The Sudan team at the Human Rights Office found that upwards of 80% of all civilian deaths from January to April—numbering at least 880—can be attributed to drone attacks. These include attacks on May 8 that killed 26 civilians in Al Quz, South Kordofan, and near El Obeid, North Kordofan.

Türk stated:

This increasing reliance on drones allows hostilities to continue unabated in the approaching rainy season, which in the past has brought about a lull in ground operations. An intensification of hostilities in the coming weeks, as the parties seek to gain or consolidate control of territory amid shifting conflict dynamics, risks hostilities expanding even further to central and eastern states, with lethal consequences for civilians across enormous areas.

Targets struck by drones include healthcare facilities, rendering hospitals inoperable, and a May 4 attack on the Khartoum International Airport that led to the disruption of all flights. The Sudanese government has accused Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of being behind the drone strike on the Khartoum airport, and others. Military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Asim Awad Abdelwahab claims to have intelligence of four drone attacks since March 1 having originated from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar using drones provided by the UAE.

The UAE has come under fire for supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in their war against the Sudanese government. The conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF. The conflict has been described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with the RSF facing accusations of war crimes and genocide by the UN.

From JURIST, May 11. Used with permission.

AI-generated image of various drones used in Sudan, via Sudan Tribune

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Sudan’s paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have repeatedly attacked the Darfur border town of Tina, with more than 123 injured people arriving at a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières near the Chad frontier last week. A drone strike—with responsibility still unclear—also killed 17 people on the Chadian side of the border. Tina has been hosting large numbers of displaced Darfuris fleeing RSF attacks elsewhere. (TNH)

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned March 17 that the escalating hostilities in the Middle East could lead to record levels of food insecurity, and the largest disruption in the global economy and humanitarian efforts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

WFP deputy executive director and chief operating officer Carl Skau said: “If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest.” Skau urged the international community to mount an adequately funded humanitarian response.

Since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran in late February, the conflict has spread to encompass much of the region, causing thousands of civilian casualties and forcibly displacing over 3 million people. The WFP predicts 45 million people may slide into acute hunger (a level known as IPC Phase 3+) if the conflict continues. Due to the heavy reliance of food and aid distribution on energy, the skyrocketing price of oil has placed heightened strain on already over-stretched aid supply lines. The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has also increased fertilizer costs, posing a more long-term threat to food security.

In 2025, an estimated 318 million people across 68 countries were already experiencing acute food insecurity, with 41.1 million under “Emergency” conditions or worse (IPC Phase 4+). The number of people facing catastrophic hunger (Phase 5) remained alarmingly high in 2025, exceeding 1 million.

Import-reliant countries, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, face the greatest risk. Humanitarian organizations are already spread thin by tightening budgets, as well as the proliferation and exacerbation of global crises. Global funding for foreign aid has contracted exponentially in recent years, with a sharp decline following President Trump’s signing of Executive Order 14169, which effectively suspended most operations of USAID. Together, these developments place extraordinary pressure on humanitarian organizations, leaving millions at risk of famine. Sudan and Somalia were named as particularly vulnerable.

From JURIST, March 19. Used with permission.

Note: Hunger in the Global South has already been exacerbated by Trump’s trade tariffs regime, while spikes in the price of oil and grain since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 have contributed to popular privation and unrest worldwide.

Photo: Alex Blokha via Wikimedia Commons

Map: PCL

This wave of attacks took place in April of this year, when the camp fell to the RSF, and were found to constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said, “These horrific patterns of violations—committed with impunity—are consistent with what my Office has repeatedly documented.” The UN called for an “impartial, thorough, and effective” investigation to hold those responsible for the atrocities accountable.

The report’s key findings include the killing of at least 1,013 civilians. The report documented widespread summary executions, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, abductions, and enforced disappearances. During the assault, the RSF pillaged food and livestock, looted shops and homes, and burned down houses. This conduct has extensive humanitarian and legal implications, according to the report:

The RSF’s offensive in and around Zamzam IDP camp had a devastating impact on the human rights of its residents, causing widespread loss of life and injuries, including long-term psychological harm…and broad destruction of essential civilian infrastructure. The documented patterns of IHL violations and IHRL abuses suggest that many of these acts were ethnically motivated, targeting individuals based on their tribal identity or perceived affiliation.

The aspect of ethnic motivation relates to recent warnings from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) over escalating ethnically targeted violence in Sudan.

A woman who returned to the camp to search for her 15-year-old son described the situation, stating, “The camp was empty. I saw scattered dead bodies on the roads. Only chicken, donkeys and sheep were wandering around. The RSF was positioned in the main market.” Another survivor reported to human rights investigators that RSF “fighters were just shouting and shooting anywhere, so that is how many people were killed.”

