KHARTOUM: A drone attack on a crowded market in central Sudan killed 28 people, a rights group reported on Monday, as the army and its paramilitary rivals traded aerial strikes in their battle for territory.

The attack occurred in a paramilitary-controlled area in the far north of Sudan’s Kordofan region, currently the fiercest frontline in the three-year-old war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

According to the Emergency Lawyers, a group monitoring atrocities in the conflict, several drones hit the al-Safiya market outside the town of Sodari in North Kordofan on Sunday.

“The attack occurred when the market was bustling with civilians, including women, children and the elderly,” the group said, adding that the toll was preliminary.

It gave no indication of who carried out the strike.

Sodari, a remote town where desert trade routes cross, is around 230 kilometres (132 miles) northwest of El-Obeid, the state capital of North Kordofan, which the RSF has been trying to encircle for months.

The Kordofan region has seen a surge in deadly drone attacks as both sides fight over the country’s vital east-west axis, which links the western RSF-held region of Darfur, through El-Obeid, to the army-controlled capital Khartoum and the rest of Sudan.

Across vast stretches of territory, attacks by both sides — many on remote towns and villages — have killed up to dozens of civilians at a time.

Last Wednesday, two children were killed and a dozen wounded in one strike on a school, while another severely damaged a United Nations warehouse storing famine relief supplies.

After consolidating their hold on Darfur last year, the RSF has pushed east through oil- and gold-rich Kordofan, in an attempt to seize Sudan’s central corridor.

Since April 2023, the war between the army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced around 11 million, creating the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the centre, north and east while the RSF controls the west and, with their allies, parts of the south.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2026