Drones hit a Gezira fuel depot as Riyadh files an August aid strike with the Security Council

In the early hours of Sunday 27 September, drones struck the Umm Alila fuel depot near Abu Haraz, about 20 km northeast of Wad Madani in Al Jazirah state. Residents reported several explosions shortly after dawn prayers. Civil Defence said it contained the fire and prevented it spreading beyond the petrol and diesel tanks. The facility distributes fuel across Sudan’s principal agricultural state and was ransacked during the RSF’s takeover of Wad Madani in December 2023. Sudan Tribune attributed the strike to the RSF on the basis of security sources and witnesses; Dabanga stated it in its own voice. The RSF could not be reached by either outlet and has not claimed it. Separately on Thursday 24 September, the army said it downed a Chinese-made FH-95 drone near El Kokiti in North Kordofan, its second that week, while the RSF said it downed a Turkish-made Bayraktar over Blue Nile. Neither side published wreckage.

Saudi Arabia’s UN ambassador Abdulaziz Al-Wasil has now written to the Security Council and the Secretary-General over a drone strike around midnight on 17 August that hit a truck carrying King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre supplies near the entrance to El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan. Al-Wasil said Saudi authorities received official confirmation of RSF responsibility from Sudan’s foreign ministry — one belligerent attributing an act to the other, relayed by a third state. An RSF spokesperson could not be reached. The letter was seen by Sudan Tribune and by no other outlet in this window. Sudan Tribune’s own framing of the North Kordofan front is that the army has largely thwarted ground incursions after retaking positions across the state, while drone strikes on civilian and military infrastructure in El Obeid continue.

Assessment: Two things are worth separating. The first is a pattern: the RSF is not claiming strikes on fuel infrastructure while US truce terms are live, which is itself information about what it wants attributed to it and when. The second is timing. Riyadh sat on the 17 August incident for six weeks and filed in the week its Quad partner Abu Dhabi faces UN Panel of Experts scrutiny over RSF supply. That is positioning as much as humanitarianism. And if El Obeid’s ground line is holding while drone attrition on fuel, shelters and convoys intensifies, the siege has changed character rather than escalated — which makes the El Fasher template the wrong one.