In a statement late on Friday, the local governor said the attack knocked out a nearby power station for the fourth time since the war between the RSF and the Sudanese army began two years ago.

The attack marks a deadly escalation in the ongoing conflict, with a further 23 people injured, a medical official said. Witnesses said at least nine children were among the wounded. “My son, my cousin, my daughter’s husband and two children, my cousin’s children are dead. The boy is 10 years old and the girl is about two years old,” witness Haleema told Al Jazeera. Over the past months, the RSF has been accused of attacking power infrastructure in Sudanese army-controlled areas across central and northern Sudan. The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, denies carrying out drone attacks.

Friday’s attack hit a makeshift camp roughly 3km (2 miles) from the Atbara power station outside the town of al-Damer. The camp housed about 180 families who had fled fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and were living in abandoned buildings and tents with minimal humanitarian assistance. “The first drone attack came and landed right behind us,” said Mawaheb Mohamed, another survivor of the attack. “Fifteen minutes later, another one came – four in total. He decided to leave because the scene was very difficult, there were corpses, people had been dismembered, and people in the hospital.” Following the attack, authorities were seen hosing down the smouldering remains of tents and belongings, as residents boarded buses headed to an unknown location.

The escalation came amid a wider collapse of Sudan’s power grid, with drone and missile attacks plunging millions into weeks-long blackouts, further worsening the humanitarian crisis in a country devastated by civil war. Sudan descended into violence in April 2023 when tensions between the Sudanese army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF erupted into open conflict. Al-Burhan has been celebrating recent gains made by the military, including in Khartoum, while ground fighting is currently concentrated in the Darfur region, where the RSF is battling to eliminate remaining army positions, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. The conflict has triggered one of the world’s largest displacement crises. According to the United Nations, more than 12.4 million people have been uprooted from their homes, including 3.3 million who have fled to neighbouring countries. (Aljazeera)