Coverage spread: 2 sources — 2 international
Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.
Where they agree
- Sudan has been in civil war since April 2023, pitting the Rapid Support Forces against the Sudanese military.
- The conflict is causing severe, ongoing harm — to civilians through drone strikes and to cultural heritage through neglect.
- Both threads rely on UN-linked sources: UNESCO for heritage damage, UN data for civilian casualty causes.
Where they differ
- Al Jazeera focuses on cultural heritage loss, detailing the physical deterioration of the Meroe pyramids through quotes from guards, inspectors and archaeologists.
- France24’s two segments focus on human casualties, highlighting UN findings that drone strikes now cause over 80% of civilian deaths.
- Al Jazeera cites UNESCO figures on 100+ damaged cultural sites and 22 looted/destroyed museums, a statistic absent from the France24 pieces.
- France24 cites ACLED’s death toll estimate of at least 59,000, with aid groups suspecting a much higher true figure, a detail not covered in the Al Jazeera piece.
Sudan’s more than three-year civil war is now endangering both its people and its ancient heritage. The United Nations says drone attacks have become the leading cause of civilian death in Sudan, accounting for more than 80 percent of civilian casualties in the first four months of 2026, while separately the ancient pyramids of Meroe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site north of Khartoum, are deteriorating rapidly because fighting has halted all conservation work.
How bad has the drone violence gotten?
According to the UN, drone strikes caused roughly 80 percent of civilian deaths recorded in Sudan during the first four months of 2026, making them now the single deadliest threat to non-combatants in the conflict. The war began in April 2023 as a struggle between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese military. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a group that tracks conflicts worldwide, estimates at least 59,000 people have been killed since the fighting started. Aid organizations caution that this figure is almost certainly a significant undercount, and that the real death toll could be far higher, given the difficulty of verifying casualties in active war zones.
What is happening to the Meroe pyramids?
Meroe, located about 200km (125 miles) north of Khartoum, contains more than 200 narrow, steep-sided pyramids built between 800 BC and 350 AD as royal tombs for the Kingdom of Kush. Archaeologist Mahmoud Suleiman warned that the site “may face a disaster,” saying collapses are now possible because the war has prevented experts from performing even basic upkeep. Site guard Mustafa Ahmed described thick sand accumulating on and inside the pyramids and temples, with grass overtaking the structures and stones beginning to fall. Antiquities inspector Mohamed Mubarak said salt carried in by windblown sand is attacking the site’s inherently fragile stone, eroding ancient inscriptions carved into the monuments. Suleiman attributed the decline to a combination of factors: climate change, the scattering of Sudan’s archaeological workforce due to the war, and the complete suspension of foreign archaeological missions that once helped maintain the site.
How widespread is the damage to Sudan’s cultural sites?
UNESCO has said the toll extends well beyond Meroe. The agency reports that more than 100 cultural sites across Sudan have been damaged and at least 22 museums have been looted or destroyed since the war erupted in April 2023. This makes Meroe’s slow decay part of a broader pattern of cultural loss unfolding alongside the human casualties of the conflict.
How do the different reports frame the story?
The coverage splits into two distinct threads that, together, illustrate the layered toll of Sudan’s war. Al Jazeera’s reporting focuses on cultural heritage, drawing on on-the-ground voices — a guard, an antiquities inspector, and an archaeologist — to describe the physical decay of the Meroe pyramids in granular detail: sand, salt, encroaching grass, and falling stone. France24’s reporting, in both its video and TV segment, centers on the human cost, citing UN data on drone strikes as the dominant driver of civilian deaths and referencing conflict-monitoring statistics on the overall death toll. Neither outlet directly connects the two threads within a single piece, but read together they show a country where advanced weaponry is killing civilians at record rates even as neglect and instability erode monuments that have stood for more than two millennia.
Why this matters beyond Sudan
The war, now past its third year, has drawn global concern both for its mounting civilian death toll and for the erosion of sites considered part of humanity’s shared heritage. The Meroe pyramids, recognized by UNESCO for their historical significance as tombs of Kushite rulers, cannot be replaced if they collapse — and there is currently no functioning mechanism to protect them while the fighting continues. At the same time, the shift toward drone warfare as the leading killer of civilians signals an evolution in how the conflict is being fought, with UN officials flagging it as a growing and urgent humanitarian concern. Both threads point to the same underlying problem: a war with no clear end in sight is degrading everything in its path, from human lives to irreplaceable ancient monuments.
Sources
- Al Jazeera
- France24 — UN warns drone attacks have become leading cause of civilian death in Sudan · UN warns drone strikes worsen in Sudan
Featured photo: Hans Ollermann via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)