A drone strike on a crowded market in central Sudan has killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens more, according to a Sudanese rights group that monitors abuses in the country’s ongoing war.

The attack targeted the Al-Safiya market area on the outskirts of Sodari, a town in North Kordofan state. Emergency Lawyers, a network of volunteer legal activists documenting violations across Sudan, said several drones struck the market in quick succession while it was packed with shoppers and traders.

Witness accounts gathered by the group describe scenes of panic as explosions ripped through stalls selling food and household goods. Many of the dead and injured were reported to be women, children and elderly people who had gone to the market to buy basic supplies amid already dire living conditions.

Emergency Lawyers said the casualty figures remain preliminary, warning that the death toll could rise as more victims are found and the critically wounded succumb to their injuries. Local medical facilities, already strained by months of conflict, struggled to cope with the influx of patients suffering shrapnel wounds and blast injuries.

No party immediately claimed responsibility for the strike, and the rights group did not attribute the attack to either side in Sudan’s war, which pits the national army against the powerful Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. Both sides have increasingly relied on drones and other aerial weapons, raising fears for civilians living near front lines or in contested areas.

North Kordofan, a strategic region linking the capital Khartoum to Sudan’s western states, has seen repeated clashes and air attacks since the conflict erupted. Markets, transport hubs and displacement routes have become particularly vulnerable as civilians move in search of food, fuel and relative safety.

Human rights advocates say the drone strike on Al-Safiya market underscores the growing use of remote aerial warfare in Sudan’s conflict, often in densely populated civilian areas. They have called for independent investigations into attacks on markets, hospitals and residential neighborhoods, and for those responsible to be held to account.

For residents of Sodari and surrounding villages, the latest attack deepens a climate of fear in which even routine trips to buy food can turn deadly, further eroding the fragile fabric of daily life in a country already pushed to the brink by war, displacement and economic collapse.