Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces launched drone strikes on the capital Khartoum and other Army-controlled cities on Wednesday (august 12, 2026), in what appeared to be their largest coordinated attack in months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by war between its regular military, led by Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
The capital Khartoum, which was recaptured by the Army last year, has been targeted by drone strikes before but had been enjoying relative calm for months.
A source in the Army said the RSF attacked the capital, the Kordofan city of El-Obeid, and the northern cities of Atbara and El-Damer “with a large number of drones, which our anti-aircraft defences engaged with”.
RSF spokesman Al-Fatih Qurashi confirmed in social media posts that the paramilitary group had targeted the airport and Army warehouses in Atbara, as well as fuel depots in Omdurman and a military airport in the country’s far south.
An AFP correspondent in the capital reported a drone attack at 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) along with the sound of anti-aircraft missiles from the direction of the Army’s Wadi Seidna base, just north of the capital’s twin city of Omdurman.
In Khartoum North (Bahri), just across the River Nile, two drones hit a mosque and an electricity transformer in the El-Droshab area, according to an eyewitness.
It was not immediately clear if air defences had shot them down.
Witnesses in the northern cities of Atbara and El-Damer — both also under Army control — gave similar reports of hearing explosions and seeing drones in the sky.
Some 120 kilometres southeast of the capital, in the town of Tamboul, civilians were in a “state of fear” after drones appeared above, a witness told AFP.
Two eyewitnesses in the town of Sifeiya, 90 kilometres from the South Sudan border, reported a drone strike on the local airport, which the Army uses as an airbase.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attacks, hundreds of kilometres away from each other.
Across the country, aid workers estimate more than 200,000 people have been killed in what the UN calls a “war of atrocities”. The conflict has also caused the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
Retaliatory strikes
Last month, the Army clinched a victory in the Kordofan region, pushing the RSF off a key highway connecting Khartoum to El-Obeid, the region’s largest city, which they had tried to seize for months.
The Emergency Lawyers — a rights group documenting atrocities on both sides of the war — on Wednesday (August 12) reported what appeared to be a retaliatory army attack against civilians in North Kordofan.
At least five civilians were killed and 10 injured in an attack by Army troops near the town of Jabret al-Sheikh, which the Army recaptured last month.
The Army and its allied militias have been repeatedly accused of attacking civilians in recently recaptured areas.
Daglo, seemingly on the back foot, has said he would “unleash” his fighters — already accused of war crimes including genocide — and his troops have since repeatedly threatened a large-scale retaliatory attack.
He and Burhan, allies until they fell out in a bitter power struggle, have spent most of the war in a relative stalemate, unwilling to hold negotiations while vying for a decisive battlefield advantage.
The RSF last year consolidated its hold on the vast western region of Darfur, and has since pushed to seize territory in Kordofan and along the southeastern border with Ethiopia.
The Army holds the country’s centre, north and east, and has tried to project an image of a return to normality in areas it controls.
But in Khartoum, 2.3 million people have returned from displacement, only to find vast amounts of uncleared war remnants, dilapidated infrastructure and limited electricity and water.
Published – August 12, 2026 09:33 pm IST
