Suspected RSF drones attack areas in Sudan including Khartoum and Al Obeid

Drones suspected to have been launched by Sudan‘s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces hit three cities including the capital Khartoum on Wednesday, residents said.

The drones hit an area west of Omdurman, part of the capital’s greater region and home to large army bases, they said. Also targeted was Bahri, another city part of the Nile-side capital.

Drones also hit the industrial city of Atbara, north of Khartoum, as well as Al Obeid, a key city in the central region of Kordofan that has for months been under partial siege by the RSF.

Media reports that could not be immediately confirmed said at least two people were killed and six injured when the drones hit Al Obeid, where residents said the apparent target was a base housing the army’s Fifth Infantry Division.

Residents in the capital reported seeing the drones fly over the city before hearing loud explosions shortly after dawn. They could not tell the specific targets hit. Video posted online showed columns of black smoke rising above the capital, as well as footage of damaged buildings.

The National was not immediately able to verify the authenticity of the videos and there has been no word from the RSF or the Sudanese Armed Forces – the other warring party in the civil conflict – on Wednesday’s drone attacks.

The attacks come a day after the RSF announced the capture of the town of Qayssan in the southern Blue Nile region, near the South Sudan border. It also follows last month’s capture by the army and its allies of a key Kordofan city and several areas straddling a vital motorway leading to Khartoum.

Most of the recent fighting in Sudan’s civil war has been confined to Kordofan, where the RSF and its allies are trying to complete a sweep of the resource-rich area after they took near total control of the neighbouring Darfur region last year.

The RSF also controls parts of Blue Nile State, while the army has the capital and the northern, eastern and central regions under its control.

The war broke out in April 2023 after months of tension between army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo over their place in a democratic Sudan boiled over into open hostilities.

With the war now in its fourth year, tens of thousands are believed to have been killed and about 14 million displaced. The war has also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 20 million people grappling with hunger.

Al Shafie Ahmed contributed to this report from Kampala, Uganda