p>A drone strike hit a packed market in Sodari, North Kordofan, Sudan, on Sunday, killing at least 28 people and wounding dozens more. The al-Safiya market was full of traders, women, children, and elderly shoppers when the strike landed during peak hours, according to the advocacy group Emergency Lawyers. The group attributed the attack to the Sudanese army. Military officials have denied responsibility but offered no alternative explanation.
The attack was not an isolated event. It was the latest in a string of aerial assaults on civilian sites across the Kordofan region, carried out by both sides of Sudan’s civil war. In the span of two weeks, drones have hit markets, a mosque where children were studying the Quran, a hospital, and a World Food Programme convoy delivering aid to starving families. The UN’s top human rights official, Volker Turk, said nearly 90 civilians were killed and 142 wounded by drone strikes in the Kordofan region in just the two weeks leading up to February 6, before the Sodari attack even happened.
What Happened at the Sodari Market
Sodari sits along desert trade routes about 230 kilometers northwest of el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan and a city the Rapid Support Forces have been trying to encircle for months. The area has become one of the fiercest front lines in the nearly three-year-old war between the Sudanese army and the RSF. But the market was not a front line. It was a place where displaced families went to buy food and basic goods, often the only option available to them.
Emergency Lawyers said in a statement cited by the Associated Press that the drones belonged to the army. Military officials rejected the claim but did not identify another responsible party or explain the strike. No independent monitors, satellite imagery, or forensic analysis of the drone type have been made public. No survivor accounts have surfaced through official medical channels. The attribution remains unresolved.
The result, though, is beyond dispute. At least 28 people were killed and dozens wounded at a site with no military value. Markets like these serve as lifelines in Sudan’s conflict zones. Destroying one does more than kill the people inside. It cuts off a community’s ability to feed itself. Whether that outcome was the point of the strike or the result of reckless targeting, the effect on the ground is the same.
Mosques, Hospitals, Aid Convoys: The Targets Keep Expanding
The Sodari market bombing fits a wider pattern that has alarmed aid agencies and human rights monitors. On February 7, the Rapid Support Forces carried out a drone strike near Rahad in North Kordofan that killed at least 24 people, including eight children and two infants, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. The victims were displaced families fleeing fighting in the Dubeiker area. The day before that, a drone hit a World Food Programme convoy heading toward el-Obeid with food for displaced communities, killing one person and destroying the trucks.
On February 5, an RSF drone struck a hospital in el-Kuik, South Kordofan, killing 22 people including medical staff. Days later, a separate drone strike targeted the Sheikh Ahmed al-Badawi Mosque in al-Rahad, killing two children and injuring 13 worshippers. The children had been inside studying the Quran, the Sudan Doctors Network reported.
Both the Sudanese army and the RSF are now deploying drones against the kinds of sites that international humanitarian law exists to protect: hospitals, markets, houses of worship, and aid operations. Most reporting treats each attack as a standalone tragedy, tallying the dead and moving on. But line up the targets and a pattern emerges. Markets where families buy food. A mosque full of children. A hospital. A convoy carrying emergency rations to a starving city. When both sides repeatedly destroy the same kinds of civilian infrastructure, ordinary life in contested territory becomes impossible. People who cannot buy food, pray safely, or receive aid face a grim choice: flee or starve.
The United Nations has documented similar dynamics elsewhere in Sudan. After aid workers were killed in a convoy ambush in North Darfur, agencies issued a direct call to protect humanitarian convoys and uphold basic norms of war. That call has gone unanswered. U.S. Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos condemned the WFP convoy attack on social media. “Destroying food intended for people in need and killing humanitarian workers is sickening,” he wrote on X. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry blasted the RSF for the strikes and called out unnamed foreign parties for continuing to deliver arms and fighters into the conflict.
Drone Warfare Is Rewriting the Rules of This War
The surge in drone attacks across Kordofan shows how rapidly unmanned systems have reshaped Sudan’s civil war. Drones let both the army and the RSF project lethal force deep into rival-held territory without risking pilots or ground troops, lowering the cost of operations that would otherwise require a ground offensive. A New York Times investigation recently revealed that Egypt is hosting a clandestine drone base in its Western Desert that has become central to the conflict, with advanced Turkish-made Akinci drones striking RSF targets deep inside Sudan. The report adds another dimension to a conflict already shaped by outside arms shipments and mercenary fighters.
In theory, precision-guided drones could reduce civilian casualties. In practice, the strikes on Sodari’s market, the mosque in al-Rahad, the hospital in el-Kuik, and the WFP convoy suggest the opposite. Whether the targeting is deliberate or reckless, the absence of any credible investigation into these attacks removes whatever incentive might exist to exercise restraint. Neither side has faced meaningful consequences for hitting protected sites.
A clandestine drone operation in Egypt offers new evidence of how the civil war in Sudan — racked by famine, atrocities and thousands of deaths — is morphing into a theater for high-tech drone warfare driven by the interests of rival foreign powers. https://t.co/xUHmqnwxks
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) February 2026
For the people still living in North Kordofan, the reality is closing in. Markets that once provided a livelihood are now potential kill zones. Mosques that offered routine and refuge can be hit without warning. Aid deliveries that families depend on to survive are themselves under attack. The war, now approaching its third year, has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 12 million, according to the World Health Organization, though aid groups say the real death toll is likely many times higher. Each new drone strike in Kordofan accelerates the displacement and deepens the isolation of communities that are already running out of options.
