Sudan Drone Strikes: Which Power Stations Were Hit?

Drone strikes have knocked out the power substations at Al-Dabbah in Sudan‘s Northern State and Abu Hamad in River Nile State early on November 1, extending a campaign against electricity infrastructure in army-held territory which the Sudanese government blames on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). River Nile State governor Mohammed al-Badawi stated after inspecting the site that the Abu Hamad substation had been completely destroyed, cutting power across the state, while the guard at Al-Dabbah was killed as the facility burned. The Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers counted 15 electricity facilities attacked in October alone, with strikes since October 20 reaching 10 of the country’s 18 states. The pattern highlights how far the war’s drone campaign has moved from the front lines to the power supply on which the army-held half of the country depends.

The heaviest blow fell late on October 29, when drones struck the Um Dabakir thermal power station in White Nile State, the country’s largest thermal plant with a capacity of 500 megawatts, destroying four transformers, damaging three generating units and forcing the station to shut down. White Nile and North Kordofan states were cut off from the national grid as a result, with the regional network director warning that the damage would be felt for months. Early on October 30 a drone carrying four munitions destroyed the transformers at the main substation in Shendi, according to the town’s security committee, and also hit an army air defence hangar, wounding one soldier. The Al-Markhiyat substation northwest of Omdurman had been struck days earlier, leaving much of the capital without electricity for more than 12 hours.

The strikes leave the 1,250 megawatt Merowe Dam carrying more than 70 percent of Sudan’s electricity, with national output having already fallen from 4,400 megawatts before the war began in April 2023 to around 1,100 megawatts. Former energy minister Adel Ibrahim has estimated that only three principal stations remain in service, at Merowe, Atbara and Maranjan near Wad Madani, stating: “If electricity stations continue to be targeted at this rate, complete darkness will engulf the country.” The Sudan Doctors Network has warned that the outages endanger hospitals, dialysis centres and blood banks, while irrigation pumps for the winter growing season depend on electricity or on diesel that is now scarce across much of the north.

Khartoum has tied the campaign to neighbouring Ethiopia, with Foreign Ministry undersecretary Muawiya Othman telling diplomats on October 31 that Ethiopia was taking part in “a proxy war on behalf of regional actors”, above all the United Arab Emirates. A report by the army-led Transitional Sovereignty Council claimed 70 drone attacks launched from Ethiopian territory between February 15 and October 27, 28 of them in October, from sites including Assosa airport and Bahir Dar air base. Ethiopia has denied the accusations and countered that the Sudanese army is backing rebels against Addis Ababa, while the UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF, which has not commented. The claims come only days after Ethiopia received its first Su-35 fighters from Russia, and the drone war is far from one-sided, with an army drone strike on a market in the RSF-held city of Nyala in late October having killed more than 100 people according to Emergency Lawyers.