Drones struck the airport and cut power across Port Sudan on Tuesday, officials said, the third straight day the army-aligned government’s seat of power has come under attack.
The strikes, which also targeted an army base, come a day after Sudan’s main fuel depot was hit, causing a massive blaze just south of the eastern city which had until Sunday been considered a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing the two-year war.
An AFP correspondent reported loud explosions at dawn and plumes of smoke over the Red Sea coastal city, one from the direction of the port and another from a fuel depot just south.
One drone hit “the civilian section of the Port Sudan airport”, an airport official said, two days after the facility’s military base was first attacked in drone strikes the army blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The RSF has not claimed the attacks, about 650 kilometres (400 miles) from its nearest known positions on Khartoum’s outskirts.
Air traffic was halted at the country’s only airport still handling international civilian flights, the official there said.
Another drone targeted the main army base in the city centre, an army source said, with witnesses reporting a major hotel hit nearby.
Both sites are near the residence of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has been at war with his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the RSF commander, since April 2023.
A third drone hit a fuel depot near the southern port in the densely populated city centre, where the UN, aid agencies and hundreds of thousands of displaced people have relocated from Khartoum.
Drones also hit Port Sudan’s main power substation causing a city-wide blackout, the national electricity company said.
Fires at airport
AFP photos showed thick black smoke billowing over the skyline.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Witnesses in the city’s north reported anti-aircraft fire from a military base.
“Yesterday and today just confirm to us that this war will follow us no matter where we go,” said Hussein Ibrahim.
The 64-year-old sought refuge in Port Sudan more than a year ago, fleeing RSF attacks on his hometown in Al-Jazira, about 1,000 kilometres away.
At petrol stations across Port Sudan, most of them out of service, queues of cars stretched for more than a kilometre as drivers scrambled to fill their tanks.
The army source said strikes had also targeted airport fuel depots.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the attacks were a “worrying development threatening the protection of civilians and humanitarian operations”.
Nearly all humanitarian aid into Sudan, where famine has been declared and nearly 25 million people suffer dire food insecurity, arrives through Port Sudan.
The RSF has increasingly relied on drones since losing territory including nearly all of Khartoum in March.
Sudan’s war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted 13 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
The United Nations said Tuesday it is “gravely concerned” by the growing numbers of Sudanese refugees fleeing from the western Darfur region to neighbouring Chad, with nearly 20,000 people arriving in the past two weeks alone.
Legal battle
The Sudan conflict has effectively split the country in two, with the army controlling the centre, north and east while the RSF holds nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Experts say the RSF’s increased reliance on drones after it lost Khartoum serves to both telegraph its reach and hinder the army’s supply lines.
The RSF has used both makeshift and highly advanced drones, which Sudan’s army has accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying.
Sudan’s army-aligned information minister, Khalid al-Aiser, again pointed the finger at the UAE, saying it was supplying “its proxy”, the RSF, and describing the assault as “terrorist”.
The International Court of Justice on Monday threw out a case brought by Sudan against the UAE, accusing it of complicity in genocide by supporting the RSF.
The army-aligned foreign ministry said it “respected” the ruling based on the ICJ’s lack of jurisdiction due to the UAE’s 2005 “reservation” on the UN Genocide Convention.
But it added the court’s refusal to hear the case “cannot legally be interpreted as a denial of the violations, nor does it represent any acquittal of the UAE from its involvement in genocide”.
