The death toll from the drone strike on the Abyei market rises to at least 153, with the fire still burning

The count kept climbing all day Tuesday, because the market was still on fire.

“We have recorded 153 deaths,” Yohanna Akol Ngor, the caretaker information minister of the Abyei administration, told the Associated Press by phone. “It is a horrible and shocking situation.” The figure had stood at 73 in the morning. The strike hit Amiet Market, north of Abyei town, at around midday on Monday and ignited a fuel depot inside the market. The fire was still burning on Tuesday, and rescue teams were still struggling to reach victims inside it, which is why officials expect the toll to rise further. Local authorities said about 8,000 people have been displaced, as of October 20.

Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said more than 20 wounded people had been brought to Ameth Bek Hospital, where its teams are working alongside staff from South Sudan’s health ministry. “So far we received over 20 patients, including several critical cases. Patients with burns were also admitted,” said Dr. Christian Lindauer, the charity’s medical activities manager at the hospital. MSF called on all parties to stop attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Who fired the drones is disputed, and the two accounts cannot both be true. Ngor and South Sudan’s foreign ministry blamed Sudan’s military. A senior Sudanese military officer, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the press, said the army carried out a drone strike on Monday targeting fuel tankers arriving from South Sudan that he said were bound for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, with which the army has been at war since April 2023. He said those killed were RSF members and people involved in fuel smuggling. “We do not target civilians,” he said. The AP could not independently verify his account of the targets or of who was killed. Diplomatic sources, an aid worker and a conflict expert told Reuters the strike hit a fuel depot that had previously been used by the RSF to supply its fighters. South Sudan’s foreign ministry said the attack hit multiple locations within the market, causing civilian casualties and extensive property damage. It summoned Sudan’s ambassador to protest and urged Khartoum to settle the Abyei question through diplomatic channels.

Abyei is an oil rich territory claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan since the South became independent in 2011, and administered jointly, uneasily, ever since. It sits along Sudan’s Kordofan frontier, which has become a major battleground of the civil war, and the United Nations force stationed there warned in May that the RSF’s presence in the area was exposing residents to greater danger. A market full of traders and shoppers on a Monday is what that warning looks like when it comes due. One strike, one fuel depot, and a death toll that passed 150 before the fire was even out.