This handout satellite photo obtained from Planet Labs PBC and dated May 6, 2025, shows smoke billowing from a fuel storage depot after a strike on Port Sudan. (Photo by Planet Labs PBC / AFP)
Port Sudan, Sudan: Drones struck the airport and cut power across Port Sudan, officials said on Tuesday, the third straight day the army-aligned government's seat of power has come under attack.
The strikes, which the army blamed on rival paramilitaries and also targeted a military base, came a day after Sudan's main fuel depot was hit, causing a massive blaze just south of the eastern city.
Smoke billows after a drone strike on the port of Port Sudan on May 6, 2025. Drones struck the airport and targeted an army base in Port Sudan on May 6, officials said, the third straight day the Sudanese army-aligned government's seat of power has come under attack. (Photo by AFP)
Until Sunday, Port Sudan been considered a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the two-year war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
An AFP correspondent reported loud explosions at dawn and plumes of smoke over the Red Sea coastal city, one from the direction of the port and another from a fuel depot just south.
One drone hit "the civilian section of the Port Sudan airport", an airport official said, two days after an army air base in the city came under drone strikes blamed on the RSF.
A man watches as smoke billows after a drone strike on the port of Port Sudan on May 6, 2025. Drones struck the airport and targeted an army base in Port Sudan on May 6, officials said, the third straight day the Sudanese army-aligned government's seat of power has come under attack. (Photo by AFP)
The RSF has not commented on the attacks on Port Sudan, about 650 kilometres (400 miles) from its nearest known positions on the outskirts of the capital Khartoum.
Air traffic was halted at the country's only airport still handling international civilian flights, the official there said.
The UN said the airport is "a lifeline for humanitarian operations" as it serves as the main gateway for "aid personnel, medical supplies and other life-saving relief" into the war-ravaged country.
Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN's top official in Port Sudan, warned damage to infrastructure would "further exacerbate human suffering in what is already the world's largest humanitarian crisis".
An army source said a second drone attack on Tuesday hit the city's main army base, with witnesses reporting a nearby hotel was struck.
Both sites in the city centre are near the residence of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, whose forces have been at war with the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, since April 2023.
Drones also struck a fuel depot, the army source said, and more hit Port Sudan's main power substation, causing a city-wide blackout, the national electricity company said.
