Drone and shelling attacks in Khartoum kill and maim civilians in 2024

Sudan's war began in April 2023 as a power struggle between the national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Khartoum, the capital, became one of its main battlegrounds, with fighting spreading through residential districts in the city and its twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri.

Throughout 2024, drone strikes and artillery shelling repeatedly hit areas where civilians lived and sheltered. Many people were killed, and many others were seriously wounded, including children, some of whom lost limbs. Hospitals in the capital were damaged, closed or short of supplies, which made treating such injuries extremely difficult.

The violence forced millions of Sudanese to flee their homes, inside the country and abroad, in what aid agencies and the United Nations described as one of the world's largest displacement and humanitarian crises. Reports of child casualties drew international attention to the human cost of the conflict, and individual stories of injured children have since prompted public gestures of solidarity from abroad.