The United Nations is blaming most civilian deaths in Sudan on drones. In reality, hunger is the main killer, not drones. In Sudan’s civil war, 400,000 people have died, mostly civilians who perished due to hunger and hunger-related diseases. Tens of thousands of people starved to death after a militia known as the Rapid Support Forces looted their food and possessions, and drove farmers from their land. Others, including many children, died of starvation in cities besieged by the RSF, such as Dilling and Kadugli. Thousands of others died when the Sudanese military blocked international-aid trucks from carrying food into famine-ridden areas of Sudan controlled by the RSF.
Yet the UN believes that most Sudanese currently dying in the war are being killed by drones, which is not the case:
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Monday issued a high alert on the widening use of drones in the conflict in Sudan….The Sudan team at the Human Rights Office found that upwards of 80 percent of all civilian deaths from January to April 2026—numbering at least 880—can be attributed to drone attacks. These include attacks on Friday that killed 26 civilians in Al Quz, South Kordofan, and near El Obeid, North Kordofan.
Türk warned: “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.”…
Targets struck by drones include healthcare facilities which has rendered hospitals inoperable, and a May 4 attack on the Khartoum International Airport which 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.
But these drone deaths are just a drop in the bucket. As Fox News notes, although “drones are indiscriminately killing women and children” in Sudan, the war has caused “as many as 400,000 deaths since the conflict began on April 15, 2023. More than 11 million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world.”
Most deaths in Sudan are low-tech, not high-tech, and are the result of old-fashioned killing methods, such as shooting civilians attempting to flee, or setting fire to houses with civilians still in them. Eyewitnesses fleeing a massacre in El Fasher in late 2025 reported that RSF fighters got into their vehicles and intentionally ran over civilians who were lying on the ground or attempting to flee. A survivor reported witnessing RSF fighters using their vehicles to crush several prisoners.
It is true that hundreds of Sudanese are being killed by drones. In February, drones killed dozens of people in towns across the African nation of Sudan. Weeks earlier, drones sent by the Rapid Support Forces killed hundreds of people in attacks on El-Obeid, which has around 600,000 people, and surrounding areas. In a village near El-Obeid, a drone killed 65 people at a funeral gathering.
Earlier, “a drone attack” by the RSF “hit a kindergarten in” the town of Kalogli in “south-central Sudan, killing 50 people, including 33 children,” reported the Associated Press. Then it returned to kill paramedics at the scene.
Millions of people in Sudan lost power last year due to drone strikes on a key power plant.
But drones are not responsible for most deaths in Sudan. The Rapid Support Forces committed genocide against the Masalit people of western Sudan, without using any drones at all. And they slaughtered tens of thousands of the Zaghawa people, including thousands of children, after seizing the major city of El Fasher, again, without using drones. The RSF also has kidnapped thousands of people and held them for ransom, torturing many of them. The RSF has killed at least 250,000 people from non-Arab ethnic groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
