The investigation into the air raids in the civil war of Sudan records that the at least 1,700 people perished during the air strikes against the residential neighbourhoods, schools, and displaced people camps and markets in Sudan by the air force.
The Sudan Witness Project claims to have gathered the most extensive known body of military airstrikes the war of which started in April 2023.
Through its analysis, the air force has been found to use unguided bombs in populated regions.
The statistics deals with warplane attacks, which the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is in a position to carry out. Its competitor is the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which lacks aircraft. It deploys the drone attacks, yet the drones were not included in the study.
The RSF has been accused in the international community of ethnic massacres in western Sudan in the locality called Darfur which led to the accusation of genocide by the United States.
The RSF is bearing an enormous amount of blame and infractions, and I believe fairly so, according to Mark Snoeck who made the project. But I believe that the SAF needs to be also held responsible in what they do.
The military, too, has had its share of criticism at the hands of the international community members, who accuse it of bombing even without any kind of distinction.
BBC requesting the SAF to comment on it was not responded to. However it has already refuted claims of warring on civilians stating its air attacks are only meant on RSF meetings, sites and bases that are known and confirmed to be valid military targets.
Sudan Witness is a project by the Center of Information Resilience (CIR), a non-profit organization that aims at exposing human rights abuses. British foreign ministry funded this project.
Sudan Witness analysed 384 airstrikes in a six-month review of the month between April 2023 to July 2025, an advance copy of the report provided to the BBC.
It documented the deaths and injuries of more than 1,700 and 1,120 civilians respectively. The group states that it is as conservative figures because it takes the lowest number reported.
In the area of residential places, there were 135 cases, where homes and civilian infrastructure were confirmed to be destroyed.
Bombs were placed in 35 cases in markets and commercial establishments commonly at times when they were full of people. And 19 attacks were targeted at at-risk groups, such as health facilities, locations of displaced and education institutions.
Sudan Witness recognises its studies to be unfinished as the data used to calculate their results are the availability of data but not the number of strikes. Conflict zones are difficult to get information, it says, because of poor telecommunications quality and a lack of credible individuals to identify, and probably a strike on military targets would be underreported.
However according to it, it has been in a position to develop a broader picture of the military air campaigns, visualizing the information as an interactive map indicating the magnitude and the effect on the civilian populations.
According to Mr Snoeck, it would take the Sudanese Armed Forces to be caught in action in the footage that can be verified to say that the SAF made airstrike in a specific place at a specific time. And this would be a very high standard, since such footage is very unusual in Sudan. The analysis of hundreds of airstrikes claims is therefore done to paint us the bigger picture.
The primary tendencies that are following are repeated blows on residential neighbourhoods and markets, according to Mr Snoeck, and a high number of alleged assaults on the essential humanitarian and medical installations.
He said these trends helped to hint at the conclusion that the SAF is not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties.
According to Justin Lynch the managing director at Conflict Insights Group which follows supply of short incidents of weapons into Sudan, Sudan civilians were the ones to suffer the battles between the military and the RSF.
He says that the war in Sudan is in fact a war against civilians (BBC). The air power and other heavy weapons are simply used disproportionately on civilian rather than military targets.
The degree of credibility of a given airstrike reported at Sudan Witness is shown as a result of the publicly available information called open source in digital form.
It evaluates the trustworthiness of the source, its possibility to examine the site with the assistance of the videos posted via social media, and accessible satellite images.
This may be because some of the incidents that Sudan Witness has investigated were premised on just accounts. At least in areas where it could identify corroborating evidence, it established the attacks with a low to medium level of confidence.
Nevertheless, the group emphasizes the instances of munitions, impact craters or shrapnel damages detected.
In one of such cases Sudan Witness verified numerous videos and pictures of a crater containing a dropped air bomb that detonated not in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, among displaced people.
It seemed to be a copy of an unguided munition of the SH-250 munition made by Military Industry Corporation which is a Sudanese manufacturer of arms.
Mr Snoeck says that this happens to be one of the most worrying discoveries of this work. Why would you just drop a bomb on an internally displaced people camp without any guidance on it? This was not even a RSF-controlled region then, and I still do not understand what was the rationale of such a strike.
In another attack, Sudan Witness confirmed a unique video that shot the moment of impact as there was the cry of an aircraft being followed by several explosions as civilians sought refuge.
