Burhan and Hemedti Are Bombing Sudan's Displaced From the Sky

Think about a mother who fled one massacre with her children, found a patch of ground under a tarp, and believed for one night that she had escaped. Then the sky opened. In Sudan this month, that is how many people died.

Between the first and twenty-first of October, drone strikes killed at least 306 people and wounded hundreds more, according to the UN human rights office. The dead were not soldiers in trenches. They were shoppers, traders, nursing mothers, and children who had already lost their homes. We should be clear about what that number means. It is more than three hundred families receiving the worst news of their lives in the space of twenty-one days, and it is one month's toll in a war that has already driven millions from their homes.

Let us name the men responsible, because vagueness is how impunity survives. Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan commands the Sudanese Armed Forces. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commands the Rapid Support Forces. Between them they have turned a country into a drone range. Türk's office says drones now account for the majority of conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan this year. Two men with sophisticated machines, fighting over state power, have decided that the cost will be paid by ordinary Sudanese.

Look at what the documentation shows. Between 6 and 10 October, drone strikes attributed to government forces hit shelters for displaced people in Ghubeish and El Nuhud in West Kordofan, killing at least 25 civilians, women and children among them. On 9 October, an alleged RSF drone struck a crowd of displaced people working artisanal gold mines near a camp in Abu Shendi, Blue Nile, killing at least 31, most of them women and children. On 18 October, a transport truck in Dibab, West Kordofan, was hit in what the UN describes as a "double tap" strike, a second missile fired at the same target after rescuers arrived. At least 139 people died. A double tap is not a mistake. It is a method, and it is designed to kill the people who come to help.

Then came Abyei. On 19 October, a drone strike hit Amiet Market and the Todach area of Abyei, the oil-rich zone claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. The UN put the death toll above 80. A local official later told AFP the toll could reach 153 and blamed the Sudanese army, which used multiple munitions. UN peacekeepers from Pakistan reached the scene and found, in the words of their commander, "every shop was burning." Angelina Musa Diaw, a trader and mother of three, lost everything in one afternoon. She told the UN she needed help. Ask yourself how many Sudanese mothers are saying the same words tonight, to no one.

The strikes are not confined to the front. On 11 October, a strike on Um Darfa hospital in Blue Nile seriously injured two health workers and put the facility out of action. On Monday of this week, a coordinated drone attack targeted five power stations in Al-Jazira, Gedaref and White Nile, cutting electricity across large areas. Reports from the same period say most of the country's hospitals have closed, at least eight million children are out of school, and close to twenty million people face hunger in what is already one of the world's worst food crises. Power outages in Sudan are not an inconvenience. They mean a neonatal ward goes dark, a refrigerator for insulin stops, a water pump falls silent. When a drone switches off a power station, it switches off a hospital, a clinic, and a child's last chance.

Who is arming these machines? The Security Council has said the continued influx of weapons is fuelling this war, and that is the question Revvmark keeps asking. Turkish and Iranian drones have been flown by Khartoum's army. UN experts and investigative reporters have traced Emirati money and weapons routes to the RSF, which the UAE denies. Russia has courted both sides for a naval base and gold. Every one of these foreign governments speaks the language of stability and partnership. Every one of them profits from a war that is slaughtering Sudanese people. Africa has seen this movie before, and it always ends with someone else's gold in someone else's vault.

We have to talk about the lie both generals tell. The army tells the world it is humane and the RSF is the monster. The RSF tells Sudanese that it is the liberator. Analysts studying this conflict have said plainly that the difference between the two is far smaller than either wants you to believe. The Abyei and Abu Shendi strikes show it. The victims are the same, the methods are the same, and the cover stories are the same. Neither general has earned the benefit of the doubt, and neither should be treated as a partner in peace until he answers for these crimes.

So what must happen? The Security Council must move beyond statements of "strongest terms" and impose targeted sanctions on named commanders on both sides, including asset freezes and travel bans. It must enforce and expand arms embargoes to cover drones, their components, and the satellite and software systems that guide them. The UN and the African Union should back an independent investigation into the Dibab double tap and the Abyei market attack, with findings that lead to indictments. The International Criminal Court should have the resources it needs to pursue Darfur and Kordofan cases, and the Security Council should stop treating its own referral as a museum piece. The African Union Peace and Security Council, which has suspended Sudan before, must insist that no military faction is recognised as a legitimate partner while it bombs its own people.

Africa has better models than Sudan's generals. Botswana built one of the continent's most prosperous states by protecting property rights, holding regular elections, and keeping its army out of politics. Mauritius turned a sugar island into a diversified economy by investing in institutions and rule of law. Senegal, after years of bruising politics, showed that power can change hands at the ballot box without a civil war. These are not perfect countries. They are proof that Africans can build states where soldiers answer to civilians and courts answer to citizens. Sudan's own 2019 revolution, which pushed out Omar al-Bashir after decades of repression, showed the same hunger for civilian rule. The generals stole that revolution in a coup and then tore the country apart over who would keep the spoils.

Sudan's resistance committees, emergency response rooms, and doctors' networks have been counting the dead through the worst of this war, often at personal risk. They deserve protection, funding, and a seat at any negotiating table. A lasting settlement must be civilian-led, with a transitional authority chosen by Sudanese, not by foreign capitals and not by the men holding the drone controllers. Accountability cannot be negotiated away in exchange for a ceasefire. A ceasefire without justice is simply a pause before the next strike.

And now the question for you. How many more mothers must bury their children under a sky that no one is willing to defend? How many more hospitals must go dark before the diplomats stop writing "deeply disturbed" and start acting? Sudan's people have not asked for charity. They have asked for something that should be simple: that the men who command the drones be held responsible, that the weapons stop flowing, and that civilians be allowed to live.

Africa must say this clearly. Write to your MPs and ask them to back sanctions on named commanders. Press your foreign ministry to vote for drone and arms embargoes in the Security Council. Support the Sudanese civil society groups documenting these killings, and share their work so the world cannot pretend not to know. Demand that the African Union stop hiding behind process. Burhan and Hemedti have made their choice. The rest of us must make ours before the next truck, the next market, the next shelter becomes another name on a list.

Based on reporting by UN-NEWS