Blue Nile drone strike kills 30 outside displacement camp
A Count That Began With Burials
The protection that a displacement camp is supposed to provide failed on Friday in Wad al-Mahi, a locality in Sudan’s southeastern Blue Nile region. At least 30 displaced people were killed, among them 26 women and four children, and dozens of others were wounded. [1] The Blue Nile regional government placed the strike approximately 50 km east of Damazin, the regional capital, and condemned it as a “blatant assault and a serious violation” of the humanitarian values and international legal rules that prohibit attacks on civilians during armed conflict. [1] It called on the international community, and on human rights and humanitarian organizations, to condemn the incident, document it, investigate it, and hold those responsible accountable. [1]. In a displacement camp in Blue Nile’s Abu Shendi, survivors buried 26 women and four children from Friday’s strike, according to one person involved in the burial. [1]. The paramilitary group accused of carrying out the strike, the Rapid Support Forces, had not commented on it. [1]. The camp itself was not hit directly; the strike fell just outside it, near an informal gold mining site where women earn a daily wage clearing gold nuggets from earth extracted by men. [1].
Where the Drone Came From
The question of origin is where the wider war enters this account. The governor of Wad al-Mahi, Mahjoub Al-Sheikh, described the attack as “cowardly” and said the drone was launched from “inside Ethiopia”, according to the AFP news agency. [1]. [1] Sudan’s regular army and the RSF have been fighting since mid-April 2023, and the newest front line of that war runs along the Ethiopian border region. Wad al-Mahi lies in the Blue Nile region, which meets the Ethiopian border in the country’s southeast. Sudan has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of harbouring RSF fighters and bases, and Ethiopia has denied the allegations. Ethiopia, meanwhile, is facing its own internal conflict that threatens to escalate into a regional war. [1]. On the Sudanese side, the RSF has pushed its offensive towards Damazin. An advance there could create a two-front problem for the army, which would have to defend territory on the Blue Nile front and in the Kordofan region at the same time. In Kordofan, a year of deadly drone strikes has already left the two sides deadlocked. [1].
