a Nyala resident told Agence France-Presse. 'We buried him alongside more than 70 bodies in a single site.'

Rising civilian toll

These attacks are part of a relentless series of mass casualty drone strikes in recent months in Sudan, where the use of unmanned aerial vehicles has risen sharply. Between January and April of this year, drone strikes accounted for at least 880 civilian deaths – more than 80% of all conflict-related civilian deaths in that timeframe according to the UN Human Rights Office.

Evolving warfare

Sudan's civil war broke out in April 2023 when a power struggle between the armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into violence in the capital, Khartoum. The dynamics of the warfare have evolved over the past 42 months, with both sides increasingly turning to drones.

A Centre for Information Resilience investigation identified 21 unique UAV models – both surveillance-reconnaissance drones and combat drones – that had been used in Sudan since the start of the war. The RSF and aligned forces use 10 models manufactured in Belarus, China, and Russia, while the Sudanese army and aligned forces use five models manufactured in Iran, Sudan, and Turkey.

Ali Mahmoud Ali, a Sudan analyst at Acled, said the Sudanese armed forces usually use drones to hit RSF bases and cut supply routes, while the militia often targets infrastructure such as power stations, water stations, airports, and hospitals 'to send the message' that it could 'destabilize SAF regions'.

Humanitarian impact

The intensifying drone attacks are disrupting electricity, water and fuel supplies, as well as hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid. 'We need help passing the message to whoever needs to hear it, that this must stop,' said Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. 'People who need life-saving dialysis can't get it. Women are giving birth with no lights in the hospital. Operations can't take place.'

James Elder, a spokesperson for Unicef, said on Tuesday two-thirds of child injuries and deaths in Sudan this year were caused by drones. Ali Salih*, a resident of El Obeid, has grown accustomed to drone attacks in the area and lives with the constant fear of when the next one may strike.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale, said the mass killings in Sudan could become the future of war around the world if there was no international control on how wars involving UAVs were fought. 'What is happening in Sudan this year with drones will redefine the next decade-plus of war more than the tank and the biplane did in the first world war,' he said.