More than 160 dead in Sudan’s drone week, and almost no strike has a confirmed author

The deadliest incident came on Sunday evening, 18 October, when a drone struck near a market and transport hub in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, an area under Rapid Support Forces control. A medical source and a witness told AFP that 80 people were killed, most of them commuters waiting for trucks home; AFP described it as one of the deadliest single attacks since the war began in April 2023. France 24 and the Dhaka Tribune carried the account, including a witness, Ahmed Abakar Wadi, who said he had helped bury 50 bodies. On Monday a drone attack in Khartoum killed four people including three children, per AFP and France 24. On Tuesday, local authorities in the disputed Abyei area said 53 people had been killed in a strike on a market described as a transit point for goods moving into RSF-held territory, according to Arab News citing AFP. Al Jazeera, citing medics and rights groups, put the running total across recent days above 160. The AFP wire figure carried by Kuwait Times the same day was more than 100.

The attribution record is the story. At Al-Dibab, the RSF’s self-declared Tasis administration and the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers both blamed the Sudanese army; no independent confirmation of the launching party has surfaced, and the Council on Foreign Relations conflict tracker records the same accusation citing France 24. On the Khartoum strike, coverage split by outlet: AP attributed it to the RSF, Radio Dabanga to the Sudanese Armed Forces. In Abyei, local authorities blamed the army, which has not acknowledged the strike; South Sudan’s foreign ministry summoned Sudan’s ambassador to Juba, Essam Mohamed Karrar, on Monday to protest, per Sudan Tribune. At Nyala’s livestock market on 18 October, the RSF supplied both the accusation and the casualty figure. On the eastern front, Sudan Tribune reported on 18 October — sourced to military sources alone — that air defences intercepted RSF suicide drones aimed at dam facilities near al-Fashaga and Khashm el-Girba in Gedaref and Kassala.

Assessment: A death toll no longer identifies a perpetrator, and both sides know it. When markets, transport hubs and economic nodes in enemy-held territory are the target set for both belligerents, every mass-casualty event becomes an asset for whoever claims it first — which is why the RSF’s own administration was the first voice on Al-Dibab and the army’s was the first voice in Blue Nile. Read the 160-plus figure as a floor with uncertain composition: Al Jazeera and AFP cannot be reconciled from the available material, and they are almost certainly using different cut-offs. The Abyei summons matters more than its body count, because it drags a second state into an attribution dispute Sudan cannot resolve internally.