It was late morning, and Amiet Common Market was busy as usual. Then, at about 11:30 on Monday, explosions tore through the trading hub some ten kilometres from Abyei town. Local officials count at least 73 dead and 19 wounded and fear the toll will climb, because thick smoke forced rescuers to halt their search for bodies.
According to Bulabek Deng Kuol, the traditional leader of the Ngok Dinka people, about twelve drones struck. They landed in the centre and south of the market and at its northern gate, and set the fuel traders’ corner ablaze. Abyei’s information minister, Yohana Akol Ngor, said many victims were burned beyond recognition. Most were traders, both Sudanese and South Sudanese; four Somalis were also among the dead. At the hospital in Abyei town, the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières took in over 20 patients, some with severe burns.
Abyei’s administration points the finger at Sudan’s armed forces. A military source told the BBC that the market had been chosen because it supplied fuel to the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group the army has been fighting since 2023. No formal statement from the military has followed so far.
The strike has quickly turned into a diplomatic dispute. In Juba, the government called in Sudan’s envoy to lodge a protest and condemned the bombing “in the strongest terms possible”. Both countries claim the oil-rich border area, which is under UN protection and whose fate was meant to be settled by a referendum promised in 2005. That vote has never happened.
Abyei was not the only target. On Sunday evening, army drones reportedly hit a truck carrying mourners in West Kordofan, and a monitoring group puts that death toll at around 150. The UN said it was “alarmed” by the wave of deadly strikes. Since 2023, the fighting between the army and the RSF has uprooted more than 14 million Sudanese.
