Paramilitaries launch first attack on Port Sudan: army

Smoke rises from the airport of Port Sudan following reported attacks early on May 4, 2025. Photo / AFP

• Sudanese paramilitaries attacked Port Sudan with drones, targeting an air base and civilian facilities.
• No casualties were reported, but flights were suspended due to the attack.
• The conflict has divided Sudan, with the army controlling the centre, east, and north, and the RSF holding Darfur and parts of the south.

Sudanese paramilitaries on Sunday struck Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, the army said, in the first attack on the seat of the army-aligned government in the country’s two-year war.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “targeted Osman Digna Air Base, a goods warehouse and some civilian facilities in the city of Port Sudan with suicide drones”, army spokesman Nabil Abdullah said in a statement.

He reported no casualties but “limited damage”.

Smoke was seen billowing from the airport in Port Sudan, about 650km from the nearest RSF positions on the outskirts of Khartoum.

The paramilitaries have expanded the scope and frequency of their drone attacks on army-held areas since losing control of areas including most of the Sudanese capital in March.

An AFP correspondent in Port Sudan reported explosions in the morning shaking his home, about 20km north of the key coastal city’s airport.

“We were on the way to the plane when we were quickly evacuated and taken out of the terminal,” a traveller told AFP from the airport.

On social media, users shared videos of a large explosion followed by a cloud of smoke rising from the blast site, which AFP was not able to immediately verify.

Flights to and from Port Sudan, the country’s main port of entry since the start of the war, were suspended until further notice, a government source told AFP.

Since April 2023, the regular army, headed by Sudan’s de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has been battling the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, in a devastating war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.

Drone strikes

In the early days of the war, the government relocated from Khartoum to Port Sudan, which until Sunday’s attack had been spared the violence.

UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the war.

The conflict has left Africa’s third-largest country effectively divided.

The regular army controls the centre, east and north, while the RSF holds sway in nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and parts of the south.

Sunday’s attack is the latest in a series of drone attacks the RSF has launched on military and civilian infrastructure deep in army-held territory.

On Saturday, a source from the army-aligned Government reported a rare drone attack on Kassala, on Sudan’s eastern border with Eritrea, about 400km (250 miles) from the nearest RSF position.

In late April, a drone strike on the city of Atbara, halfway between Port Sudan and Khartoum, caused widespread electricity blackouts across the country’s northeast and centre.

- Agence France-Presse