PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Anti-aircraft missiles fired over Sudan’s wartime capital Port Sudan on Saturday, eyewitnesses reported, as drones flew over the once-safe haven city.
Since April 2023, war has raged between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Port Sudan, seat of the army-backed government, came under attack by drones blamed on the RSF for the first time early this month.
The campaign of drone strikes attacked infrastructure including the country’s last functioning civilian international airport, power stations and major fuel depots.
The near-daily strikes had stopped for over a week until Saturday, when residents in the city heard “the sound of anti-aircraft missiles north and west of the city and drones flying in the sky,” one witness told AFP.
Since Sudanese authorities fled the capital Khartoum early in the war, Port Sudan has hosted government ministries, the United Nations and hundreds of thousands of people.
Nearly all aid into the country — home to nearly 25 million people suffering dire food insecurity — transits through Port Sudan.
The war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created what the UN describes as the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the center, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Since losing Khartoum in March, the RSF has adopted a two-pronged strategy: long-range drone strikes on army-held cities accompanied by counteroffensives to reclaim territory in the country’s south.
The drone strikes have impacted infrastructure across Sudan’s army-held northeast, with attacks on power stations causing blackouts for millions of people.
A blackout in Khartoum also cut off access to clean water, according to health authorities, causing a cholera outbreak that has killed close to 300 people this month.