Drone wave knocks out power across central and eastern Sudan as UN counts 306 deaths in three weeks

The scope of Monday’s attack is reported two ways. AFP, citing a Sudanese government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said five power stations were struck — two in Al-Jazira, two in Gedaref and one in White Nile — producing outages across large parts of the three states; an AFP correspondent in Al-Jazira independently saw the aftermath of two of the strikes. Sudan Tribune, datelined Al-Faw and El Geneid, put the attack across four states, adding Sennar, and said fuel depots were hit alongside power stations, publishing a photograph of the El Geneid station. No Rapid Support Forces claim of responsibility appeared in any retrieved copy; the attribution to the RSF comes from Port Sudan and is so far uncontested rather than independently established. AFP notes that earlier strikes on stations and hydroelectric dams have cut electricity for days at a time in a country where nearly 20 million people face extreme hunger.

The attack sits on top of a tally published three days earlier. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on 23 October that OHCHR had documented at least 306 deaths and hundreds of injuries from drone strikes between 1 and 21 October, attributed to both the army and the RSF, hitting homes, markets, hospitals, displacement sites, power stations and water sources. “The increasing use of drones, already accounting for the majority of conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan this year, is deeply disturbing and is exacting a horrifying toll,” Türk said. The single largest incident in his tally, a “double-tap” strike on a transport truck at Dibab, West Kordofan, on 18 October, is given as at least 139 killed; AFP’s contemporaneous reporting on 20 October put that toll at 80, and France 24 recorded the RSF blaming the Sudanese government for the strike.

Assessment: Two things are worth separating here. The grid strikes are an escalation in kind, not degree: infrastructure has been hit before, but a single coordinated wave across three or four states is a bid to make the army’s rear areas ungovernable rather than to take ground. The OHCHR tally supplies the other half — three of its six listed incidents are at or near artisanal gold-mining sites, 73 deaths in total, which the High Commissioner tied explicitly to the war economy. Both parties are now shooting at each other’s revenue, not just each other’s lines. Treat the casualty numbers with care: the Dibab gap between 139 and 80 is a seventy-percent discrepancy inside three days, and neither count has been reconciled.