At least 35 people were killed and several wounded when Sudanese army drones struck a traditional court in the village of Garra al-Zawaya, North Darfur, on Sunday, August 2, 2026, according to the Emergency Lawyers rights group. The strike hit at approximately 1 p.m. local time (11:00 GMT) as civilians gathered for hearings on local cases and disputes Al Jazeera.

Garra al-Zawaya lies near the town of Kabkabiya, roughly 150 kilometers west of el-Fasher, which was the Sudanese army's last stronghold in Darfur before the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured it in a bloody offensive in October 2025. The village is currently under RSF control. The court building that was struck functions as a traditional institution for resolving local and tribal feuds and sustained damage in the attack. A witness from the area told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that the court session was being held under a tree with local community leaders participating. Among those killed, according to the witness, were four tribal leaders and two RSF commanders Arab News.

The presence of RSF commanders alongside tribal leaders and civilians at a customary court session raises questions about the Sudanese Armed Forces' (SAF) targeting decisions. The army has not publicly commented on the specific strike. Emergency Lawyers, which has been documenting violations by both sides of the conflict, attributed the attack to the army's drone fleet.

The strike fits a well-documented pattern of escalating drone warfare in Sudan. Since the RSF's el-Fasher campaign, both the SAF and the RSF have increasingly relied on armed drones to strike deep behind opposing lines, often hitting civilian infrastructure in the process. According to the UN, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes in Sudan during the first five months of 2026 alone. The UN has also described the broader Sudan conflict as the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with millions displaced.

The pattern of drone attacks this year shows a widening set of targets. In June 2026, drone strikes on the central Sudanese city of el-Obeid killed up to 23 people. In April, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Darfur treated 56 wounded and recorded two deaths following five drone attacks carried out by the SAF. The Sudan INGO Forum condemned a March drone attack on Ed Dain Teaching Hospital in East Darfur as a "grave escalation in attacks on healthcare." Drone strikes on UNHCR-contracted trucks in North Darfur on April 24 destroyed life-saving assistance intended for over 1,314 families. MSF was forced to withdraw from Kornoi and Tine following drone strikes on November 3, 2025, and has called for the immediate protection of civilians and humanitarian workers Reliefweb.

The RSF is not only a victim of drone strikes but a perpetrator. A drone attack by a paramilitary group in Sudan killed 24 people, including eight children, in early February 2026. A separate drone attack on a World Food Programme aid convoy in North Kordofan province killed one person and wounded several others, according to UN official Denise Brown PBS.

The broader context here is a conflict now in its fourth year with no viable peace process in sight. The war began in April 2023 when RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo turned against his former ally, Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Tens of thousands have been killed. The RSF, which emerged from the government-backed Janjaweed militia accused of atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s, consolidated control over much of the Darfur region following its capture of el-Fasher. UN investigators said the violence linked to the RSF siege and capture of el-Fasher bore "the hallmarks of genocide."

What sets the Garra al-Zawaya strike apart is the target: not a military base or a supply convoy, but a traditional dispute-resolution institution operating in the open, under a tree, with community leaders present. Think of these courts as the equivalent of a community mediation center — one of the few functioning mechanisms for local governance and conflict resolution in areas where formal state institutions have collapsed. Striking one, regardless of whether RSF personnel were present, eliminates a civilian structure that communities rely on to manage intercommunal disputes in a region already saturated with armed actors.

The killing of tribal leaders compounds the damage. In Darfur's fragmented political landscape, tribal leaders often serve as intermediaries between rival armed groups and between communities and whatever authority controls a given area. Their removal narrows the already constrained space for local mediation and increases the likelihood that disputes escalate to armed confrontation, a dynamic the region has seen repeatedly over two decades of conflict.

Both sides of the war have shown a willingness to accept civilian casualties as a cost of operations, and neither has faced meaningful international accountability mechanisms sufficient to alter that calculation. The Garra al-Zawaya strike, like the attacks on hospitals, aid convoys, and marketplaces that preceded it, is unlikely to be the last.