# Sudan Civil War: Drone Strikes Kill Nearly 700 Civilians in First Three Months of 2026
*April 14, 2026 — Conflict / Africa*
Nearly 700 civilians have been killed in drone strikes across Sudan in the first three months of this year alone, the United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher reported Tuesday, as the country’s brutal civil war entered its fourth year with no end in sight. The grim milestone was announced a day before the third anniversary of the conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has already killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 11 million people.
“In the first three months of this year, nearly 700 civilians were reportedly killed in drone strikes,” Fletcher said in a statement, describing the situation as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The strikes have been particularly concentrated in the southern Kordofan region — now the main active battleground — and in RSF-controlled areas of western Sudan, including Darfur.
## A War That Has Torn the Country Apart
The war, which erupted in April 2023 when power-sharing arrangements collapsed between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF, has produced a catastrophe that aid agencies and UN officials have repeatedly described as beyond description. Entire cities have been reduced to ruins. Markets, hospitals and residential neighbourhoods have been struck in attacks that witnesses and humanitarian workers say have targeted civilian infrastructure with disturbing regularity.
The use of drone strikes — by both sides, though reporting has increasingly focused on the RSF’s deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles — has transformed the character of the conflict. Unlike artillery or air raids, drone strikes can be deployed with greater precision in populated areas, but the near-daily frequency in recent months has made ordinary movement, trade and daily life across wide swathes of the country nearly impossible.
## Famine, Displacement and Systemic Sexual Violence
Fletcher’s statement outlined a crisis that extends far beyond battlefield casualties. Hunger is accelerating as the lean season approaches. Hundreds of thousands of children are acutely malnourished. Millions of students have been deprived of education. Women and girls are facing what the UN described as systemic and brutal sexual violence linked to the conflict.
“Millions have been driven from their homes across Sudan and beyond its borders, with entire communities emptied and families uprooted time and again,” Fletcher said. “The risk of wider regional instability is high.”
Nearly 34 million people — close to two-thirds of Sudan’s population — now require humanitarian support. Last year, aid workers managed to reach 17 million people with some form of assistance. This year, the target is 20 million. But the response is, in Fletcher’s words, “critically underfunded.”
## International Response Falls Dangerously Short
Denise Brown, the UN’s resident coordinator in Sudan, said Monday that the 2026 appeal for $2.9 billion had received contributions covering just 16 percent of the target — a reflection of donor fatigue, competing global crises, and what critics describe as insufficient political will from the international community.
Donors are scheduled to gather in Berlin on Wednesday for a conference aimed at reviving stalled peace talks and mobilising emergency aid. But with both the SAF and the RSF having repeatedly violated ceasefire agreements, and with no credible enforcement mechanism in place, observers have expressed deep scepticism about the prospects for meaningful progress.
“This grim and chastening anniversary marks another year when the world has failed to meet the test of Sudan,” Fletcher said. It was an unusually blunt assessment from a senior UN official — and a reflection of the desperation that has settled over a crisis that continues to receive a fraction of the international attention it demands.