A Sudanese army drone strike on a traditional court in North Darfur killed at least 35 people on Sunday, according to the Emergency Lawyers rights group, which has documented abuses by both sides of the country's three-year civil war. The strike hit the village of Garra al-Zawaya, near the town of Kabkabiya in North Darfur state, at around 1pm local time, as civilians had gathered to attend hearings on local disputes. A witness told AFP that the session was being held under a tree with the participation of community leaders, and that those killed included four tribal leaders and two commanders from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which controls the area. The RSF's self-declared government put the toll higher, claiming 37 dead and 50 wounded, and condemned the strike as "a horrific crime". The Sudanese army had not responded to the reports at the time of publication.

Garra al-Zawaya lies roughly 150 kilometres west of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state and the army's last major stronghold in the region before the RSF seized it in a bloody offensive last October. UN investigators have said that violence surrounding the RSF's siege and capture of El-Fasher bears "the hallmarks of genocide". The RSF itself emerged from the Janjaweed, a government-backed militia accused of widespread atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s, and has since consolidated control over much of the region following El-Fasher's fall.

Sunday's strike reflects the dramatic escalation of drone warfare in Sudan's conflict. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes in just the first five months of this year. Both the army and the RSF — locked in a war since April 2023 between RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and his former ally, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — have been accused of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, though the RSF has faced particular accusations of systematic sexual violence and mass atrocities.

The broader conflict shows no signs of abating. Last week, after losing control of a key highway linking the capital Khartoum to El-Obeid — the largest city in the southern Kordofan region — Dagalo released a video urging his fighters to consider themselves "unleashed". El-Obeid has since come under intense drone attacks, and the UN has issued a red alert over a feared RSF ground offensive there. The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and created what the UN describes as the world's largest humanitarian crisis, encompassing both mass displacement and acute hunger on a catastrophic scale.