“This weekend, five children were reportedly killed and three more injured in Dilling, South Kordofan,” the UN children’s agency wrote on its X account.

Sudan’s army, which has been fighting paramilitaries for control of the country, said on Saturday it had repelled a third wave of assaults against Dilling by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), inflicting “heavy human and material losses”.

According to local media, drone strikes carried out by the RSF killed around 10 people, including women and children, and wounded dozens more.

It is difficult, sometimes impossible, to independently verify casualty figures from fighting in Sudan’s remote regions.

At war for nearly three years, both the army and paramilitaries regularly accuse each other of deadly drone strikes, with fighting intensifying over recent months in the region of Kordofan as well as areas bordering Ethiopia in the east and Chad in the west.

In its statement on Saturday, the army also said it had killed and captured several “foreign mercenaries” from South Sudan during the fighting in Dilling.

Sources close to the army confirmed to AFP the arrest of “foreigners from neighbouring countries”.

On Monday, Sudan’s army-aligned foreign minister asked the UN special envoy for the Horn of Africa to “shed light” on the issue of mercenaries and external support for the RSF.

Three years of war in Sudan have left tens of thousands of people dead and displaced more than 11 million, causing what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

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