Drone strikes knock out power across southeast Sudan

The lights went out across four states of southeast Sudan in the early hours of Monday, and by morning the state power company was pointing at drones.

The Sudan Electricity Holding Company said strikes hit substations at Singa, Al Hawata, Al Fao and Mashkour, and at Al Junaid in Gezira state, wrecking equipment and knocking out the southeastern network. Power was cut in Sennar, Gedaref, White Nile and Gezira, about half the territory the Sudanese army currently holds. The company warned that the damage threatens the stability of the national grid and said engineers have gone out to survey the stations and start repairs. An AFP correspondent in Gezira said the power there had been out since about 2 a.m. Authorities in Sennar said the Singa strike injured members of the substation guard team.

Babiker Youssef, who lives in Al Fao in Gedaref, told AFP that his diabetic son depends on insulin that has to stay cold in a fridge. "We have no idea when the power will come back," he said. The United Nations has warned that attacks on power stations threaten health care and other services for millions of people in a country where the United States, the European Union and thirty other countries have warned of famine risk.

The company blamed the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary army that has fought Sudan's regular army since April 2023. The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the company's account. Both sides have stepped up drone warfare this month, with strikes on Nyala, which the RSF holds, and on Khartoum airport, which the army holds. Monday's strikes took the drone campaign to the wires that carry ordinary life: hospital fridges, water pumps and the grid itself. Sudan's power network was fragile before this week. Three and a half years of war have left stations short of spare parts and repair crews, and each new round of strikes lands on equipment the country cannot quickly replace.