The capital of Sudan, Khartoum, recorded a wide power outage this Tuesday after a drone attack on a substation in Omdurman, a city adjacent to the capital, according to authorities amid an armed conflict with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023.
The Minister of Energy and Petroleum of Sudan, Mutasim Ibrahim Ahmed, explained that the offensive impacted the Al Murjiyat substation, causing significant damage and leaving several areas of Khartoum and the River Nile state without electricity, in a context of similar attacks with unmanned aircraft against other facilities in the country.
After the incident, the government official chaired a meeting focused on the stability of the electrical system and on urgent efforts to repair the damaged infrastructure and restore service. According to the state news agency SUNA, technical teams have already been deployed on the ground, although no further details have been provided.
In recent days, the RSF have intensified the use of drones against energy targets, hitting infrastructures in the states of Gezira, Sennar, Gedaref, and White Nile, which further exacerbates the fragility of the Sudanese electrical grid.
The civil war broke out in April 2023 due to deep differences over the integration plan of this paramilitary group into the Armed Forces, which frustrated the transition process opened after the fall in 2019 of the regime of Omar Hasan al Bashir, already seriously deteriorated after the coup that overthrew then-Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
The conflict, fueled by the involvement of several countries supporting the different factions, has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian emergencies on the planet, with millions of people displaced or refugees and with growing international concern over the spread of diseases and the destruction of essential infrastructure, which prevents adequate assistance to hundreds of thousands of affected individuals.