Sudan’s armed forces have accused Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates of involvement in a drone attack on Khartoum airport, part of a series of strikes that have ended months of relative calm in the capital three years into the country’s civil war.
Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday rejected what it called “baseless accusations,” denied involvement, and accused Sudan’s armed forces of supporting hostile actors and violating Ethiopia’s territorial integrity.
The UAE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations made late on Monday. Reuters could not independently verify the claims.
Sudan has frequently accused the UAE of backing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been fighting the army since 2023. The Gulf state denies the charge.
Sudan also accused Ethiopia of allowing drones to be launched from its territory. In February, Reuters reported that Ethiopia was hosting a camp to train thousands of RSF fighters and had upgraded the nearby Asosa airport for drone operations. Ethiopia did not respond to requests for comment at the time.
The strikes, which began on Friday, have hit military targets and civilian areas in Khartoum, where people, ministries and international agencies had started returning since the army retook control of the city in March 2025, residents told Reuters.
Witnesses said Monday’s drone attacks targeted Khartoum International Airport — site of some of the earliest fighting between the military and the RSF in April 2023. The airport received its first international flight in three years last week.
Army spokesman Brigadier General Asim Awad Abdelwahab said the government had evidence that attacks on several states beginning on March 1 had taken off from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport. He cited information from a drone downed in mid-March that he said linked it to the airport and to the UAE.
He said the army linked another drone launched from the same airport to Monday’s attack.
“What Ethiopia and the UAE have done is direct aggression against Sudan and won’t be met with silence,” Abdelwahab said.
Residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believed the RSF was behind the new attacks. The RSF has not commented.
Sudan’s Information Ministry said no one was wounded and no damage was caused by the attack on the airport, which would return to operations after routine safety procedures.
Drone warfare has become the main tool of the conflict, which the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The war has killed hundreds of thousands through violence, hunger and disease, and forced millions to flee.
Witnesses told Reuters drones had also struck Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman as well as al-Obeid to the west and Kenana to the south over the weekend.
One drone killed five people in a civilian bus in southern Omdurman on Saturday, according to Emergency Lawyers, an activist group. Another on Sunday killed family members of Abu Agla Keikal, a tribal militia leader allied with the army who defected from the RSF earlier in the war.
The attacks follow the defection of al-Nour al-Guba, a senior RSF commander who was welcomed by the army into Khartoum along with his forces late last month, raising fears of tensions within the army’s coalition.
Sudan’s war erupted after the RSF and the Sudanese army fell out over plans to integrate their forces and transition to democracy.
The RSF quickly took over Khartoum but was pushed out last year. It has since consolidated control of the Darfur region in the west, and opened a new front, also marked by repeated drone attacks, in Blue Nile state along the border with Ethiopia.
