This is an allegation, and the whole story is built that way, because it has to be.
A rights group called Emergency Lawyers says a Sudanese army drone struck a traditional court at Garra al-Zawaya, a village in North Darfur state about 150 kilometers west of el-Fasher, at around 1 p.m. local time on Sunday. At least 35 people were killed and several wounded, Al Jazeera reported.
What the court was
Not a courthouse. A gathering.
The court was one of the traditional bodies that settle local and tribal disputes, and Al Jazeera reports that "the court session was being held under a tree with the participation of local community leaders."
That detail is worth pausing on, because it is the difference between a building that might plausibly be mistaken for something else from the air and a group of people sitting outdoors in the open.
Who died
Among the dead were four tribal leaders and two commanders of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese army.
So the casualties were not exclusively civilian. We are stating that plainly, because it is the fact most likely to be left out by whichever side finds it inconvenient, and because it does not resolve anything on its own. The presence of two RSF commanders at a dispute hearing under a tree does not by itself make 35 dead a lawful strike, and it is not our place to adjudicate that. It is our place to report it.
Emergency Lawyers has not, in the reporting we could reach, given a breakdown of how many of the 35 were civilians.
The army has not answered
The Al Jazeera account records no response from the Sudanese armed forces, and we found none elsewhere.
That gap matters. An accusation of this weight against a national military, without the military's answer next to it, is an incomplete story, and we would rather label the hole than let the silence read as either admission or absence of interest. If the army responds, we will report what it says.
The war
Sudan's war began in April 2023 between the RSF, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and the armed forces under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Al Jazeera reports that tens of thousands of people have been killed since.
Darfur has been among the worst-affected regions throughout.
On drones specifically, Al Jazeera cites United Nations figures that more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes in the first five months of this year. Both sides use them.
One source
We could reach a single source for this, and we are saying so rather than implying a fuller picture than we have.
The claim originates with Emergency Lawyers. It has not been independently confirmed by any body we could reach, the army has not addressed it, and the casualty figure is a rights group's count rather than an official one. Read it that way.
