Explosions and fires rocked Sudan’s main port city and wartime capital, Port Sudan, on Tuesday, part of a days-long drone assault that has torched the country’s biggest fuel depot, damaging the most important gateway for foreign aid.
Video footage showed a massive column of black smoke billowing from the area around the port, and a witness said blasts had been heard from other areas, though it was not clear exactly where else had been hit.
According to Sudan’s electricity company, a substation in the city was also hit, causing a complete power outage, part of a systematic assault on infrastructure.
Port Sudan had reportedly enjoyed relative calm since the civil war suddenly erupted in April 2023, becoming the base for the army-aligned government after the Sudanese Armed Forces lost control of much of the capital, Khartoum, at the start of the conflict to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Scores of displaced people have also sought refuge in the city, where U.N. officials, diplomats, and agencies have set up headquarters, making it the main base for aid operations in what the U.N. has described as the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster.
DAILY POST reports that Port Sudan’s import and storage depots supply fuel across the country, and the destruction of its facilities risks a major crisis, throttling aid deliveries by road and impacting electricity production and cooking gas supplies.
The attacks, which began on Sunday, opened a new front in the conflict, targeting the army’s main stronghold in eastern Sudan after it drove the RSF back westward across much of central Sudan, including Khartoum, in March.
Drones struck a military base on Sunday in the area near Sudan’s only functioning international airport, and on Monday, they targeted the city’s fuel depots.
