An army Antonov destroyed a Kordofan water station as Khartoum expelled diplomats over the drone war
The SAF strike at Um Badr killed two women on 4 November. Sudan and Ethiopia have now expelled each other’s diplomats over where the drones come from.
On 4 November a Sudanese army Antonov destroyed the Al-Kabjark water station at Um Badr in North Kordofan, killing two women and injuring ten, according to Sudan Tribune, which reports it was the second main facility residents rely on for water. The strike came on the second consecutive day of SAF and allied operations against the RSF along the North and West Kordofan border. A lawyers' group condemned the bombing of residential areas and water sources “in locations they said were devoid of any military presence,” describing a continuous pattern of attacks on civilians and essential infrastructure. As with the grid campaign, authorship is attributed by reporting rather than claimed by the belligerent. A separate 3 November drone strike on a South Kordofan fuel station produced two incompatible tolls on the same day: at least seven per Sudan Tribune, at least 16 per Sudan Now.
The diplomatic track has moved faster than the evidence. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry briefed diplomatic missions on 31 October, naming locations inside Ethiopia it said were being used to support RSF drone operations, and on 1 November lodged formal complaints with the UN Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council. On 4 November Ethiopia ordered six Sudanese diplomats to leave, per Reuters as logged by the Council on Foreign Relations tracker; Sudan Tribune described mutual expulsions the following day. Speaking to Al Jazeera on 3 November, border affairs specialist Abdul Kareem Al-Almin Ahmed said the alleged Ethiopian support has opened differences inside the SAF over how to respond, while professor Badr Hassan Al-Shafei said fear of mutual escalation is preventing open confrontation.
Assessment: Read Um Badr against the grid story above and the symmetry is the point: both belligerents are now destroying the infrastructure that keeps civilians alive, and both are letting the destruction be attributed rather than claiming it. That is a deliberate posture, not an oversight — unclaimed strikes carry no liability and still deliver the coercive effect. On Ethiopia, separate the confirmed from the alleged carefully. The expulsions happened. The launch sites are a Sudanese government assertion for which no independent evidence has surfaced, advanced by a cabinet that has just instructed its own ministries to run international media campaigns on exactly this subject.