Drone Strike on Amiet Market in Disputed Abyei Region Kills at Least 153

A drone strike on a busy market in the disputed Abyei region killed at least 153 people on Monday, according to local officials cited by the Associated Press, in one of the deadliest single attacks reported in the oil-rich territory claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. The strike hit Amiet Market, north of Abyei town, at about 11 a.m. on Monday, October 19, and ignited a fuel depot that supplied local businesses, the Associated Press reported. The fire was still burning on Tuesday, a day later, as the reported death toll climbed sharply and families, traders and aid workers confronted a scene that officials described in plain and horrified terms.

The Associated Press reported that Yohanna Akol Ngor, the caretaker information minister of the Abyei administration, spoke by phone on Tuesday and gave the latest count himself. Ngor said "We have recorded 153 deaths" — a figure that had risen from an earlier count of 73 and, by his account, was still rising as the fire burned. He called the situation unfolding in Abyei horrible, words that captured both the scale of the loss and the uncertainty that still surrounded it. The Associated Press noted that Ngor blamed Sudan's armed forces for the strike, and it also noted, clearly, that he provided no evidence for that attribution. That distinction matters in this story, and it runs through everything that follows: the deaths, the fire and the destruction at the market have been reported by multiple outlets, but who carried out the strike, and who exactly was killed, have not been independently verified.

A market, a fuel depot and a fire that would not go out

Amiet Market was not an isolated military site in the accounts given to reporters. According to the Associated Press, the strike hit a fuel depot inside a market that supplied local businesses, in a place where people gather to trade, buy fuel and move goods through a region with few paved certainties and long-running disputes over land, oil and authority. Reuters, citing three diplomatic sources, reported that the strike hit a fuel depot inside the market that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, known as the RSF, had used in the past to supply its forces. Those two descriptions can sit side by side without resolving the central question. A market can be a civilian centre of daily life and, at the same time, a place through which fuel moves for armed groups — and that is precisely why the accounts of Monday's strike diverge so sharply, and why careful attribution is not a formality here but the substance of the reporting itself.

What is not in dispute in the reporting is the fire. The Associated Press reported that the strike ignited the fuel depot and set off a blaze that was still burning on Tuesday. A fire of that kind, fed by stored fuel, helps explain why a death toll first reported at 73 could rise to 153 within a day, and why officials warned that it was still rising. People who might have survived the initial blast can be trapped by fire, smoke and collapsing structures, and identification and recovery become harder, not easier, as hours pass. Neither the Associated Press nor Reuters put a final number on the toll in their reporting on Tuesday, and Previously is not treating 153 as a final figure. It is the count given on Tuesday by the Abyei administration's caretaker information minister, attributed as such, at a moment when the fire had not yet gone out.

Competing accounts, none independently verified

A senior Sudanese military officer, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, gave a sharply different account of the same strike. The officer said the army carried out a drone strike on Monday targeting fuel tankers arriving from South Sudan that he said were bound for the RSF. He said those killed were RSF members and people involved in fuel smuggling, and he said "We do not target civilians" in the course of that account. The Associated Press was explicit about the limits of that claim as well: it said it could not independently verify the officer's account or the identities of those killed. Sudan's military did not respond to a public request for comment, according to the Associated Press, and the RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters. Readers should hold all three of those facts together at once — the accusation from Abyei, the explanation from the unnamed Sudanese officer, and the absence of independent verification for either.

South Sudan's government took a public position of its own. According to the Associated Press and Reuters reporting summarized by regional outlets, South Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also blamed Sudan's military, said the strike hit several locations within the market causing civilian casualties and extensive property damage, and summoned Sudan's ambassador to protest. The ministry urged Khartoum to, in its words, refrain from actions that endanger civilian lives and property, and it called for disputes over Abyei to be resolved through diplomatic channels. That diplomatic step — summoning an ambassador — is a formal and serious protest, and it signals how quickly a market strike in a disputed territory can become a confrontation between two governments that already disagree about who governs the ground where it happened. It does not, on its own, settle the question of responsibility, and the reporting from both the Associated Press and Reuters treats that question as contested and unverified.

