هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Power was cut across the whole of Gedaref state in eastern Sudan at dawn on Monday, 26 October, after drones struck the Al-Hawata and Al-Faw substations as part of a wider attack on stations in the eastern electricity grid. It was the third drone attack on the east in six weeks, but the first to have a clear impact after Sudanese army ground defences repelled two earlier attacks.
Throughout the war that broke out in 2023, eastern Sudan remained relatively safe and served as a main supply route for the state from Port Sudan. Meanwhile, war has been raging across the border in neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea, with renewed conflict in Tigray bringing Sudan’s war into contact with other conflicts converging around a strategic triangle of borders.
Three attacks in six weeks
The first attack took place on 15 September, when drones appeared over the Atbara and Setit dams and the Al-Shawak area in Khashm el-Girba locality. Two fell in an uninhabited area. The second came on the morning of Sunday, 18 October, when Sudanese army ground defences opened fire on drones over the cities of Gedaref and Khashm el-Girba. Some targeted eastern Sudan’s most important water and electricity facilities: the Upper Atbara and Setit Dam Complex and the Khashm el-Girba reservoir.
The third attack came just eight days later. One drone hit the Al-Hawata station in Al-Rahad locality, putting it out of service, while another damaged a transformer at Al-Faw station, knocking the entire eastern grid offline. No one was killed.
Al Jazeera quoted sources in Gedaref’s electricity distribution administration as saying the drones also targeted stations in Gedaref and Singa, as well as the Mashkour and Al-Junaid sugar factories. A government official told Agence France-Presse that five stations were targeted, two in Al Jazirah state and others in White Nile and Gedaref.
The attacks have become more frequent, and their targets have changed. In the first two, the drones approached the dams themselves, which are protected by heavy air defences. In the third, they targeted less protected substations, where disabling a single transformer is enough to cut electricity to an entire state.
These facilities are also vital to the region’s residents. The Upper Atbara and Setit complex generates about 300 megawatts, irrigates the New Halfa project and supplies drinking water to the east. Damage to it, or to the grid that transmits its electricity, immediately affects agriculture, water supplies and hospitals in a region hosting large numbers of internally displaced people alongside its existing population.
The attacks come amid a sharp rise in the use of drones across Sudan. The United Nations documented at least 306 people killed in drone strikes during the first three weeks of October, attributing the strikes to both the Rapid Support Forces militia and the army. The former naturally accounts for the larger share of those deaths, given its systematic and deliberate targeting of civilian sites and infrastructure.
Why the east, and why now?
No ground battles are taking place in eastern Sudan, which is precisely what makes attacks there effective. Gedaref and Kassala are among the last places people fleeing the war can turn to. Supply and displacement routes connected to Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Red Sea coast pass through them. Striking the region signals to the government that areas deep inside its territory are vulnerable and forces the army to spread its limited air defences across facilities far from the front lines.
Three reasons for targeting eastern Sudan can be inferred.
The first is military. The Rapid Support Forces, backed by Ethiopia, are pressing the Blue Nile front, continuing their offensive alongside the SPLM on the Kurmuk axis. Fighting has reached the Sali area, which the army uses as a forward headquarters for operations in the south of the region. The more the army is occupied with protecting the east, the less pressure there is on this front.
The second concerns the drones themselves. As the Rapid Support Forces militia loses ground across most of Sudan, drones have become its main means of exerting pressure. Alongside these battlefield losses, the shift from military targets to infrastructure, especially electricity facilities, means the target is no longer the army but the population and economy of the areas it controls.
The east had not previously been spared such attacks. A strike on Al-Shawak station in early 2025 caused a total power outage in Gedaref and Kassala. What is new is the frequency and regularity of the strikes.
The third reason is regional, and we believe it may be the most important. The first drone attacks on the east last month came as the war in northern Ethiopia was escalating from limited clashes and drone strikes into a wider war. The last two followed Ethiopian army advances in Tigray, where it seized most of the region’s major cities.
Yet war continues to rage between the government army and the Tigray Defense Forces. During this period, Sudan’s eastern border has become the focus of mutual accusations between Khartoum and Addis Ababa, making the drones’ origins as much a political question as a military one.
Where are the drones launched from?
No technical evidence identifying the launch sites of the drones striking the east has yet been published, but the Sudanese account has remained consistent and become more pointed. During the September attack, field sources said the drones had been launched from inside Ethiopia. In the 18 October attack, local sources said the drones targeting Khashm el-Girba had been launched from Ethiopian territory, though this was not independently verified. In the attack at dawn on Monday, 26 October, the editor-in-chief of Al-Sudani newspaper quoted senior military sources as saying Emirati drones operating with the Rapid Support Forces had been launched from Ethiopia and struck the Al-Junaid, Al-Hawata and Al-Faw stations.
These accusations have precedents dating back to the start of the year. In February, a Reuters investigation found that Ethiopia had built a secret camp to train Rapid Support Forces militia fighters. The investigation said the camp was funded with Emirati support and located in the Menge district of the Benishangul region, near the borders with Sudan and South Sudan, only about 101 kilometres from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
In March, the Sudanese government said drones had been launched at its territory from Ethiopia. Two months later, it recalled its ambassador to Addis Ababa and accused Ethiopia and the UAE of being behind the attack on Khartoum airport. The army spokesman said the drones had been launched from Bahir Dar airport in Amhara, a region bordering Sudan.