Reportedly, at least 30 people were killed and 100 injured during the bombing of the Hamrat al-Sheikh Market in the North Kordofan state.
The SAF has been involved in many of the air attacks in Darfur, a province under the control of RSF.
They contain a strike on a hospital in el-Daein in August 2024, which was the ancient capital of the Rizeigat people, in which most RSF troops belong.
Sudan Witness confirmed the recording which revealed damages of shrapnel in the building. The World Health Organisation and UN children charity UNicef announced the killing of 16 civilians who included three children and one health expenditures.
This strike was criticised even by a rebel group which was allied to the army. These were quoted by the Sudan Tribune, an independent online news portal, who quoted a spokesman to the Justice and Equality Movement who stated that citizens got surprised by the random airstrikes on the hospitals and homes.
Nyala city in South Darfur state has become a common target. Its airport has been claimed to be the principal route through which the RSF weapons including advanced drones sponsored by the United Arab Emirates are transported. Abu Dhabi rejects the fact that it supports the RSF.
The SAF explains that it is attacking military stores in the city.
However, a different group of researchers who monitors the conflict, the Sudan War Monitor, says it has no precision weapons to deliver an accurate strike upon them in such a dense environment.
Sudan Witness examined a sequence of air attacks in the centre of the city used in February this year, which were also recorded by the Human rights watch. They targeted apartment complexes and a grocery store outside an eye hospital killing no fewer than 63.
According to the group, the attacks on the crowded marketplaces and commerce bases not only kill civilians but also affect the economic stability and further worsen the humanitarian crisis.
Last year in October no less than 65 individuals were reported dead and 200 injured in a bomb attack that ravaged a market known as al-Kuma in North Darfur.
Sudan Witness confirmed the site of video of the burned market and confirmed it with satellite shots of new burn marks on the area.
Al-Kuma is a 80km (50 miles) north-east of el-Fasher, which, until recently, was the target of a vicious battle, and has been ensnared in the crossraid of SAF air raids on the RSF.
According to a local official, when the army of the country booms people using its air force and justifies that it is doing it in the name of protecting the country, it certainly means that it is not doing it as it knows it usually does in real war.
Another local source indicated that there had been over 30 air raids against the town since the war broke out.
It is an indication of military airstrikes in marketplaces and other civil locations which indicate an uncritical and unequivocal negligence of the security of innocence-seeking Sudanese civilians, according to a foreign office official of Britain. No matter what side of the conflict they may belong to, the Pit of the evil crimes need to be taken to account.
Sudan Witness Project since after July 2025 has continued observing of air raids and reports that there has been a change in the recent months to drone strikes by both sides.
The decimating bloodshed of airstriking warfare sometimes focuses on prepared factions perceived to back the other side, says the Sudan War Monitor, citing an alleged SAF drone attack on al- Kuma in October where this time the group targeted a social gathering at the residence of a local religious figure.
Most of the al-Kuma inhabitants are members of the Ziyadiya of the Arab nomadic population that constitutes the social and ethnic foundation of the RSF.
Also that weekend, the RSF used drones and artillery counterstrikes against el-Fasher, hitting a religious displacement centre and allegedly killing no fewer than 60 civilians.
The non-Arabs like the Zaghawa are dominant in El-Fasher, which is a city that RSF fighters linked to the armed groups that defended El-Fasher of the Zaghawa.
Neither side uses drones and their airpower to focus on military targets in the first place they either shoot indiscriminately or are meant to cause terror of the populations of the opposing sides, both of which are war crimes, says Mr Lynch of the Conflict Insights Group.
The SAF claims that the RSF take shelter in residential areas, and it claims to be following international humanitarian laws and rules of engagement with specifications of protecting civilian and respective properties too.
War crimes have been leveled at both parties in the war in Sudan.
This week the RSF along with its ally the Sudan Liberation Movement-North was accused of drone attacks which struck a kindergarten and a hospital in South Kordofan town of Kalogi.
The WHO reported that 114 people died among them 63 children.
Mr Lynch explains that the air war is not only not bringing success to any side, but also that the civilians are still suffering.
He said that SAF have employed air attacks to facilitate the overthrow of Khartoum, but beyond that singular exception he has found airstrikes to produce significantly more civilian fatalities and little military victory.
Likewise, the RSF outsource foreign mercenaries with the support of the UAE to use drones, though with a handful of exceptions it has not really reached the results.
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