The Zamzam camp was created in 2004 to hold displaced persons fleeing the war in Darfur. It is located south of El Fasher, the North Darfur state capital. The camp has transformed over the years into an “urban-like setting,” with many children who have never known life outside the camp. According to the UN, roughly 500,000 people lived at Zamzam as of April 2025.

Sudan has signed but not ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and therefore is not a state party. However, the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes in Darfur under UN Security Council Resolution 1593.

From JURIST, Dec. 18. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Note: Resolution 1593 of 2005 provided the basis for the indictment of Darfur militia leader Ali Kushayb, who was recently convicted by the ICC.

Photo via UN News

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) identified at least 150 “clusters of objects consistent with human remains” in and around El Fasher between Oct. 26, when the RSF claimed to have taken full control of El Fasher, and Nov. 28. They identified the clusters as likely human remains, based on their size, the timing of their appearance, and proximity to reddish ground discoloration that later turned brown, consistent with blood oxidation. In some cases, the RSF’s own social media posts corroborated the presence of human remains at the locations.

Researchers documented 38 instances of “reddish discoloration consistent with blood or other bodily fluids,” and evidence of ongoing efforts to destroy remains through burning and burial.

The report concludes “to high confidence” that the RSF conducted door-to-door killings in the Daraja Oula neighborhood, the city’s last major civilian refuge, and targeted people attempting to flee the city through the earthen barriers, or berms, that had been built around El Fasher during the months-long siege.

The researchers wrote:

HRL assesses that during this time of restricted access, RSF has systematically killed and disposed of a number of objects consistent with human remains likely in the tens of thousands. The evidence presented in this report cannot be used to estimate the number of people who have died, but it can be used to demonstrate that largescale and systematic mass killing and body disposal has occurred and is occurring on a scale that has not ever been seen before in very high resolution commercial satellite imagery analyzed by civilians.

Casualty estimates for El Fasher range widely, but Doctors Without Borders said the low number of survivors reaching safety at nearby displacement camps—roughly 10,000 of an estimated 260,000 people in El Fasher before the assault—suggests most civilians were killed, died, or remain trapped. Citing the Yale analysis, the humanitarian group said observations “point to a catastrophic scenario.”

By late November, 38% of the identified body clusters were no longer visible in satellite imagery, suggesting systematic disposal operations, the Yale researchers said.

The findings add to mounting evidence of atrocities in Sudan’s civil war, which began in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. The RSF has since advanced into the Kordofan region, seizing the strategic Heglig oilfield. Peace efforts have stalled after the Sudanese Armed Forces rejected a US-backed truce proposal in November, calling it biased; the RSF nominally accepted the plan but has continued military operations.

The researchers called on the UN Security Council to immediately secure access to El Fasher for humanitarian assistance and evidence collection, writing:

The international community, including the UN Security Council, must immediately secure access to El-Fasher to provide humanitarian assistance to survivors and to collect whatever evidence of the killing still remains. Time is of the essence for both those still living and for the evidence left by those who have died.

From JURIST, Dec. 17. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Google/Airbus via JURIST

In Sudan, the WHO reported that over 100 people, including 63 children, were killed Dec. 4 when drone strikes attributed to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit a kindergarten and nearby hospital in South Kordofan. Paramedics and responders were also struck as they tried to help the wounded. In Myanmar’s Rakhine state, a military airstrike on Dec. 11 destroyed the Mrauk-U general hospital, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens more. It was the 67th attack on a healthcare facility in Myanmar this year, according to the WHO.

Attacks on healthcare facilities killed a record 3,600 people in 2024, mainly in Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Myanmar and Sudan. This year is on course to surpass that toll. In Gaza alone, at least 917 people were killed by Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities between Oct. 7. 2023 and June 11, 2025.

From The New Humanitarian, Dec. 12. Slightly edited, internal links added.

Recent years have also seen attacks on healthcare facilities in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Photo: Myanmar Now

Meanwhile, the Sudanese army, no paragon of peace either, has snubbed the latest US-led truce proposal as biased towards the UAE, which is said to be arming the RSF, and appears to have lost confidence in White House adviser Massad Boulos. Still, with US President Donald Trump promising to personally wade into mediation, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal casting the conflict as a sovereign army defending civilians against a genocidal militia, not a war between two rival (and equally bad) generals. Of course, that overly convenient framing ignores the state’s long record of cultivating and empowering the RSF (until their falling out in the 2023 attempted coup), not to mention the awkward fact that the two forces joined hands to stage the 2021 coup that derailed Sudan’s democratic transition.

From The New Humanitarian, Nov. 28. Slightly edited, internal links added.

Map: PCL

Residents are attempting to flee to El Obeid, the state capital that lies some 100 kilometers to the south. But the RSF appears to be taking its offensive there next. At least 40 people were killed Nov. 5 when a drone struck a funeral gathering at al-Luweib, a village outside El Obeid. Local authorities blamed the RSF for the attack. (OHCHR, IOM, AA, AfricaNews)

Map: Displacement Tracking Matrix