Seventh strike in a week takes out Omdurman transformer station, blacking out the capital

The strike landed before dawn on Tuesday 27 October. Sudan Tribune, citing unnamed local sources and Omdurman residents who described a loud explosion followed by blackouts and army anti-aircraft fire engaging the drone, counts it as the seventh attack on Sudanese power facilities in less than a week. The preceding wave, on Monday 26 October, hit six stations across four states: Al-Junaid in Al-Jazirah, Singa in Sennar, Al-Hawata and Al-Faw in Al-Qadarif, and Mashkour in White Nile. An earlier strike hit Tendelti in White Nile several days before that. AFP attributed the Al-Markhiyat strike to the Rapid Support Forces on the word of a single anonymous official at the national electricity company, who said drones “targeted the Al-Markhiyat transformer station, disrupting the power supply across large parts of Khartoum and Al-Jazira states.” No RSF claim of responsibility for any of the seven strikes has surfaced.

The on-the-record confirmation is narrower than the attribution. A Ministry of Energy and Petroleum press release, reported by Sudan Tribune on Wednesday, confirms the damage and the outage but not who fired it. Minister Al-Mu’tasim Ibrahim Ahmed met electricity sector leaders on Tuesday; the ministry says teams are working “around the clock,” describes the Al-Markhiyat damage as extensive, and says the meeting also reviewed damage at Al-Hawata, Al-Junaid, Mashkour and Al-Faw and the impact on national grid stability. The ministry places the resulting outages across large parts of Khartoum and River Nile states — not Al-Jazira, as AFP’s source said. Residents quoted by Sudan Tribune said they feared prolonged outages would disrupt Nile-side water treatment stations if repairs are delayed. No authority has confirmed or denied that.

Assessment: Two things are being conflated and should not be. That the stations were hit is established by the energy ministry on the record. That the RSF hit them rests on one anonymous electricity company official, speaking to AFP, who also used the government’s term of art — “militia.” The discrepancy over which state lost power, Al-Jazira or River Nile, is not cosmetic: it identifies a different grid segment. The ministry promised a damage assessment and said power would return “soon,” with no date. Watch for silence: if the assessment is not published, the damage exceeds the announcement. And watch the water treatment question, which is the shortest path from a grid story to a cholera story, and currently rests on residents alone.