470 Dead: Sudan's Hidden Air War Documented by Advocacy Group
A Darfur advocacy group has documented that airstrikes and drone attacks killed at least 470 people and injured 187 others across Sudan between March 2024 and January 2026, with 87 percent of attacks attributed to the government military.
The war in Sudan has entered a new, deadlier phase defined by the systematic use of airpower against civilian populations—and the world barely knows it's happening.
On Monday, the Darfur Victims Advocacy Organisation released a report quantifying what residents of Sudan's hardest-hit regions already know: that airstrikes and drone attacks have become the conflict's most devastating weapon against civilians. Between March 2024 and January 2026, the organisation documented 42 air raids and one drone attack that killed at least 470 people and injured 187 others. These are not the numbers of scattered tactical errors. This is industrial-scale aerial bombardment targeting the population.
The geographic concentration is telling. North Darfur accounted for about 61 percent of the attacks, making it the most devastated state. South Darfur followed with 16 percent, with the remaining strikes dispersed across Kordofan, El Gezira and Sennar. The pattern shows a systematic campaign against the western and central portions of the country—exactly where the Rapid Support Forces have consolidated control and where civilians cannot flee.
What sets this report apart from the white noise of casualty counts is attribution. The Darfur Victims Advocacy Organisation determined that 87 percent of the documented attacks came from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the government military. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out the remaining 13 percent, primarily using drones and artillery. This matters because it names the perpetrator. The SAF, backed by a government that has nominally returned to the capital and claims to be restoring order, is conducting the majority of aerial strikes that are killing hundreds of civilians.
According to Adam Obama, the organisation's executive director, the conflict has entered what he describes as a new phase marked by the growing use of advanced military technology and foreign-made drones. This is not improvised warfare with crude munitions. The escalation in drone use reflects an intentional modernization of the air campaign, with both sides acquiring sophisticated platforms and deploying them against populated areas.
The UN Human Rights Office has documented a sharp increase in drone strikes throughout 2026. Over 500 civilians were killed in such strikes from January to mid-March alone, with more than three-quarters of those deaths occurring in the first two weeks of March. The deadliest single attack came on March 20—the first day of Eid al-Fitr—when airstrikes hit El Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur state, killing at least 64 people including seven women and thirteen children. One doctor was killed and eight health workers were among the 89 injured. The hospital was targeted during the most sacred days of the Islamic calendar.
These are not precision strikes against military targets. Medical facilities, markets, and residential areas remain the primary civilian infrastructure being hit. The escalation in drone use has created a situation where civilians face attack at any moment—whether buying food in a market, receiving treatment at a hospital, or gathering for religious observance. The technology is cheap, remotely operated, and leaves little time for civilians to seek shelter.
The Darfur Victims Advocacy Organisation is calling for immediate action: an air embargo over Darfur and other affected areas, a comprehensive ban on arms supplies to both warring parties, and the creation of an international fact-finding mission. These demands are reasonable. They are also completely ignored by the international community.
On Tuesday, residents of Omdurman—the twin city of the capital Khartoum—reported explosions near the Wadi Seidna military base after a drone attack in the pre-dawn hours. Military sources claimed air defences intercepted the drone, though this could not be independently verified. Sources reported additional missile strikes inside the city, with casualties unknown. Khartoum state has been hit repeatedly in recent months, with strikes blamed on the RSF targeting residential areas and critical infrastructure including Khartoum International Airport.
On Sunday evening, a drone strike killed three civilians and injured another in the Adeid Raha area of North Kordofan. These are individual incidents in an unbroken chain of aerial violence that spans from one end of Sudan to the other.
What makes the Darfur Victims Advocacy Organisation's report significant is that it quantifies what western journalists and international agencies struggle to document: the scale of aerial violence in a country where the UN has largely abandoned on-the-ground investigation. In a conflict where the death toll estimates range from 61,000 to hundreds of thousands—with some researchers suggesting the real number exceeds 150,000—every documented death is a correction to a record that the world refuses to keep.
The organisation's report covers only 22 months of the war. The conflict began in April 2023 and continues unabated. In the nearly three years of fighting, aerial weapons have become the dominant means of killing civilians. Both warring parties have acquired Chinese-manufactured drones (the RSF's Wing Loong II and FeiHong-95) and Turkish Bayraktar platforms. The technology is proliferating faster than international oversight can track it.
When the SAF recaptured the capital Khartoum in March 2025, western capitals briefly celebrated the "restoration of order." What followed was an expansion of aerial bombing campaigns against populations in areas the government could not reach through ground force. When the RSF consolidated control of Darfur after the massacre in El Fasher, it accelerated its own drone operations against SAF-controlled areas and against civilian populations it deemed aligned with the government.
The result is a civilian population trapped between two militaries that have chosen airpower as the primary instrument of war. There is no escape. There is no shelter. There are only bodies—470 documented by the Darfur Victims Advocacy Organisation, and hundreds more documented by the UN, humanitarian organisations, and local volunteers with satellite phones.
The international response has been prayer and press releases. In February 2026, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on four RSF commanders for atrocities committed in El Fasher. The US Department of the Treasury followed suit. These measures are symbolic. They do not stop the drones. They do not save lives. They do not impose an air embargo or halt arms deliveries to either side.
Meanwhile, the war continues. The airstrikes continue. The death toll continues to climb. And advocates in Darfur—a region the world was supposed to be preventing from becoming a killing ground—document the body count one raid at a time.
This report is the first systematic accounting of aerial death in Sudan's forgotten war. 470 people dead from airstrikes in 22 months—mostly killed by the government military the international community deemed "restored to order" when it recaptured Khartoum. The advocacy group is calling for an air embargo that will never come, a weapons ban that will never pass, and international scrutiny that will never materialise. What they've done is provide evidence. What that evidence proves is that the world doesn't care enough to stop it. The winners if nothing changes? The arms dealers. The manufacturers of Chinese and Turkish drones. The foreign powers fueling both sides. The losers? 470 documented dead, and thousands more who will die before we care enough to count.
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