A drone strike blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has knocked out power in the strategic city of El-Obeid in North Kordofan State, according to a local official and a resident.
An official with the state electricity company, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an RSF drone struck the city’s power station early Tuesday, sparking a fire and causing a widespread blackout.
“I heard an explosion around 2:00 a.m., then saw flames rising from the direction of the power station,” said Awad Ali, a resident of El-Obeid. “As of 9:00 a.m., electricity had not been restored.”
El-Obeid, the largest city in the Kordofan region, has become a critical battleground in Sudan’s ongoing conflict between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which erupted in April 2023.
The city sits at a strategic crossroads linking RSF-controlled areas of Darfur in the west with army-held territories in the east, including the capital, Khartoum. Over the past year, the RSF has sought to reassert pressure on El-Obeid after the army broke a prolonged siege, launching repeated drone attacks and assaults on surrounding towns.
In recent weeks, however, the army has pushed back, breaking sieges on the other two major Kordofan cities, Dilling and Kadugli, where hundreds of thousands of civilians had faced the threat of mass starvation.
The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced an estimated 11 million people, creating what aid agencies describe as the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis. The war has effectively divided Sudan, with the army controlling the north, centre and east, while the RSF and allied forces dominate much of the west and parts of the south.
