A drone attack hit Amiet Market in Abyei on Monday around 11:30 local time, killing 153 people, according to the region's information minister. The death toll rose sharply from an earlier count of 73, turning a market blast into one of the deadliest single attacks reported in the disputed border region.
The timing matters because Abyei sits at the fault line between Sudan and South Sudan, and both countries jointly administer the oil-rich area whose ownership has remained unresolved since South Sudan ceded in 2011. South Sudan has already summoned Sudan's ambassador to lodge a formal protest, a move that signals how quickly the strike has escalated beyond a local tragedy into a cross-border political crisis.
Yohana Akol Ngor said the number of dead had climbed from 73 to 153 people by Tuesday. He did not give a breakdown of the victims, but the scale alone points to a strike that tore through civilians at a market rather than a military site. That is why the attack has drawn such sharp attention in Sudan, where the war between Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces has repeatedly spilled into places that should have been far from the front line.
There is still a gap in the public account of what set off the attack. A military source said Sudan's army carried it out and claimed the market was a fuel supply site for the RSF, but the army has not responded to that allegation. No evidence for that claim has been made public, leaving the accusation hanging over a death toll that is already severe enough on its own.
The Abyei strike also fits a wider pattern of drone warfare that has widened the war's reach. The Sudan War Observatory said drone strikes in West Kordofan on Sunday evening killed 145 people when a truck carrying around 200 mourners was hit as it arrived in Al-Dabab, with five others killed when a tent at the funeral was struck and another 150 people injured. It said army drones also bombed a market in Al-Mujlad the same evening, although the exact number of deaths and injuries there was not yet known.
The UN has said it is alarmed by the continued deadly drone strikes across the country. Stéphane Dujarric said they were killing civilians, including children, and disrupting essential services. With more than 14 million people already forced from their homes and 20 million facing acute hunger, the strike in Abyei is not just another battlefield episode. It is a sign that the war is still finding new places to hit, and that the border between Sudan and South Sudan is becoming harder to keep intact.
