Cairo
AP
—
A drone attack by a Sudanese paramilitary group hit a kindergarten in south-central Sudan, killing 50 people, including 33 children, a doctors’ group said.
The Sudanese Doctors Network said in a statement late Friday that emergency workers at the scene in the town of Karogi in South Kordofan state were targeted in a “second unexpected attack.”
Emergency Lawyers, a rights group that tracks violence against civilians in Sudan, said in a statement on Saturday that it reported a second attack on emergency workers treating survivors in Karogi, and said a “third civilian facility close to the previous two” had also been attacked.
The group condemned the attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, calling it a “serious violation of international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children, and critical civilian infrastructure.”
The death toll is expected to rise further, but communications failures in the region have made it difficult to report casualties.
Thursday’s attack is the latest in fighting between the RSF and Sudanese forces, which have been at war for more than two years. Currently, they are concentrated in the oil-rich Kordofan state.
“Killing children at school is a horrific violation of children’s rights,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Sudan representative, said in a statement on Friday.
“Children should never pay the price of conflict,” Mr Yett said.
He said UNICEF urges all parties to “immediately halt these attacks and ensure safe and unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance to those in desperate need.”
Hundreds of civilians have been killed across Kordofan province in recent weeks, with the escalation of fighting shifting from Darfur after RSF took control of the besieged city of El Fasher.
On Sunday, a Sudanese military airstrike killed at least 48 people, mostly civilians, in Kauda, South Kordofan state.
UN Human Rights Representative Volker Türk warned that Kordofan could face new atrocities similar to the El Fasher incident.
Separately, RSF condemned drone attacks on the Chad-Sudan border in a statement on Friday, saying Sudanese forces were behind it and posting a video showing billowing black smoke. This cannot be independently verified, and it is unclear whether there were any casualties in the attack. There was no immediate comment from Sudan’s military.
RSF’s violent takeover of El Fasher was marked by executions, rapes, sexual assaults, and other atrocities of civilians. Thousands have fled, and thousands more are feared to have been killed or trapped in the city.
The RSF and the Sudanese military have been fighting for supremacy in Sudan since 2023. According to the World Health Organization, the war has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 12 million people. But aid groups say the actual death toll could be much higher.
