Port Sudan (Sudan) (AFP) - Drones struck the airport and cut power across Port Sudan, officials said on Tuesday, the third straight day the army-aligned government’s seat of power has come under attack.

The strikes, which the army blamed on rival paramilitaries and also targeted a military base, came a day after Sudan’s main fuel depot was hit, causing a massive blaze just south of the eastern city.

Until Sunday, Port Sudan been considered a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the two-year war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

An AFP correspondent reported loud explosions at dawn and plumes of smoke over the Red Sea coastal city, one from the direction of the port and another from a fuel depot just south.

One drone hit “the civilian section of the Port Sudan airport”, an airport official said, two days after an army air base in the city came under drone strikes blamed on the RSF.

The RSF has not commented on the attacks on Port Sudan, about 650 kilometres (400 miles) from its nearest known positions on the outskirts of the capital Khartoum.

Air traffic was halted at the country’s only airport still handling international civilian flights, the official there said.

The UN said the airport is “a lifeline for humanitarian operations” as it serves as the main gateway for “aid personnel, medical supplies and other life-saving relief” into the war-ravaged country.

Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN’s top official in Port Sudan, warned damage to infrastructure would “further exacerbate human suffering in what is already the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”.

An army source said a second drone attack on Tuesday hit the city’s main army base, with witnesses reporting a nearby hotel was struck.

Both sites in the city centre are near the residence of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, whose forces have been at war with the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, since April 2023.

Drones also struck a fuel depot, the army source said, and more hit Port Sudan’s main power substation, causing a city-wide blackout, the national electricity company said.

- ‘War will follow us’ -

AFP images showed thick black smoke billowing over the city.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Witnesses in the city’s north reported anti-aircraft fire from a military base.

“Yesterday and today just confirm to us that this war will follow us no matter where we go,” said Hussein Ibrahim, 64, who has fled RSF attacks on his hometown in Al-Jazira state, about 1,000 kilometres away.

At petrol stations across Port Sudan, queues of cars stretched for more than a kilometre as drivers scrambled to fill their tanks.

Nearly 600 kilometres south, witnesses told AFP on Tuesday that a separate drone strike targeted the airport in the eastern city of Kassala, adding that it was intercepted by army anti-aircraft fire.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has called the spate of attacks this week a “worrying development threatening the protection of civilians and humanitarian operations”.

Nearly all humanitarian aid into Sudan, where famine has been declared and nearly 25 million people suffer dire food insecurity, arrives through Port Sudan.

The RSF has increasingly relied on drones since losing territory including nearly all of Khartoum in March.

Sudan’s war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted 13 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

- Legal battle -

The United Nations said Tuesday it is “gravely concerned” by the growing numbers of refugees fleeing Sudan’s western Darfur region to neighbouring Chad, with nearly 20,000 people arriving over the past two weeks alone.

On Tuesday, paramilitary shelling on a displacement camp near North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher killed more than six people and wounded over 20 others, according to volunteer rescuers.

The conflict has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the centre, north and east while the RSF holds nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.

Experts say the RSF’s increased reliance on drones serves to telegraph its reach and obstruct the army’s supply lines.

The RSF has used both makeshift and highly advanced drones, which Sudan’s army has accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying.

Sudan’s army-aligned information minister, Khalid al-Aiser, again on Tuesday pointed the finger at the UAE, saying it was supplying “its proxy” the RSF.

The International Court of Justice on Monday threw out a case brought by Sudan against the UAE, accusing it of complicity in genocide by supporting the RSF.

The army-aligned foreign ministry said it “respected” the ruling based on the ICJ’s lack of jurisdiction, adding that it “cannot legally be interpreted as a denial of the violations”.