Shrapnel scattered everywhere, smoke lingering as it fades after flames consumed the bodies of civilians, vehicles, and commercial goods long awaited by thousands of Sudanese, amid a tragic humanitarian crisis.

Charred corpses fused together by the bombardment that struck the market of Jabal Issa town, about 140 kilometres northwest of Al-Malha, on January 25, 2026. The wounded suffer in silence as the country’s health system collapses after nearly three years of war.

Local community leaders, including Ibrahim Al-Toum, are leading efforts to repair the market and rescue the injured following an airstrike carried out by a drone believed to be a Turkish-made Bayraktar Akıncı.

Al-Toum told Darfur 24 that a drone, believed to belong to the Sudanese army, carried out a violent strike on the Jabal Issa market, killing 13 people instantly, charring more than eight additional bodies, and wounding several civilians, including women.He explained that the attack targeted a commercial vehicle as its passengers were leaving the market, resulting in the burning of several civilians, in addition to other charred bodies inside the market whose identities have yet to be established. He also revealed heavy losses to goods owned by local residents and traders from neighboring villages.

Simultaneously, two corroborating sources—who requested anonymity—reported that a drone struck a site used as a Starlink satellite internet outlet west of the city of Mellit in North Darfur State, killing and wounding civilians.According to the sources, preliminary figures indicate that around six people were killed and three others injured, some in critical condition, and were transferred to the city’s rural hospital, Darfur 24 reported.

Massacre at Abu Za‘eima Market

In a related development, an army drone based in Port Sudan targeted the Abu Za‘eima market in North Kordofan State at midday on Friday, January 23, 2025, killing five civilians and injuring thirty others to varying degrees, including women and children. The wounded were transferred to the city of Ad-Dabba in Northern State for treatment, according to Madamik newspaper.

The human rights group “Emergency Lawyers” condemned the attack in a statement, denouncing the targeting of a market and a civilian site. It stressed that targeting markets and civilian areas constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime, as it breaches the principles of distinction and proportionality.

The group emphasised that the protection of civilians is a non-negotiable legal obligation, and called for an immediate halt to drone attacks on civilian sites, respect for the principle of military necessity, strict adherence to international humanitarian law, and the guarantee of victims’ and their families’ right to justice and reparations.

In official reactions, the Sudan Founding Alliance (Ta’sis) stated that on the evening of Sunday, January 25, 2026, aircraft belonging to what it described as the “terrorist Muslim Brotherhood militia” targeted the Jabal Issa market in Al-Malha locality, North Darfur, using drones.

According to the alliance’s statement, “this crime resulted in the complete burning of the market and the martyrdom of 23 civilians, including shop owners, vendors, and residents.”

The statement added: “In a similar crime that confirms the same criminal approach, the army and its Islamist militias on the same day bombed the Abu Za‘eima market in North Kordofan State—a market crowded with civilians—killing five civilians and injuring thirty others, including women and the elderly, in criminal conduct that threatens civilian lives and flagrantly violates all international laws and norms.” It continued: “The crimes of the terrorist army continue amid complete regional and international silence, encouraging these criminals to commit further atrocities, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the killing of civilians, and to persist in this war.”

The Drone War

Meanwhile, as the war between the army in Port Sudan and the Ta’sis Alliance approaches its third year, field data indicate heavy reliance on drones, particularly in bombing populated areas, markets, and hospitals.Drone attacks are currently increasing in South Kordofan, amid fears of an expanded scope of targeting and escalating security threats in the region.

Mona Abdel Fattah said that the impact of drones in the Sudanese war should not be exaggerated to the point of portraying them as an overwhelming factor that changes all rules of engagement. “Their impact is significant,” she said, “but it operates in conjunction with artillery, armored vehicles, and logistical lines.”

She added that since the outbreak of the Sudanese war in April 2023, drones have entered the battlefield as a decisive tool that has redrawn the balance of power between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, turning the sky into a battlefield no less ferocious than the ground. While the war began as a conventional conflict, the introduction of drones transformed it into a low-cost, high-impact technological war, with blurred boundaries and broader possibilities.

She noted that Sudanese army drones—particularly Iranian-made Mohajer-6 models—have given the army a clear operational advantage, thanks to their ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and precision strikes using small guided munitions of the Qaem type. These aircraft, she said, provided the army with an effective means to offset its limited ground deployment in urban areas and helped it regain the initiative in the skies over Khartoum and other cities.

In a related context, The New York Times reported that the Sudanese army has frequently been accused of indiscriminate shelling in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, often killing dozens at once, with most of these attacks also occurring in Darfur.

The Strategy of Contradiction

Meanwhile, the army commander in Port Sudan, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, addressed the international community in an article published in a Turkish magazine, stating that what Sudan is facing is not an internal armed conflict, “but a broader test that touches the essence of state sovereignty, social cohesion, and the future of the surrounding regional order,” as he put it.Al-Burhan made this assertion as a condition for peace in his message to the international community, reiterating that Sudan is facing not an internal armed conflict, “but a broader test that touches the essence of state sovereignty, social cohesion, and the future of the surrounding regional order.”

This came after an article he published in The Wall Street Journal, which leading Sudanese analysts viewed as evidence of contradiction in al-Burhan’s positions and indifference to the suffering of the people.

In this context, activist Ibrahim Borsi said that “there is only one thing in Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s article published in The Wall Street Journal on November 26, 2025, that can be considered true: the man is writing from within a void—the void of the state, the void of legitimacy, and the void of the very idea itself.”

He added that one can observe a clear attempt at “changing skin,” a process known in Western political literature as image laundering, whereby a leader implicated in chaos seeks to present himself abroad as a “statesman who lost his way and then returned.” He continued: “The article does not merely conceal the past; it falsifies the present. Al-Burhan writes as if he had not, just a day earlier, attacked the US president’s envoy, Massad Boulos, and as if the United States were not a state of institutions with a single position embodied in clearly defined official stances.”

* Bayethe Msimang is an independent writer, analyst and political commentator.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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