Khartoum Airport hit by drone attack ahead of reopening day

No group has so far claimed responsibility

Khartoum International Airport was due to reopen on Wednesday for the first time in more than two and a half years. Reuters

Khartoum International Airport was hit by a drone attack early on Tuesday, a day before it was due to reopen for the first time since Sudan's civil war broke out more than two and a half years ago.

Witnesses in the capital's greater region said they heard explosions from the vicinity of the airport shortly after seeing drones flying low over the city in its direction. Other sites in the capital region were also attacked, residents reported, including a power transformer in Omdurman and areas surrounding an oil refinery in northern Khartoum.

Omdurman is one of three cities that comprise the Sudanese capital, together with Khartoum and Bahri. The greater capital area, however, is commonly known simply as Khartoum.

Witnesses said the saw objects in the sky before hearing explosions. "We saw flashes of light in the darkness before dawn and heard the sound of blasts before we could see columns of thick black smoke rising skyward," said Osman Hamza, who lives in Omdurman.

Another Omdurman resident, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the explosions were so loud, he thought the house next door had been blown up. "It felt like the war returned to Khartoum," he said.

"It is not unlikely now that my family and I will leave the city if this happens again," said Mr Ibrahim, who suspected the explosions were the result of kamikaze drones hitting military sites in the city.

Sudan's army chief and de facto leader, Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, right, and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces Gen Mohamed Dagalo. AFP

Later on Tuesday, the army chief and de facto ruler Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan visited the airport and addressed the nation from there. In the televised speech, he vowed to defeat the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and never to allow the paramilitary to be part of Sudan's future.

"This tyrannical gang will never be allowed to hurt you," he said as he stood on the tarmac with the airport's terminal in the background. "We in the armed forces are determined to provide protection to our people in Sudan. We will do and achieve this."

There was no immediate comment on Tuesday's the attacks from the RSF, which is led Gen Mohamed Dagalo, Gen Al Burhan's former ally.

In May, the RSF launched a wave of drone attacks at a military airbase that is part of the international airport at the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, the temporary seat of the military-backed government.

They have also attacked fuel depots there as well as infrastructure sites north and south of the capital.

Tuesday's attacks, which began before dawn, came a day after Sudan's Civil Aviation Authority said the airport would reopen on Wednesday, with the gradual resumption of domestic flights when technical and operational preparations were completed.

The airport was swiftly seized by the RSF during the opening days of the war. The paramilitary then moved to capture most of the sprawling capital, territory regained by the army and allied militias in March this year. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage caused by the attack.

Khartoum has remained relatively calm since being retaken by the army and its allied militias but attack drones are still being launched, with the RSF repeatedly accused of attacking military and civilian sites.

Tuesday's strike is the third such attack on the capital this month. Last week, drones hit Khartoum on two consecutive days, striking army bases in the city's north-west. A military official said most of the drones were intercepted.

With no sign of the civil war abating, the army controls the capital as well as eastern, central and northern Sudan. The RSF, whose forerunner was a notorious militia known as the Janjaweed, controls all of Darfur – except the army-held city of El Fasher – and parts of Kordofan to the south and south-west of the vast, Afro-Arab nation.

El Fasher has been besieged by the RSF since May 2024 and is the scene of near-daily clashes between the paramilitary and the army and its allies.

There are no reliable casualty figures from the war, which is widely believed to have killed tens of thousands of people. The fighting has also displaced more than 13 million people and left more than 25 million others facing hunger or caught in pockets of famine in parts of the country.

Al Shafie Ahmed was reporting from Kampala, Uganda