Drones hit Sudan’s Blue Nile capital as rival accounts dispute who launched them

Explosive-laden drones struck several areas of Ed Damazin, capital of Blue Nile region, on the evening of Sunday 13 September. Residents reported at least 11 detonations, according to Sudan Tribune, which filed from the city. Projectiles landed near a military hospital and the airport, and one drone hit a fuel station; army anti-aircraft guns engaged. Earlier the same day the Sudanese Armed Forces said in a statement that air defence units had downed a drone over the town of Balang — a claim Sudan Tribune noted Reuters could not independently verify. A military spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on casualties or damage. Sudan Tribune attributed the evening strikes to the Rapid Support Forces, citing witnesses. Radio Dabanga, publishing on 14 September on the basis of activist video and unnamed sources in the city, attributed them to the RSF and to the SPLM-N faction led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, which holds parts of Blue Nile including Kurmuk and Geissan. Neither party has claimed the strike on the record.

The attack lands on a front that has been moving against the army since February. An RSF-aligned SPLM-N faction and its allies took Kurmuk and Geisan, then seized the Bakori base in Geisan and the Sarkam base in Kurmuk, per Sudan Tribune, which also reported SAF reinforcements — including elements of the Darfur Joint Force — arriving in Ed Damazin from Khartoum, Gezira and Sennar. Earlier this month Joseph Touka, first deputy chairman of the SPLM-N faction allied with the RSF, said in an interview on the group’s own website that Ed Damazin was now exposed and within striking distance of its fighters, and that the coalition was widening territorial control to encircle and wear down government troops. The Blue Nile Civil Society Initiative condemned attacks on civilian sites including fuel stations, saying they had “terrorised residents,” in a statement carried by Dabanga with no named spokesperson.

Assessment: Read the disagreement between Sudan Tribune and Dabanga as information, not noise. If the SPLM-N is now co-authoring drone strikes on a regional capital, the Blue Nile front has stopped being an RSF expedition and become a coalition war with its own logic — and al-Hilu’s fighters know that terrain in a way the RSF does not. Handle the Ethiopia strand with care: Khartoum has made at least four separate claims since May of drones crossing from Ethiopian territory, and not one has been independently verified in the reporting available. A think-tank assessment that RSF operations “almost certainly” originate there is an analytic judgement, not a finding. The absence of any casualty figure two days on is itself a measure of how little reporting capacity survives in Ed Damazin.