Drone Strike on Abyei Market Kills 53 as Civilians Pay Price

A drone strike killed 53 people and wounded at least 27 at a crowded market in the disputed Abyei district, local authorities said Tuesday. Women, children and older people were among the dead. Local merchants, members of the host Ngok Dinka community, South Sudanese returnees and Sudanese refugees seeking sanctuary from the war next door also died.

Authorities said the strike hit Amiet market on Monday and accused the Sudanese army of firing 22 munitions. South Sudan's Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Sudanese ambassador and condemned the attack "in the strongest terms possible." It accused the army of striking multiple locations within the market.

Civilian Toll

The dead in Amiet were at work or in flight. Some were traders. Some had fled one conflict only to find themselves inside another. The victims included people from the Ngok Dinka community that hosts the market and refugees who had nowhere else to go. That mix shows how thoroughly the war has erased any distinction between safe and unsafe ground.

South Sudan's Foreign Ministry said the market serves as a transit point for goods moving to areas controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. That detail matters when considering why the market was targeted, but it doesn't change who stood there. Local authorities described a civilian crowd.

Amiet wasn't an isolated event. More than 100 people died in strikes across Sudan between Sunday and Monday, in a war between the Sudanese army and the RSF that began in April 2023 and is now in its third year.

A Wave of Strikes

The recent wave's deadliest attack came Sunday evening near a market in al-Dibab town in West Kordofan, a southwestern state controlled by the RSF. Residents and medical workers said a drone hit a transport hub where villagers had gathered after market day to find rides home. Eighty people were killed.

Ahmed Abakar Wadi, a resident who helped bury the victims, told AFP that at least 50 bodies were recovered at the scene, including his brother's. Another 47 wounded people went to nearby al-Mujlad, where 30 later died, according to a medical source. "The drone struck once, and then came back 10 minutes later and struck again," Wadi told AFP.

The RSF's self-declared administration, Tasis, and the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers accused the army of carrying out the al-Dibab attack. The military hadn't commented. The strike ranked among the deadliest single attacks in Kordofan, an oil-rich region linking western and eastern Sudan where the army and RSF are fighting for territory. Strikes also hit the RSF stronghold of Nyala in South Darfur and the army-controlled capital, Khartoum.

A Disputed Territory, A Fragile Neighborhood

Sudan and South Sudan both claim Abyei. The two countries separated in 2011, 15 years ago, after decades of conflict. Parts of the district are controlled by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, a splinter group from the organization that fought for Juba's independence. The SPLM-N has split into two factions, each backing an opposing side in Sudan's war.

That makes Abyei especially combustible. Its status was never settled. Now the territory sits between a state at war and a neighbor demanding answers, while armed factions inside it back opposing sides.

The human toll of Sudan's war is hard to overstate. Multiple outside powers have fuelled it, and it has caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, killing hundreds of thousands of people. The United Nations said drone attacks killed more than 1,100 people across Sudan during the first half of 2026 alone.

Why This Matters: Two days of strikes killed well over 100 civilians. The marketplaces hit were places where ordinary people buy and sell, or wait for a ride home. When drones strike twice, as Wadi described at al-Dibab, rescuers and survivors face danger too. Abyei adds a regional threat: two states claim the disputed district, and now a neighbor's foreign ministry is demanding accountability. The UN's tally of more than 1,100 drone deaths in six months points to a pattern, not an aberration. Outside powers fuelling this war share responsibility for the weapons and the stalemate. Without pressure on them, markets and transport hubs will keep becoming killing grounds.