Drone Strikes on Five Power Stations Plunge Eastern Sudan Into Blackouts

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out a coordinated drone attack on five power stations, triggering widespread blackouts across the east of the country, according to a government official.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said two power stations were struck in each of Al-Jazira and Gedaref states, with a fifth hit in White Nile state. The strikes caused outages across large parts of all three states, which are held by the Sudanese army. The army has been fighting the RSF, its former ally, since April 2023.

The United Nations has repeatedly cautioned that frequent attacks on power infrastructure endanger the health and basic services of millions of people who are already coping with the world's largest hunger crisis. Past drone strikes on power stations and hydroelectric dams have left communities without electricity for days at a time.

Residents described the immediate toll. Babiker Youssef, who lives in Al-Fao in Gedaref, said the power had been off since early morning. His son is diabetic and needs insulin kept refrigerated. "We have no idea when the power will come back," he said by phone, adding that he feared he would be unable to replace the medication if it spoiled.

In Al-Jazira's town of Al-Junaid, 54-year-old farmer Abdelhafez Daafallah said conditions had only begun to improve three months ago, when a power station destroyed by the militia was repaired. He had hoped irrigation pumps would run again and that he could return to farming after nearly four years unable to work his land. Farmers in Al-Jazira have struggled to rehabilitate and replant their fields since the army retook the state from the RSF last year.

Ibrahim Mohammed, a 37-year-old grocer in Gedaref, said he was already dealing with hours-long outages before the strikes. With chicken stored in his fridge, he said he must either lose his whole stock or sell it at any price, "which is still a loss."

The war is now being fought mainly with drones, and both sides have launched sophisticated attacks across the country that have killed dozens of civilians at once. According to a UN tally, drone strikes in the first three weeks of October killed more than 300 people and wounded hundreds more.

Africa's third-largest country, home to an estimated 50 million people, has been devastated by the conflict, which aid workers say has killed more than 200,000 people. Most of Sudan's hospitals have been forced to shut, at least 8 million children are out of school, and large areas lack access to basic services.

The economy is also under severe strain. Sudan is grappling with unprecedented inflation, and its currency has lost more than 25% of its value in recent weeks.