Burhan and Hemedti's Drones Are Bombing Sudan's Markets From the Sky

Three hundred civilians dead in three weeks. Not in a famine report, not in a footnote about a distant war, but in markets, shelters, and residential streets, killed by machines that hover overhead and drop death without warning. Who is buying those machines? Who is pulling the triggers? And how many more Sudanese must die before the people with the power to stop it actually do?

International humanitarian organisations working in Sudan have now issued their sixth alert on drone warfare. Their message is grim and unambiguous. In October alone, drone strikes killed at least 300 civilians in the first three weeks of the month, and October has become one of the deadliest months for ordinary people in 2026. This is no longer a trend to monitor. It is a massacre in slow motion, and it is being run from above.

Consider the numbers. Between January and May 2026, drone strikes killed at least 880 civilians in Sudan. That accounts for roughly 80 per cent of all civilian deaths documented in the first quarter of the year. Read that again. The weapon that was supposed to make war more precise has become the main instrument of civilian slaughter. The drone does not discriminate between a soldier and a grandmother selling tomatoes. It only knows where it was aimed.

Then look at October's single incidents. On 26 October, a drone struck a market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. More than 150 people were killed or injured in a single day. Picture that market: the stalls, the bargaining, the children running between sacks of grain, and then the sky splitting open. On 19 October, another drone attack hit the Abyei area near Amiet Market and Todach, killing and injuring dozens more. These were not accidents of the battlefield. They were attacks on the places where people go to eat, trade, and survive.

The destruction does not stop at bodies. Drone strikes have hit shelters, water plants, markets, transport hubs, hospitals, power stations, and homes in at least twelve states, from North, South and East Darfur, through Kordofan, to Blue Nile, Gedaref, Sennar, Al Jazirah, White Nile, and Khartoum. Think about what that means. When a water plant is hit, mothers walk further for water that may be contaminated. When a power station goes dark, a clinic cannot keep vaccines cold. When a market burns during harvest season, a family that grew a crop cannot sell it, and a city that depends on it goes hungry. The international community has already warned that food security is deteriorating fast at the very moment farmers should be bringing in the harvest. A drone can destroy a season's livelihood in seconds.

Let us be precise about the law, because precision matters. Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law. They also break the commitments both sides made under the Jeddah Declaration to Protect the Civilians of Sudan, signed in 2023 under international mediation. Those commitments were not abstract diplomatic poetry. They were promises made by the men commanding these armies, promises that the dead of Nyala and Abyei now prove were worthless.

This is where we must name names. The Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, are both deploying drones in this war. Both are answerable for the civilians who die beneath them. Neither can hide behind the other's crimes. A soldier who knowingly launches a weapon into a crowded market is a war criminal, whatever uniform he wears or whichever flag he claims to defend.

But the drones did not fall from the sky as a gift of nature. They were manufactured, purchased, shipped, and fueled by external powers. Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 systems and Iranian Mohajer-6 drones have been reported in service with the Sudanese army. UN investigators and credible reporting have pointed to the United Arab Emirates as a supplier to the RSF, a claim the UAE denies. Whatever the full chain of supply turns out to be, the principle is simple. Every foreign government that sells, finances, or looks away from these weapons is buying a share of the blood. Some do it for minerals, some for ports, some for influence over the Red Sea, and some for geopolitical bragging rights. The new scramble for Africa has many more players than the old one, but the logic is the same: outsiders profit while Africans pay with their lives.

Sudan is also a story about what happens when the continent's democratic promise is betrayed from within. The 2019 revolution that toppled Omar al-Bashir was carried by young Sudanese who demanded civilian rule, dignity, and an end to military domination. Those demands were crushed by the same generals now dropping bombs on markets. Let no African government pretend this is a distant tragedy. Every coup, every military grab for power, every decision to put guns above ballots makes this kind of carnage more likely. When soldiers believe they can rule by force, they will eventually rule by drone.

So what must happen? First, the Security Council must stop treating Sudan as a file to be managed and start treating it as a crisis demanding enforcement. That means a binding arms embargo covering drones, spare parts, and fuel for both parties, with real monitoring and real penalties for violators. Second, the African Union must apply its own principles with courage. It should maintain Sudan's suspension, press for an independent, civilian-led transition, and back an investigation into drone strikes on civilians with the power to name commanders. Third, every government and company that supplies these systems must face export controls, sanctions where the evidence supports them, and public accountability. If a weapon can be traced to a market massacre, the seller should be ashamed in front of the world.

Africa has shown that a better way exists. Botswana built a stable democracy and used its diamond wealth to fund schools and clinics instead of militias. Mauritius has grown through open markets, strong institutions, and an independent judiciary. Ghana and Senegal have demonstrated that power can change hands at the ballot box without tanks in the streets. Sudanese civil society, including the neighbourhood emergency response rooms and resistance committees that have kept people alive through shelling and blackouts, is already proving that ordinary citizens can organise, feed, and protect each other. These are the building blocks of a Sudan that can rise: rule of law, independent courts, property rights, a free press, and a military that answers to civilians.

To the Sudanese reading this: your suffering is not invisible to us. We see the markets, the water plants, the shattered homes. Demand from every party that they publicly renounce drone attacks on civilians and open humanitarian corridors that actually work. Demand that your leaders accept a civilian transition, not another negotiated gift of power to the men with the guns.

To the rest of Africa: will we keep issuing statements while our neighbours burn? Demand that your governments vote for real sanctions at the Security Council and the AU. Demand transparency on every arms deal, every drone sale, every port agreement signed with a government at war with its own people. Pressure your parliaments, your media, and your diaspora. Silence is a choice, and it has a body count.

Three hundred civilians in three weeks. Make it the last October that Sudan's sky becomes a killing field.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB