UN counts 306 killed by drones in three weeks as Abyei toll keeps moving

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Friday 23 October that his office had documented at least 306 people killed and hundreds injured by drone attacks in Sudan between 1 and 21 October, in strikes attributed to both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Targets included homes, markets, hospitals, displacement sites, power plants and water sources across Kordofan, Darfur, Blue Nile and Khartoum. “The increasing use of drones, already accounting for the majority of conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan this year, is deeply disturbing and is exacting a horrifying toll,” Türk said. Sudan Tribune reported his office’s finding that the warring parties have doubled their use of drones since the start of the year, and described a retaliatory pattern in which RSF-attributed drones struck Khartoum, including the airport area, after army airstrikes allegedly hit Nyala in South Darfur. An OHCHR report of 4 September had already put drone deaths at 1,120 civilians, more than 80 percent of the civilian toll.

The one incident that should anchor the count is the least settled. On Monday 19 October a drone hit the Amiet Common Market north of Abyei town, striking a fuel depot that was still burning two days later. Yohanna Akol Ngor, caretaker information minister of the Abyei administration, told the Associated Press on 20 October that confirmed deaths had risen from an initial 73 to 153 — “It has reached 153 — those we can confirm killed and the number will even rise,” he told Reuters — and that some 8,000 people had been displaced. A senior Sudanese military officer, unnamed, told AP the army had struck fuel tankers arriving from South Sudan that he said were bound for the RSF; that account is uncorroborated. Juba’s foreign ministry blamed Sudan’s military and summoned Khartoum’s ambassador. On Saturday 24 October the head of Sudan’s Abyei Joint Oversight Committee asked UNISFA to investigate.

Assessment: Two things are being counted here and they should not be confused. The OHCHR figure is a documented-cases floor over a fixed three-week window, not an estimate of the dead; the real number is higher and the office says so by implication. The Abyei toll, by contrast, is a live negotiation. Figures of 73, 80, 153 and 220 are all in circulation, from the Abyei administration, Sudan Tribune’s own standfirst and unattributed aggregation respectively, and The Sudans Post has carried, in sequence, an army justification of the strike and an army denial of it. A combatant that explains a strike one day and disowns it the next is not confused. It is testing which version costs less.