GENEVA — The UN rights chief on Monday condemned a "sharp increase" in the use of drone warfare in conflict-torn Sudan where more than 1,000 civilians were killed in such strikes in the first five months of this year.

 

Drone warfare has become an increasingly prominent feature of Sudan's conflict since it erupted in April 2023 between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

 

"In Sudan, the horrific conflict has expanded and escalated, marked by a sharp increase in the use of drone warfare," said UN rights chief Volker Turk.

 

"Between January and May 2026, our office documented more than 1,000 civilians killed by drone strikes," he said in an opening address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

 

He also said that "rape and sexual violence are rampant".

 

Now in its fourth year, the conflict in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million from their homes, creating what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises.

 

Drone strikes on the strategic city of El Obeid killed 23 people, a rights group and witnesses said last week, in one of the deadliest aerial attacks the city has seen since the war began.

 

"The roofs of houses collapsed on their occupants," a resident of the Al Matar neighbourhood in the city's east said.

 

El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, has been partially encircled for months by paramilitary forces and sits along a key route linking RSF-held areas in the western Darfur region to army-controlled regions in the east.

 

Fighting has intensified in recent months in the Kordofan region and Blue Nile state near the Ethiopian border, particularly after the RSF captured El Fasher in October, the army's last major stronghold in western Darfur.

 

Kordofan -- home to oil deposits, arable land and the RSF's most powerful paramilitary allies -- remains a key and fiercely contested battleground.

 

The war in Sudan, where two rival generals are competing for power, was described as one of the world's most neglected crises this month by the Norwegian Refugee Council.