Yohana Akol Ngor said a drone strike on Amiet Market in Sudan's Abyei killed 153 people on Monday, after the market was hit around 11:30 local time. The attack landed in a disputed border area jointly administered by Sudan and South Sudan, and South Sudan summoned Sudan's ambassador to lodge a formal protest.
Ngor, the Abyei region's Information Minister, said on Tuesday that the death toll had risen from 73 to 153 people. He said the target was Amiet Market, about 10km from Abyei town. For readers tracking the wider conflict, a separate briefing on South Sudan's football decision appeared in South Sudan National Football Team Vs Egypt National Football Team standings and in South Sudan Vs Egypt, but the market attack is the sharper crisis for civilians in Abyei.
West Kordofan deaths came first
The Abyei strike came after drone attacks on Sunday evening in two areas of West Kordofan state killed 150 people, according to the same sequence of reports. The Sudan War Observatory said a wave of drone attacks started that evening and was likely launched from Kadugli in South Kordofan state.
In Al-Dabab in West Kordofan, a truck carrying around 200 mourners was hit as it arrived, sources told the Sudan War Observatory. The observatory said 145 people were killed when the truck was struck, five others died when a tent where mourners had gathered was hit, and 150 people were injured.
Sudan army allegation
A military source told the the army carried out the Abyei attack, but Sudan's army has not responded to the allegation it carried out these strikes. The market was described as a fuel supply site for the Rapid Support Forces, adding a military layer to a strike that also killed civilians in Abyei.
Stéphane Dujarric said on Monday: "We are alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country that are killing civilians, including children, and that are disrupting essential services". The UN warning followed a chain of strikes that has already spread from West Kordofan into Abyei, raising the pressure on any account of who launched the drones and from where.
The unresolved status of Abyei, which Sudan and South Sudan both claim, sits over this attack like a fault line. South Sudan and Sudan jointly administer the area, so the market strike now sits at the center of a protest, an attribution dispute, and a wider war that has already forced more than 14 million people from their homes and left 20 million people facing acute hunger.
