A WFP driver is killed on the Dilling-Kadugli road in South Kordofan

An aerial attack killed a driver on a World Food Programme convoy in South Kordofan early on Saturday, 3 October. The agency said two contracted trucks carrying WFP food were hit while moving from Dilling to Kadugli. Both towns are held by the Sudanese Armed Forces. The trucks were marked as humanitarian vehicles. WFP did not name the party that struck them, and it said the damage to the cargo was still being counted.

The statement, issued from Khartoum on Sunday, called for a prompt and impartial investigation and for those responsible to be held to account. It also recorded a second incident one day earlier: a WFP truck struck an explosive device in Dilling after it had delivered food. Two hits on aid vehicles, on consecutive days, on the same short road, are the operational fact. The agency asked all parties to protect civilians and to allow humanitarian cargo to move.

Why that road matters

Dilling and Kadugli sit in the Nuba Mountains belt of South Kordofan, a state that has been fought over since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces widened in 2023. Fighting in Kordofan intensified in late 2025. The road between the two towns is one of the few ways food still moves into Kadugli, which has been cut off for long periods. A convoy that cannot complete that run leaves warehouses in Dilling and empty markets further south.

Al Jazeera reported that the strike hit the convoy on Saturday as it travelled between the two SAF-held cities. WFP's own wording is narrower and more useful: an aerial attack, early hours, two contracted trucks, one driver dead, cargo damage not yet measured. The agency did not say how many tonnes were on the trucks, or whether the second truck could still move. That missing tonnage figure is what local ration planners need. A marked truck on this road typically carries several tonnes of cereals or pulses. Two trucks is a neighbourhood's supply for days, not a national pipeline. The political weight is larger than the tonnage, because the marking was ignored.

A war that has already made aid a target

Sudan's civil war has now run for more than three years. Both the army and the RSF have been accused by UN officials, at different moments, of blocking aid and striking civilian areas. This statement does not assign the Saturday strike. What it does is put a named UN agency, a named route, and a named date on the record, which is harder to blur than a general claim about insecurity.

WFP is the largest UN food agency. In Sudan it has been trying to feed people in Darfur, Khartoum, and the Kordofans at the same time, often by negotiating access town by town. A driver killed on a marked truck changes the calculation for the next contractor. If commercial drivers will not take the Dilling-Kadugli run, the agency either pays more, uses a longer route, or stops. None of those options is in the Sunday statement. All three follow from the facts it does give.

The Friday blast adds a second method. An explosive device on a road, after a delivery, is a ground threat. An aerial hit before dawn is an air threat. A contractor who can accept one may refuse the other. WFP's decision to put both incidents in the same note is a way of saying the corridor is unsafe from the ground and from the air, not that a single bad day occurred.

What is still missing

The driver's name has not been released. The type of aircraft or munition has not been released. The volume of food destroyed has not been released. WFP said those details were still being collected. Until they are, the confirmed sequence is short. On Friday a WFP truck hit an explosive device in Dilling after a delivery. On Saturday, before dawn, two marked trucks on the way from Dilling to Kadugli were hit from the air, and one driver died. The agency has asked for an investigation. The road those trucks were using is still the main food line into Kadugli.

Kordofan is also the region where the army and the RSF have spent the past year trying to cut each other's supply lines into Darfur and the centre. An aid truck on a SAF-held road can be read, by the other side, as a logistics target even when it carries flour. International humanitarian law does not allow that reading. WFP's call for an investigation is an attempt to force a public choice: name the aircraft, or leave the strike unclaimed. Unclaimed strikes on marked trucks are how corridors close without a formal siege.