Drone Strike on Nyala Market Kills at Least 21 in Sudan's Darfur

Update: Rights group says more than 100 killed in Nyala market strike, and MSF saw 150 injured

Updated 05:21 UTC, Oct. 28, 2026. Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese rights group that tracks violence in the war, said in a statement on Tuesday, October 27, that more than 100 people were killed in the drone strike that hit a market in Nyala, South Darfur, on Monday evening, and that 113 others were injured, many of them women and children, the Associated Press reported. The group blamed the Sudanese military for the strike, condemned it as a massacre and called for an independent investigation. Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said 36 bodies arrived at the hospital it supports in Nyala and that 150 injured people were seen in its emergency room, AP reported.

Those figures are far higher than the first toll in this report, given to AFP by a medic at Nyala Hospital: 21 people killed and more than 40 injured. The counts were gathered by different sources in different ways, and the full toll has not been independently verified. The attribution of the strike to the Sudanese military in this update is the claim of Emergency Lawyers, reported by AP. It is not an established finding, and the original report below, which treats responsibility as unconfirmed, stands.

A drone strike hit a market in the northern part of Nyala, Sudan, at about 8 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT) on Monday, October 26, 2026. At least 21 people were killed and more than 40 others were injured, according to a medic at Nyala Hospital and witnesses cited by AFP.

The medic gave the toll to AFP on Tuesday, October 27. "Twenty-one people were killed in last night's bombing, and more than 40 others injured," the medic said. The reports cited here do not give a breakdown of the wounded by severity, and they do not establish the identities of those killed or wounded.

Who was at the market

A second resident told AFP the market was frequented by young men, including armed members of the Rapid Support Forces. The medic could not say how many of the casualties were fighters. That limit matters for how the toll should be read: the confirmed count is 21 dead and more than 40 injured, and the reporting does not divide that count between fighters and other people who were at the market on Monday night.

Responsibility not established

Responsibility for the strike had not been established as of Tuesday, October 27, 2026, and no group had publicly claimed it. The strike is therefore reported here as an attack whose author remains unconfirmed. Any claim about who launched it would go beyond what the sources in this report establish, and this article makes no such claim.

Nyala and the war

Nyala is the capital of South Darfur state. It also serves as the de facto capital of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which set up a rival administration there. The Sudanese military has been at war with the RSF since April 2023, and it regularly strikes Nyala, according to AFP reporting carried by Barbados Gazette. Monday night's market strike fits that wider pattern of strikes on the city, even though responsibility for this specific strike remains unconfirmed.

Two separate incidents readers should not confuse with this one

A drone strike on a livestock market in Nyala in mid October 2026 killed about 30 people, according to hospital sources cited by Der Spiegel in reporting carried by QNC News. The RSF blamed the army for that earlier strike. That was a separate incident, about a week and a half before Monday's strike, and it is not part of the toll in this report.

The Nyala market strike also came on the same Monday as separate drone strikes on power stations in Sennar, Gedaref, White Nile and Gezira states. Those power strikes, and a further strike near Khartoum on Tuesday, are covered in a separate Orbit Post article on the Sudan power outages. They are a different event from the market strike in Nyala, and the two tolls should not be combined.