Drones knock out Sudan’s power stations state by state as Khartoum points at Addis Ababa

Sudan Tribune reported that drones struck the Al Dabbah and Abu Hamad transformer stations in Northern and River Nile states on Sunday 1 November, citing government sources in Abu Hamad locality and local sources in Al Dabbah; that RSF drones destroyed the Aroma and Halfa El Jadida distribution stations in Kassala State at dawn on Monday 2 November, cutting power across the state, with a further strike on a station at Merowe near the dam; and that on Tuesday 3 November a suspected RSF drone hit a fuel station at El Abbasiya in South Kordofan as vehicles queued to refuel, killing at least seven people and injuring 36. The casualty figures come from unnamed local sources, not from a named hospital or a UN body. The Files notes that the same outlet published a near-identical report — seven killed by an RSF drone in the Abbasiya Tagali area of South Kordofan — on 1 November 2025, and we have not been able to rule out confusion between the two.

The running totals have moved faster than the verification. Sudan Tribune’s own tally, published on 1 November, put the count at 14 power stations bombed over two weeks. The cabinet the same day described roughly 14 stations destroyed across Gedaref, Sennar, Al Jazirah, White Nile, Khartoum, South Kordofan, Northern State and River Nile State. By 3 November the government’s figure was at least 17 stations across nine states. Meeting on 1 November under Prime Minister Kamil Idris, the cabinet ordered a maximum state of alert, threatened maximum penalties for anyone proven to have supplied the RSF with coordinates for the strikes, and directed coordinated domestic and international media campaigns to criminalise the attacks. On 28 October, Information Ministry undersecretary Graham Abdel Qader said strikes had hit hospitals, mosques, residential neighbourhoods and energy installations across White Nile, Gezira, Sennar, Red Sea, Blue Nile and Khartoum states, and Khartoum named Ethiopia as involved.

Al Jazeera headlined on 2 November that Sudan had filed complaints against Ethiopia with the UN over the drone campaign. The Files has seen the headline, not the text of any letter, and has located no response from Addis Ababa. Against that backdrop, the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, told The National on 2 November that the UN plans to hold talks with the RSF “before Christmas” on the transition to civilian rule, after meetings with parties close to the army and with the anti-war coalition. “Diplomatically, the efforts are strong, and now even more strong than some years ago,” Haavisto said, describing the session with the anti-war coalition as “a good meeting... already talking about the substance of the transition to a civilian government.” The UN is working within the Quintet grouping alongside the EU, African Union, Arab League and IGAD.

Assessment: Three things to hold apart. First, attribution: no RSF claim, no denial, no debris analysis or flight-path work has surfaced, so every named perpetrator in this file is a belligerent’s assertion carried by a single outlet. Second, Khartoum’s case against Ethiopia slides between hosting and launching — those are different allegations with different legal weight, and a Security Council letter, if one exists, will have to pick one. Third, seventeen stations is a destruction figure, not a restoration figure; no utility has spoken about repair timelines. Whether Kassala and the Red Sea corridor stay dark is what separates harassment from strategy. The cabinet’s coordinates clause is the most solid item here, and the most dangerous: it licenses collaborator hunts in army-held cities.