NYALA, Sudan - A drone strike hit a crowded market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on Monday evening, killing civilians and fighters and sending more than 150 wounded people to an emergency room, according to witnesses, medical groups and local monitors.

The full toll remained uncertain because access to the city is restricted and competing organizations reported sharply different numbers. Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese rights group, said more than 100 people were killed and 113 wounded in what it described as a Sudanese military drone strike. The Associated Press said it could not independently verify those figures.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said the teaching hospital it supports in Nyala had received 36 bodies, including 21 people wearing civilian clothing. Medical teams reported seeing more than 150 wounded patients, including women and children, in the emergency room.

MSF said the strike occurred at about 8 p.m. on Oct. 26 at a busy market in western Nyala and that a second strike hit a civilian neighborhood. Its staff described patients arriving with shrapnel injuries and burns, some transported in tuk-tuks and donkey carts.

Witness accounts indicated that large numbers of Rapid Support Forces fighters were gathered at the market, where civilian vendors sell food, tea and cigarettes. One witness told AP that the blast killed fighters as well as women selling food. Another estimated that about 14 civilians were killed but stressed the difficulty of establishing identities and numbers.

A spokesperson for forces allied with the Sudanese army said more than 150 militia recruits were killed at what he called a camp west of Nyala, describing the attack as precise. That account conflicted with evidence from the hospital and rights groups that civilians were among the dead and wounded.

The Sudan Doctors Network gave a lower preliminary toll of at least 21 dead and more than 40 wounded. It said limited access, active fighting and the absence of confirmed casualty lists made verification difficult. The group also described the attack as shelling rather than a drone strike.

These differences matter. In a war saturated with propaganda and weak independent access, casualty claims can be used to portray a strike as either a clean military success or a deliberate massacre. The most concrete evidence available Wednesday came from hospital admissions: dozens of bodies, civilian clothing on many of them and an emergency department overwhelmed with wounded people.

The attack is part of a civil war that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary RSF. The conflict has killed at least 59,000 people and displaced about 13 million, according to figures cited by AP, while famine has taken hold in parts of the country.

Nyala is controlled by the RSF and has become a vital commercial and military center. MSF said another drone struck the city's Al-Mawashi market on Oct. 16, killing at least four people. It also said both sides have attacked civilian areas and infrastructure, including recent RSF strikes on electricity systems in several states.

A market does not stop being civilian because fighters shop there

The presence of armed men can make a location a military concern, but it does not erase the civilians who depend on the same space to survive. International humanitarian law requires parties to distinguish military targets from civilians and to avoid attacks expected to cause disproportionate civilian harm.

That duty is especially important in Sudan, where formal economic life has collapsed across large areas. Vendors gather near fighters not necessarily because they are combatants, but because soldiers may be among the few people with money. Poverty pushes civilians into dangerous proximity to armed groups and then leaves them exposed when the other side attacks.

Calling every person near an RSF gathering a recruit would make civilian protection meaningless. At the same time, declaring a final casualty number before names and records can be checked would weaken the credibility of those documenting possible violations. The honest position is that a military target may have been present and that substantial civilian casualties are confirmed, while the total remains unresolved.

Drone warfare makes this ambiguity easier to exploit. Operators can strike from a distance, release a claim of precision and leave local hospitals to count the human cost. In places where journalists and investigators cannot move safely, the first official narrative can travel much farther than the evidence.

Sudan's war has continued partly because armed leaders and their outside supporters have paid too little price for civilian destruction. International attention rises briefly after a market, hospital or displacement camp is hit, then moves elsewhere while the infrastructure of ordinary life is dismantled.

Accountability begins with preserving hospital records, witness testimony and any available flight or targeting data. It also requires pressure on both the army and RSF to permit independent access. Without that, every disputed strike becomes another argument between armed institutions while families search for names.

The darkest reality in Nyala is not only that a market was struck. It is that civilians had so few safe ways to earn a living that selling food beside fighters appeared necessary, and that the war has made even the resulting death toll difficult to prove.