Local governor says the attack knocked out a nearby power station for the fourth time since the war began two years ago.

A suspected drone attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary has killed at least 11 people at a displacement camp in River Nile state, authorities said.

In a statement late on Friday, the local governor said the attack knocked out a nearby power station for the fourth time since the war between the RSF and the Sudanese army began two years ago.

The attack marks a deadly escalation in the ongoing conflict, with a further 23 people injured, a medical official said. Witnesses said at least nine children were among the wounded.

“My son, my cousin, my daughter’s husband and two children, my cousin’s children are dead. The boy is 10 years old and the girl is about two years old,” witness Haleema told Al Jazeera.

Over the past months, the RSF has been accused of attacking power infrastructure in Sudanese army-controlled areas across central and northern Sudan.

The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, denies carrying out drone attacks.

Friday’s attack hit a makeshift camp roughly 3km (2 miles) from the Atbara power station outside the town of al-Damer.

The camp housed about 180 families who had fled fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and were living in abandoned buildings and tents with minimal humanitarian assistance.

“The first drone attack came and landed right behind us,” said Mawaheb Mohamed, another survivor of the attack.

“Fifteen minutes later, another one came – four in total. He decided to leave because the scene was very difficult, there were corpses, people had been dismembered, and people in the hospital.”

Following the attack, authorities were seen hosing down the smouldering remains of tents and belongings, as residents boarded buses headed to an unknown location.

The escalation came amid a wider collapse of Sudan’s power grid, with drone and missile attacks plunging millions into weeks-long blackouts, further worsening the humanitarian crisis in a country devastated by civil war.

Sudan descended into violence in April 2023 when tensions between the Sudanese army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF erupted into open conflict.

Al-Burhan has been celebrating recent gains made by the military, including in Khartoum, while ground fighting is currently concentrated in the Darfur region, where the RSF is battling to eliminate remaining army positions, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.

The conflict has triggered one of the world’s largest displacement crises. According to the United Nations, more than 12.4 million people have been uprooted from their homes, including 3.3 million who have fled to neighbouring countries.

US brings the two countries’ foreign ministers together and voices an interest in investment in the DRC’s mineral-rich east.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have agreed to draft a peace deal by May 2, committing to respect each other’s sovereignty and refraining from providing military support to armed groups.

DRC Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner and her Rwandan counterpart Olivier Nduhungirehe signed the agreement in a tense meeting in Washington, DC, on Friday, in which the two did not shake hands.

The deal, part of diplomatic efforts to end the violence in eastern DRC, came two days after Qatar brokered an unexpected truce between the African nations.

The United States brought the two countries’ foreign ministers together and voiced an interest in investment in the DRC’s turbulent but mineral-rich east, where fighting between DRC forces and M23 rebels has intensified since January. The M23 has captured key cities in the east in a campaign that has left thousands dead.

The US and the United Nations experts say M23 is backed by Rwanda, which has repeatedly denied the charge, saying it is defending its security against hostile militias operating in DRC, including remnants of the Hutu-led group behind the 1994 genocide.

Friday’s joint declaration, signed in front of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pledged the two sides would halt military support to non-state armed groups, though it avoided naming M23 directly.

Wagner later said the deal amounted to a commitment for Rwandan forces to withdraw, as outlined in a UN Security Council resolution.

“The good news is there is hope for peace. The real news – peace must be earned, and it will require seriousness, transparency and sincerity,” she said.

Nduhungirehe said US President Donald Trump had made a “real change in the conversation” on DRC, including by drawing a link to efforts to expand US private-sector investment.

Rubio described the agreement as a “win-win”, suggesting it could unlock major US-backed investment in energy and mining – areas where China already has significant influence. A new US envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, recently visited both nations and urged Kigali to stop backing M23 and pull out troops.

Since 2021, the two sides have agreed to at least six truces that later collapsed. The latest bout of violence since January has killed thousands and raised fears of a wider regional war.

Analyst Martin Ziakwau Lembisa believes the US pressure pushed both governments towards diplomacy.

“If it were up to the M23, they would have advanced further,” he told AFP news agency. “But how far the Americans will really get involved is the whole question.”

Soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir have demolished the homes of two men suspected of carrying out the disputed region’s deadliest attack against civilians in nearly two decades.

Police say the attackers are members of The Resistance Front (TRF), a faction of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan rejects the allegation.

Meanwhile, Indian security forces have launched a huge manhunt for those responsible for killing 26 men in Pahalgam on Tuesday.

Authorities have released wanted posters with sketches of three suspects: Adil Hussain Thokar, a suspected Kashmiri rebel, and two Pakistani citizens identified as Ali Bhai and Hashim Musa. They are also searching for Ashif Sheikh, another suspected rebel.

The family members of the two suspected rebels were also detained for questioning after the attack, a police officer and their relatives said.

Sheikh’s sister Yasmeena said soldiers cordoned off the area around their house in Kashmir’s southern Tral area late on Thursday night.

“One soldier climbed over the mud compound wall of our home,” said Yasmeena, who gave only one name.

“After some time, a big, frightening blast brought the house down. Everything inside was destroyed,” she said, adding that no one was inside the home at the time.

A police officer said soldiers also destroyed Thokar’s family home in neighbouring Bijbehara area in the same manner early on Friday.

“Both [suspected rebels] have been active for three to four years, and are part of TRF, which is an offshoot of LeT,” the officer told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“They are wanted militants [rebels] involved in earlier attacks as well on security forces,” the officer added.

Police have also offered a two million rupee ($23,500) bounty for information leading to each man’s arrest.