So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.
A remote-controlled drone attack killed at least 12 people and injured 30 others on Tuesday in Atbara, a city that has so far remained relatively unscathed by the pdeadly war tearing Sudan apart for nearly a year, a medical source and eyewitnesses told AFP.
«A fire broke out in Atbara after a drone attack during iftar“, of the dinner that follows the breaking of the Ramadan fast, an eyewitness reported by phone.
At the meal, whichorganized the Islamist militia Baraa at its base” (this is an armed group that participates in the war on the side of the army) “civilians and paramilitaries had gatheredsaid another resident. “There was panic when the explosion happened” to residents in Atbara, an army stronghold nearly 300 km northeast of the capital Khartoum, according to the resident.
The corpses of12 victims” and of “30 injured” were rushed to the city’s hospital, an AFP medical source said, without specifying whether they were civilians or paramilitaries. A previous preliminary report spoke of seven dead and ten injured.
So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.
The war, which broke out on April 15 between the head of the armed forces, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his then-deputy chief, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Sudanese and turned 8.5 million more internally displaced and refugees, the UN estimates.
But until yesterday the fighting had not reached Atbara, where army units are stationed to protect the strategically important city on the road to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, where the loyalist government has relocated in military.
The paramilitaries, who control most of the capital and large parts of the country, are equipped with drones, but their positions are some 250km from Atbara on the road from Khartoum.
The DTY, a reincarnation of the Arab Janjaweed paramilitary groups that a decade ago implemented a scorched-earth policy in Darfur on the orders of former dictator Omar al-Bashir, now also control most of Darfur, a vast region cut off from the rest of the country for months.
On Monday, aircraft “of the army bombarded the city of El Fasser, resulting in the loss of civilian lives” in the capital of North Darfur state, 800 km from Khartoum, where “thousands of civilians who fled to escape the fighting in Darfur have taken refuge“, the new US special envoy for Sudan, Tom Periello, said on Tuesday via X.
Across the country, paramilitaries, like the armed forces, “they continue to block the entry of humanitarian aid and restrict the freedom of movement of civilians. This blatant disregard for civilian lives is exacerbating the humanitarian and refugee crisis in Sudan“, he added.