Air and drone strikes reportedly caused civilian casualties across several parts of Sudan this week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday, October 22. In North Darfur State, an air strike reportedly killed five civilians in Tina locality on Tuesday, including two people working with the community-led Emergency Response Rooms, with many other people reportedly injured, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told the UN noon briefing.

Source: United Nations — Daily Press Briefing, 22 October 2026

The Sudan Times, reporting from the other side of the same border area, said five Sudanese civilians, including two humanitarian volunteers, were killed and several others seriously wounded in a drone strike on a refugee settlement in the Bamna area inside Chadian territory, near the border with Sudan's North Darfur state. Thousands of Sudanese civilians have sought refuge there after fleeing fighting in the border towns of Tine, Um Baru and Karnoi, the report said.

Source: The Sudan Times — Drone strike kills five Sudanese refugees in Chad

The Emergency Rooms Council in Tine locality identified the two volunteers as El Hadi Sandal Issa, coordinator of the Bamna Emergency Room, and Adam Omda Arja, a member of its programmes office, according to The Sudan Times. A medical source in Chad told local Sudanese media that several people sustained serious injuries, with some requiring urgent surgical treatment, and the council said a communications blackout had complicated efforts to assess the full extent of the casualties.

Responsibility for the strike has not been established. Local volunteers accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of carrying out the attack amid escalating drone warfare along the Sudan-Chad border — an allegation that could not be independently verified, with no immediate confirmation of who was responsible, The Sudan Times said. The UN briefing did not name who carried out the strike.

The UN condemned the killing of civilians and stressed that civilians, humanitarian personnel and civilian infrastructure must always be protected and never targeted, in accordance with international humanitarian law. Further civilian casualties were also reported after air and drone strikes in West and South Kordofan, and the UN said hostilities were driving up fuel prices in parts of Kordofan and Darfur, which is expected to push commodity prices higher for the most vulnerable families.

The UN and its humanitarian partners are preparing to scale up life-saving assistance in the most affected areas of Darfur and Kordofan over the next six months, but severe funding shortages hamper the response, Dujarric said. The UN called on donors to provide resources and on the parties to the conflict to allow aid to be delivered.