A drone attack on a crowded market in the disputed Abyei region has killed at least 153 people, according to local authorities, who hold Sudan's military responsible. The strike hit Amiet Market around midday on Monday, and the reported toll more than doubled within a day, DW.com reports.
Yohana Akol Ngor, the caretaker information minister in Abyei, told Reuters on Tuesday that the figure had risen from 73 the previous day. He accused Sudan's armed forces of carrying out the attack but did not present evidence, according to DW.com. He also said roughly 8,000 people have been displaced by the bombing.
South Sudan's Foreign Ministry likewise blamed the Sudanese army, saying the drone struck several points around the market. Citing witness accounts, DW.com reports that one of the targets was a fuel depot, which ignited a large fire that crews could not bring under control overnight and that was still burning on Tuesday.
South Sudan said it had summoned Sudan's ambassador to lodge a protest and called on Khartoum to "refrain from any actions that endanger civilian lives and property," DW.com reports.
Why it matters
Abyei sits on the border between Sudan and South Sudan and is oil-rich, but its final status was never settled. The 2005 peace agreement that broadly ended decades of civil war in Sudan left the question open. A planned referendum never took place because the two sides could not agree on who should be eligible to vote, leaving the area jointly administered with an interim United Nations security force on the ground for 15 years.
The region's majority Ngok Dinka population wants to join South Sudan, while Misseriya nomads who graze its pastures side with Sudan. Amiet Market is a major trading point for both communities, which makes an attack there especially damaging to everyday life across the divide.
The strike also lands against the backdrop of Sudan's wider war. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary broke out in April 2023 and has settled into entrenched front lines, pushing the country into what DW.com describes as a de facto partition. Abyei borders Sudan's South Kordofan state, which has become a major theater of that conflict.
Warnings, wounds and a region under strain
The UN mission in Abyei warned in May that the RSF's presence in the resource-rich area had increased the danger to residents and could inflame the long-running territorial dispute between Sudan and South Sudan, the world's newest sovereign state. Sudan's military has also said the RSF operates from Abyei.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said its teams were treating about 20 injured people at Ameth Bek hospital near the market. Dr. Christian Lindauer, the group's medical activities manager there, said patients included several critical cases and people with burns, according to DW.com.
The UN's humanitarian voice added to the concern. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York on Tuesday that the organization remains alarmed by sustained drone attacks across Sudan and the harm they do to essential infrastructure, saying the strikes are hitting communities already worn down by more than three years of war. Both the Sudanese military and the RSF have made heavy use of drones in the conflict, DW.com reports.
Abyei has faced other pressures as well. Recent years have brought intercommunal violence between Ngok Dinka and neighboring Twic Dinka communities, and other armed groups are present in the area. The unresolved referendum and the wider war have combined to keep the region unstable.
The reported death toll could not be independently verified, and the accusation against Sudan's military has not been supported with public evidence. Casualty figures in the conflict have repeatedly shifted as bodies are recovered and wounded people reach hospitals.
What to watch next is whether the toll at Amiet Market continues to climb, how Sudan's government responds to the summons of its ambassador, and whether the UN mission in Abyei adjusts its posture as drone strikes escalate across the country.
