Sudan RSF drone strike on school kills two children

A drone strike blamed on Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed two children and injured 12 others Wednesday in the southern Kordofan city of El-Rahad, a medical source told AFP.

The Kordofan region is currently the fiercest battlefield in the war raging between the RSF and the regular army since April 2023.

"I saw a dozen students injured," Ahmed Moussa, an eyewitness to the attack, told AFP, adding that the drone had struck a traditional Koranic school.

El-Rahad lies on a key axis linking El-Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital, to the White Nile river -- the army's main line to the capital Khartoum.

The city was retaken by the army last February, as part of a rapid offensive that saw it push west to break a long-running siege on El-Obeid.

The RSF has been trying to re-encircle El-Obeid since, including by launching successive drone strikes on the eastern highway, which connects the vast western region of Darfur with the rest of the country.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and left around 11 million people displaced, creating the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, centre and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.

The army -- on the back foot since the RSF consolidated its hold on Darfur in October -- has appeared to tilt the balance in recent days, breaking two paramilitary sieges on South Kordofan cities: Dilling and Kadugli.

The cities had come to exemplify the violence in Kordofan, where hundreds of thousands face starvation under daily drone strikes.

From the end of October to February, over 115,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to data from the UN's International Organization for Migration released Tuesday.

Battling for control of the oil- and gold-rich region, the RSF and the army have traded drone strikes across vast areas, killing dozens at a time.

In a period of just over two weeks, some 90 civilians were killed and 142 injured in drone strikes, UN rights chief Volker Turk said this week.

He said strikes by both warring parties hit targets including a World Food Programme convoy, markets, health facilities and residential areas across North and South Kordofan.

In the first week of February alone, three health facilities were attacked in South Kordofan, killing 30 people, according to the World Health Organization.