Drone attacks strike crowded courtroom and college

“Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have intensified deadly drone attacks in government-held towns in the frontline state of North Kordofan, disrupting normal life,” Reuters reports:

“Drones have increasingly become ​the weapon of choice in Sudan’s three-and-a-half-year-old civil war, with both the RSF ⁠and their foes, the Sudanese army, deploying the latest technologies used in other war zones such as Ukraine….Drone attacks by both sides killed more than 1,000 civilians in the first half ​of this year.

On September 8, a drone hit a crowded courtroom in the government-held town of Um Ruwaba in North Kordofan, a state in central Sudan that is now one of the war’s main front lines. Some 10 people were ​killed and dozens injured…the entire facade had been blown out, with columns at the front of one of the city’s most ‌prominent buildings ⁠blasted apart. A day later, a drone struck a college in al-Obeid, the state capital, blasting off the roof….a security guard had been killed and eight classrooms damaged.

“As you can see, the entire faculty is destroyed ​and we feel that ​our dreams are destroyed, ⁠our future is destroyed,” said Omnia Aboul Gassim, a student who had taken her exams at the college in al-Obeid the day before it was ​struck, standing by the ruins. At a hospital in Um Ruwaba, Salah Bakheit, whose ​arm had ⁠been smashed and body pockmarked by shrapnel in the attack on the courthouse, said he had come to that city in search of shelter after fleeing al-Obeid, which the RSF had bombarded with drones for months ⁠earlier ​this year in an attempted siege.

Poison gas was recently used by Sudan’s military, violating international law. Sudan’s military is in a bitter civil war with its adversary, the Rapid Support Forces.

The United Nations notes that “Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed genocide in the western city of el-Fasher, carrying out mass killings, gang rapes and deliberate starvation as part of an intentional policy, a United Nations investigation has found. The UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan released its findings” in July, “concluding that the RSF’s systematic campaign of violence against civilians during and after its siege of the capital of North Darfur state amounted to genocide.”

The genocide was mainly aimed at the Zaghawa people, who live in the far west of Sudan and in the eastern part of the neighboring country of Chad.

The RSF also have committed genocide against the Masalit people of Darfur in western Sudan, before and after seizing the major city of El Geneina. The RSF 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.

Sudan’s civil war has already killed at least 400,000 people.