Drone strike kills 4 women in Sudan’s Blue Nile state

CAIRO (AP) — A drone strike hit homes and a mosque in Sudan on Wednesday, killing at least four women and wounding dozens of other people, a rights group said.

Emergency Lawyers, which tracks the conflict, blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for the attack in the Hijra neighborhood of Damazin, the capital of southeastern Blue Nile province. The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese military for more than three years.

The group called for those responsible for the strike and other attacks on civilians to be held accountable.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The strike came days after an airstrike hit two World Food Programme trucks in South Kordofan province, killing a driver, said Denise Brown, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.

The convoy was hit in Dilling, an area that has faced repeated attacks by the RSF and its ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, Brown said.

The trucks were clearly marked as humanitarian vehicles, had all required travel permits and were carrying “lifesaving assistance to vulnerable populations,” she said.

Brown condemned the attack as “outrageous” at a time of tremendous suffering in Sudan.

It was the latest attack on a humanitarian convoy in Sudan, where 17 trucks carrying food have been destroyed and eight drivers killed in the past two years, according to the U.N.

The war in Sudan started in April 2023 when tensions between the military and the RSF erupted into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, before spreading across the country.

The conflict has killed at least 150,000 people, according to conflict monitor ACLED, though aid groups say the true toll is likely higher. More than 12.4 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to U.N. figures, creating what aid groups call the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Across Sudan, 33.7 million people, including 17.3 million children, urgently need aid this year. An estimated 825,000 children face severe acute malnutrition.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, met with Sudan’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, in Egypt as the U.S. administration pushes for a diplomatic end to the war.