Similar accusations have been made in Blue Nile, most recently on 12 October, when the army announced it had shot down a drone near Wad al-Mahi. It said it had tracked the drone since it crossed into Sudan from Ethiopia. A military source told Mada Masr that the Rapid Support Forces had regrouped in camps in the Ethiopian city of Assosa and that its attack on Kurmuk was accompanied by drone and artillery fire from inside Ethiopia. Addis Ababa denies all these accusations and says it respects Sudan’s sovereignty.
Geography supports the Sudanese account of the first two attacks. The Upper Atbara and Setit complex lies in Al-Fashaga, close to the border, and small suicide drones usually have a limited range. The latest attack makes the picture less clear, however, because some of the targeted stations are in Al Jazirah, Sennar and White Nile, closer to fighting in central and western Sudan. This means the drones may have been launched from more than one direction.
Based on the available information, the most likely explanation is that the Rapid Support Forces is using launch sites inside Ethiopia, at least with the authorities’ knowledge or with their direct facilitation, alongside sites inside Sudan. There is nothing to support the suggestion that the Ethiopian army itself is carrying out the strikes. Using another party allows Addis Ababa to deny involvement.
Tigray and the border: is the war expanding?
Events in Gedaref are linked to those in western Tigray, across the border. Khartoum accuses Addis Ababa of hosting the Rapid Support Forces, while Addis Ababa accuses Khartoum of hosting Tigrayan fighters. Central to the latter accusation is the formation known as “Army 70”, made up of Tigrayan fighters who took refuge in Sudan during the 2020–2022 war and are based in the border areas.
According to the Ethiopian account, the fighting that resumed in Tigray in early August began at the Sudanese border. An Ethiopian military source told a media platform close to Addis Ababa that the clashes began when a force of Tigrayan fighters based in Sudan crossed into Ethiopia near the border village of Al-Lakdi, close to the Ethiopian town of Humera. Meanwhile, Tigray’s regional government accused elements of the Rapid Support Forces of taking part in the government attack on Shirirena. The fighting also affected Sudan, where a number of Ethiopian refugees were killed by shells that landed on one of the camps.
In September, Ethiopian army commander Field Marshal Birhanu Jula accused Sudan and Egypt of supporting armed opposition groups. The Sudanese army denied the accusation and in turn accused Ethiopia of training and supplying the Rapid Support Forces and launching drones from its territory.
Chatham House believes Addis Ababa is seeking to establish a buffer zone along its border with Sudan after severing ties with Eritrea on 1 October. It attributes this to fears that the Sudanese army, working with Eritrea, could support the Tigray Defense Forces across the border. This could lead to a repeat of the events of 1991, when the two countries backed the armed struggle led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front against Mengistu Haile Mariam’s dictatorship, ultimately bringing it down.
The situation is becoming more dangerous as the military balance in Tigray shifts. At the beginning of this month, government forces took the capital, Mekelle, reached the Eritrean border at Zalambessa and entered Axum and Shire, while Tigrayan and Eritrean forces withdrew towards Badme. In recent days, however, Tigrayan forces have launched counterattacks, inflicting losses on the Ethiopian army and retaking several areas, including Hawzen, Shiraro and Adi Awala.
Ethiopia may fear that the Sudanese border strip from Humera to Al-Fashaga could become a rear area for supporting Tigrayan forces, which have close ties with Sudanese army forces stationed in Gedaref and Kassala. Seen in this light, the repeated attacks on Gedaref can be read as Ethiopian pressure on Khartoum.
At the same time, a clearer regional alignment is emerging. On 4 October, Egypt hosted a summit bringing together the leaders of Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, three of the four countries Ethiopia accuses of supporting the opposing alliance. In Khartoum, military leaders have sharpened their rhetoric. Sudanese Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Yasser al-Atta accused Ethiopia of planning to seize the fertile agricultural area of Al-Fashaga in Gedaref state, as well as the city of Damazin, the capital of the Blue Nile region.
Even so, direct war between the two armies does not appear imminent. The Sudanese army is fighting in Kordofan, Darfur and Blue Nile, while the Ethiopian army is fighting in Tigray, Amhara and Oromia. Khartoum has also kept the door open to dialogue. On 13 October, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mohi al-Din Salem told the French envoy that Sudan was ready to negotiate with Ethiopia if it stopped supporting the Rapid Support Forces.
Two developments could change this. Further attacks on the electricity network, or strikes on the dams themselves, could cause casualties and put the government under major domestic pressure, especially after its military sources began accusing both the UAE and Ethiopia. The second possibility is that Sudan, in coordination with Eritrea, could become a corridor for reopening the western Tigray front in support of the region’s forces.
For now, both sides appear to favour indirect confrontation: drone strikes deep inside territory, mutual accusations and conditional readiness for dialogue. But the shrinking interval between attacks, from a month between the first and second to eight days between the second and third, and the shift from military sites to the electricity grid suggest the situation could erupt into wider conflict. With two civil wars along the same border, and the UAE and Eritrea involved, any major incident could be enough to turn eastern Sudan from a safe area into a theatre of confrontation.