Sudan’s Army Says Paramilitary Forces Struck Civilian Targets

Sudanese paramilitary forces targeted an airport, a warehouse and several civilian facilities in the eastern city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea, setting off “scattered explosions,” according to a spokesman from Sudan’s military.

A Sudanese army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, said in a statement on Sunday that “the enemy” — a reference to the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces — had targeted the port city with exploding drones.

General Abdullah said that antiaircraft weapons had been able to shoot down a number of the drones, but that the attack had “caused limited damage, including a hit on an ammunition depot at Osman Digna Air Base, which caused scattered explosions.” No casualties were reported.

The air base is a joint military and civilian airport, and flights were halted during the day, according to the country’s Civil Aviation Authority, which said in a statement that it “condemned the treacherous attack on the air base in Port Sudan by the rebel militias.” On Sunday afternoon, the Port Sudan International Airport said in a statement that normal operations had resumed.

It was the first attack on Port Sudan, which has been serving as the country’s provisional capital, since civil war erupted in Sudan in 2023. There was no immediate comment from the paramilitary group, which is known as the R.S.F.

The strike on the provisional capital, which is held by the Sudanese military, occurred as tensions between the two sides in the conflict have increased and the civilian death toll in the war has risen rapidly.

An association of doctors on Thursday accused the R.S.F. of killing more than 100 civilians in an attack on Nahud, a city in southern Sudan.

“The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” Volker Türk, the U.N. human rights chief, said in a statement on Thursday. He said he had “personally alerted” leaders of the Sudanese military and the R.S.F. “to the catastrophic human rights consequences” of the war.

By some estimates, more than 11 million people have been displaced since the war began and more than 150,000 people killed. “It is well past time for this conflict to stop,” Mr. Türk said.

Each side blames the other for starting the war.

Four years ago, in 2021, the leaders of the military and the R.S.F. came together to seize power in a coup. That alliance soon crumbled, however, and for more than two years they have been locked in a deadly battle for power that has grown into Africa’s largest war.

The Sudanese military drove the R.S.F. fighters out of Khartoum, the capital, in March, but since then the group has declared its own government in the areas it controls.

Port Sudan, once a sleepy city, has become a haven for civilians fleeing the war and the seat of Sudan’s interim government. It has, until now, been spared from the violence that has torn through the rest of the country as the war, which is fueled by foreign powers, destroys Sudan.

Sudan has deep gold reserves, nearly 500 miles of Red Sea coastline, and vast amounts of rich agricultural land along the river Nile, and some countries have been sending arms, money or fighters in the hope of profit or strategic advantage.