• 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 capital Khartoum in March
• 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

PORT SUDAN: 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 paramilitary 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 Port Sudan’s airport.

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 capital Khartoum in March.

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

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.

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

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

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

In late February, the RSF and its allies signed a charter in Kenya announcing a plan to establish a rival government to the army-aligned administration.

AFP