KHARTOUM: A drone strike launched by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 26 women and four children on Friday near the southeastern border with Ethiopia.
The latest front line in Sudan’s war between the regular army and the RSF is the border region with Ethiopia, which is facing its own internal conflict that threatens to escalate into a regional war.
Since Sudan’s war broke out in April 2023, it has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
This year alone, nearly 100,000 people have been displaced across Blue Nile state, according to UN figures.
In a displacement camp in Blue Nile’s Abu Shendi, survivors “buried 26 women and four children” from Friday’s strike, one person involved in the burial said.
The drone hit just outside the camp, near an informal gold mining site, where women earn a daily wage using chemicals and their bare hands to clear gold nuggets from clumps of earth men have extracted. The victims included “young girls who work with their families in refining the gold”, another eyewitness said.
Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2026
