A wave of drone strikes on Tuesday has knocked out power across Port Sudan after a major electricity station was hit, plunging the eastern Sudanese city into darkness. The attack marks an intensification of assaults by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began targeting the city over the weekend.
Several other key sites were also hit early Tuesday. A drone struck the civilian section of Port Sudan’s international airport, grounding all flights. Another targeted an army base in the city center, while a third hit a fuel depot near the port.
Eyewitnesses reported that a hotel near the residence of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was damaged in the strikes, though no casualties were reported.
Sudan’s information minister visited the affected area near the port and accused a foreign nation of supplying weapons to the RSF—an allegation that was swiftly denied.
This marks the third consecutive day of RSF attacks on Port Sudan, a city that had largely been spared during the two-year civil conflict. Previous strikes over the weekend hit the military side of the airport and fuel facilities, drawing accusations from the military against the RSF, which has yet to respond publicly.
The United Nations has halted all humanitarian flights to and from the city but continues its regular aid operations, confirming that no UN facilities were damaged.
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Port Sudan has been a refuge for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting elsewhere in the country. It also became the base for Sudan’s army-aligned government after the RSF seized control of Khartoum.
Now, with drone warfare intensifying and civilian infrastructure under threat, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan is expected to worsen. Despite the army reclaiming much of central Sudan, the RSF’s shift to aerial attacks signals a dangerous new phase in the ongoing conflict.