Abyei market death toll surges past 150 as Sudanese officer admits drone strike targeted fuel convoys

The death toll from drone strikes on a crowded trading market in the disputed Abyei region has more than doubled to at least 153, officials said this week, as a senior Sudanese army officer acknowledged for the first time that the military carried out the attack and said it had targeted fuel convoys supplying a rival paramilitary force.

Yohana Akol Ngor, Abyei's caretaker information minister, said Tuesday that the confirmed toll from Monday's strikes on Amiet common market had risen from an initial count of 73 to 153, while explicitly rejecting unverified reports putting the number as high as 220. Officials said the figure is likely to climb further: some bodies were burned beyond recognition in the fires that followed the strike, and dozens of people remain unaccounted for. The dead have been buried in two mass graves dug east and west of the market.

At 153 dead, Monday's strike ranks among the deadliest single attacks on civilians since Sudan's civil war began in April 2023, and the first time a Sudanese officer has publicly, if anonymously, conceded that the army's own drones — rather than the rival Rapid Support Forces, which the military has blamed for past strikes on peacekeepers in the area — were responsible for hitting the market.

Toll climbs as fires still burn

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said more than 20 wounded were brought to Ameth Bek Hospital, several in critical condition, including patients with burn injuries. Ngor put the number of hospitalized at around 30. Local officials said the dead and wounded included Sudanese, South Sudanese and Somali nationals, reflecting Amiet's role as a cross-border hub that also serves people displaced by Sudan's civil war. Reuters reported that roughly 8,000 people had been displaced by the strikes and the fires that followed.

The drones hit Amiet market and the nearby settlement of Todach, 10 to 15 kilometers north of Abyei town, around 11 a.m. local time on Monday. One of the strikes hit a fuel depot, igniting a blaze that was still smoldering more than 24 hours later, according to Associated Press and Reuters reporting. Amiet is a major commercial crossing point for the Ngok Dinka and Misseriya communities, two groups with competing claims over Abyei's political future.

Competing accounts of the target

Ngor and South Sudan's foreign ministry have squarely blamed Sudan's armed forces for the strike, though neither has produced public evidence. Juba summoned Sudan's ambassador, Essam Mohamed Karrar, to lodge a formal protest and urged Khartoum to "refrain from any actions that endanger civilian lives and property."

A senior Sudanese military officer, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said for the first time that the army's drones had targeted fuel tankers moving from South Sudan toward the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which Sudan's military has been fighting since April 2023. The officer said those killed were RSF fighters and people involved in smuggling fuel to the group, not ordinary civilians, insisting "we do not target civilians." The AP said it could not independently verify the officer's account. Reuters separately reported that three diplomatic sources, an aid worker and a conflict analyst said the depot had previously served as an RSF fuel supply point. Sudan's military-led government told Reuters the RSF is active in parts of Abyei; Ngor denied any RSF presence in the area. Neither claim could be independently verified, and Sudan's armed forces and the RSF did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters or the AP.

A dispute left unresolved since 2011

Abyei's final status has been in limbo since Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement called for a referendum on whether the oil-producing region would join Sudan or the newly independent South Sudan. The vote was never held, largely because the two sides never agreed on whether the Misseriya, Arab pastoralists who move cattle through Abyei seasonally, should be allowed to vote alongside the Ngok Dinka, who are settled there and generally favor union with South Sudan.

The UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) was created by Security Council Resolution 1990 in June 2011, after fighting and mass displacement, to monitor what the mission calls the "flashpoint border" and to protect civilians in what is supposed to be a demilitarized zone. That status has come under growing strain as Sudan's civil war between the army and the RSF, now in its fourth year, pushes fighters and supply lines south. Diplomats say Abyei has become an increasingly important transit corridor for fuel and other logistics tied to the RSF, making its markets a target even though both Khartoum and Juba are bound by agreements to keep the area free of military activity.

UN demands accountability

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the attacks in a statement issued Tuesday, saying drone strikes near Amiet market and Todach had killed dozens of civilians, including women and children, with the toll expected to rise as many people remained missing. His statement, issued before the toll reached 153, did not identify who carried out the strikes.

"Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international law. There will need to be accountability," Guterres said, calling on the governments of Sudan and South Sudan "to take all possible steps to prevent further attacks and uphold the demilitarized status of Abyei."

UNISFA said it deployed medical personnel, firefighting teams and quick-reaction forces immediately after the strike to treat the wounded, support casualty evacuations and keep the fire from spreading further through the market. In a follow-up statement Wednesday, the mission said it remained "deeply concerned" about the targeting of civilians, reported that it had extinguished most of the large fires in the area, and said it had intensified day-and-night patrols. It urged "all parties to refrain from any retaliatory actions" and said it was monitoring the situation closely in coordination with local authorities.

What comes next

No independent investigation into the strike's origin or target has been announced. Sudan's government has not responded publicly to the South Sudanese ambassador summons, and both the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF have so far declined to comment on the record to wire reporters seeking confirmation of which side, if either, controls the area around Amiet. South Sudan's government, which has sought to maintain official neutrality in Sudan's civil war even as the conflict spills repeatedly across the border into Abyei, has pressed for the dispute to be handled "through diplomatic channels."

For now, the practical response is being led by UNISFA's roughly decade-old peacekeeping presence, which is attempting to contain fires, recover the missing and prevent the kind of retaliatory violence that has flared in Abyei before. Officials in the territory say the final casualty count will not be known until the search for the missing is complete and the remaining fires are fully out.

Monday's strike is the deadliest single episode in a pattern of escalating violence around Amiet this year. UNISFA condemned clashes at the same market in mid-September that killed at least 26 people and urged an immediate halt to hostilities there. Rights monitors have also attributed a separate series of strikes on the town of al-Muglad, in Sudan's West Kordofan state, to the Sudanese army in the days just before the Amiet attack. The UN-coordinated Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2026 counted more than 88,000 people in Abyei already facing severe food insecurity last autumn, a toll it projected would climb toward 96,000 by the spring lean season even before this week's strike — a number aid workers expect to grow further as thousands flee the market and the fires that followed.