The wounded, the displaced and the condemnation

While governments traded accusations, medical teams dealt with the people who survived. Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as MSF, said more than 20 wounded people were brought to Ameth Bek Hospital, where its teams worked alongside staff from South Sudan's Health Ministry. Dr. Christian Lindauer, MSF's medical activities manager at the hospital, said "So far we received over 20 patients, including several critical cases. Patients with burns were also admitted" — a short statement that aligns with the reported fire at the fuel depot and with the kind of injuries a fuel fire inflicts. Burns, in particular, require sustained and specialised care, and a hospital receiving critical burn cases a day after a strike is a hospital preparing for a long response, not a brief one.

The human displacement was far larger than the hospital count. Reuters reported, in coverage carried by OkayAfrica, that about 8,000 people were displaced in connection with the attacks, a figure that reflects how a strike on a market does not only kill and injure those present at the moment of impact. Traders lose their stock, families leave homes near a still-burning depot, and people who depended on the market for food, fuel and income scatter to find safety elsewhere. Reuters also reported that the United Nations condemned the series of drone attacks in Abyei and other areas — phrasing that places Monday's strike not as an isolated incident but as part of a pattern of drone attacks that the UN was already watching with alarm. That wider pattern is part of why this story reaches beyond one market on one morning.

Why Abyei, and why a fuel depot matters

Abyei's status has been disputed since South Sudan's independence in 2011. The region sits on oil-rich land along the border the two countries share, and its final status was left unresolved when the south seceded, a question that has resisted settlement ever since. That history is not background decoration for Monday's strike; it is the reason a market in Abyei is administered by an Abyei administration, protested over by South Sudan's foreign ministry, and spoken about by Sudan's military as if it were a corridor in a wider war. Sudan's war between its armed forces and the RSF began in April 2023, and that war has repeatedly struck civilian markets and gathering places, a pattern documented by reporters and aid groups across more than two years of fighting. Fuel sits at the centre of that war's logistics: armies and paramilitaries alike need it to move, and depots and tankers therefore become targets in the eyes of commanders, even when those depots sit inside the markets where civilians earn their living.

That collision — between a military logic that sees a fuel supply line and a civilian reality that sees a market town — is the hardest part of this story, and none of the reporting resolves it in favour of a single account. The three diplomatic sources who spoke to Reuters said the depot had been used by the RSF in the past. The unnamed Sudanese officer who spoke to the Associated Press said the tankers targeted on Monday were bound for the RSF. Abyei and South Sudanese officials, in the same reporting, described civilian casualties and extensive damage to a market. All of those statements are attributed above to the people and outlets that reported them, because that is what the verified record, as of Tuesday, actually consists of: not a settled finding about intent or identity, but a set of competing claims around a confirmed catastrophe — a strike, a fire, a hospital filling with burn patients, thousands displaced, and a death toll that officials themselves said was still rising.

What happens next

By Tuesday night, several things remained unresolved. The fire at Amiet Market was still burning in the latest reporting. The death toll given by the Abyei administration stood at 153 and was described as rising, with no independent verification of the identities of those killed. Sudan's military had not responded publicly to the Associated Press, the RSF had not immediately responded to Reuters, and the United Nations' condemnation pointed to a broader series of drone attacks rather than a single incident under investigation with a published conclusion. South Sudan's summons of Sudan's ambassador opened a diplomatic channel, and its call for Abyei disputes to be settled through diplomacy will now be tested against events on the ground in a territory neither capital fully controls in the eyes of the other.

For the people of Abyei, the immediate questions are more basic than diplomacy: whether the fire goes out, whether the wounded at Ameth Bek Hospital survive, whether the displaced can return, and whether Amiet Market — a place built for the ordinary business of buying, selling and fuelling a community — can function again at all. Previously will continue to follow the reporting of the Associated Press and Reuters as tolls are updated and as any independent verification emerges. For more world coverage, see the Previously news front, including our recent reporting on protected status for Sudanese people in the United States, a separate story that underlines how far the consequences of Sudan's war now reach.