A drone strike on the paramilitary-controlled town of Kutum in Sudan's North Darfur state has killed 12 civilians, including six children, a medical source and local activists said Thursday.
The strike on Wednesday came amid a surge in drone attacks by both Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been at war since April 2023.
A medical source told AFP that 12 bodies, including six children—three of them female secondary-school students—were brought to the hospital in Kutum.
Sixteen others were injured, including women and children, and are receiving treatment, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.
The El-Fasher Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, said the strike hit the Al-Salama neighbourhood near Al-Um Girls' School, blaming the army for the attack.
Near-daily drone strikes have disrupted life across Sudan, especially in Kordofan, now the war's main battlefront, and in the RSF-controlled west, including Darfur, at times killing dozens of civilians.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it has treated around 400 people for drone-related injuries since February after strikes hit civilian areas in eastern Chad near the Sudanese border and several parts of Darfur.
The United Nations has previously said drone attacks across Sudan had killed more than 500 civilians between January and mid-March, warning of "the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas".
"The teams are receiving patients with horrific injuries: patients with transfixing wounds, amputated limbs, devastating burns -- many of whom are already dead by the time they reach the hospital," said Muriel Boursier, MSF's emergency coordinator in Darfur.
"The scale of violence and atrocity we witness is unbearable."
Last week, a drone attack blamed on the RSF struck a hospital in White Nile state, just east of Kordofan, killing 10 people after hitting an operating theatre and a maternity ward, MSF said.
On March 20, another attack—attributed to the Sudanese army in RSF-held territory—gutted El-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur, killing 70 people and wounding 146.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 2,000 people have been killed and 720 injured in 213 attacks on health facilities across Sudan since the war began.
In 2025, Sudan accounted for 82 percent of all global deaths resulting from attacks on healthcare, the WHO said.
During the same period, MSF documented 100 violent incidents targeting its staff, facilities and medical supplies.
The conflict, now nearing its three-year mark, has already killed tens of thousands, displaced more than 11 million people and created what the UN describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises.
The war has effectively divided Sudan, with the army controlling the north, east and centre while the RSF dominates Darfur and, with allied forces, parts of the country's south.