An explosive-laden drone struck a secondary school and a health care center in southern Sudan on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls, according to a hospital official and a medical group.
The Associated Press reported that the attack happened in the village of Shukeiri in White Nile province and left at least 10 people wounded. Dr. Musa al-Majeri, the director of Douiem Hospital, said three girls suffered serious injuries, two of whom underwent surgery and one of whom was evacuated to Khartoum. The Sudan Doctors Network said the dead included two teachers and a health care worker and said there was no military presence in the village.
Both the medical group and al-Majeri blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for the strike. AP reported that the RSF did not respond to a request for comment. The attack immediately raised the civilian toll of Sudan’s nearly three-year war, which has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.
The strike was especially disturbing because it hit civilian institutions rather than a military outpost. A school and a health facility are among the most protected places in any conflict zone, yet the AP report describes both as targets in the same attack. That pattern fits a wider war in which drones, artillery and raids have repeatedly reached areas that should have been outside the front line.
AP said the war in Sudan began in April 2023 after a power struggle between the military and the RSF erupted into open fighting. Since then, the conflict has produced mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities that have drawn international scrutiny, including investigations by the International Criminal Court as possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The White Nile strike is part of that broader record. AP noted that the fighting has increasingly centered in the Kordofan region, where deadly drone attacks are reported daily, and that previous recent atrocities included the RSF overrun of el-Fasher in Darfur. Against that background, the Shukeiri attack stands out not just for the number of dead but for the age and vulnerability of many of the victims.
At least 17 people were killed in a single strike on a school and a medical center. That fact alone captures the scale of the violence. The hospital and medical-group accounts cited by AP leave little ambiguity about the immediate result: civilians, many of them children, were hit in a place meant for learning and care.
