Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces carried out drone attacks across Khartoum and several other army-controlled cities on August 12, 2026, in a coordinated operation that reached targets in the capital region, Kordofan and northern Sudan.
An army source told AFP that air defences engaged a large number of drones directed at Khartoum, El-Obeid, Atbara and El-Damer. RSF spokesman Al-Fatih Qurashi separately said the paramilitary force had targeted Atbara’s airport and army warehouses, along with fuel depots in Omdurman.
In the capital, an AFP correspondent reported a drone attack at about 5am, or 0300 GMT, and heard anti-aircraft missiles in the direction of the army’s Wadi Seidna base, north of Omdurman. Residents cited by The National also described drones passing overhead before explosions shortly after dawn. They could not identify all the sites struck.
Across the Nile in Khartoum North, also known as Bahri, an eyewitness told AFP that two drones hit a mosque and an electricity transformer in the El-Droshab area. It was unclear whether air defences had brought them down. No immediate casualties were reported there, and worshippers had left the mosque after dawn prayers.
Witnesses in Atbara and El-Damer reported explosions and drones in the sky. In Tamboul, about 120 kilometres southeast, a witness said the aircraft caused fear among civilians. Reports cited by The National said drones also reached Al Obeid, where residents believed an army base housing the Fifth Infantry Division was the intended target. The outlet said reports of two deaths and six injuries there could not immediately be confirmed.
A wider battlefield struggle
The war began in April 2023 following a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, formerly his deputy. The army controls the capital and much of Sudan’s north, east and centre, while the RSF consolidated control across most of Darfur and has sought further territory in Kordofan and near the Ethiopian border.
The army had recently pushed the RSF away from a key road linking Khartoum with El-Obeid. The National also reported that the RSF announced the capture of Qayssan in the Blue Nile region a day before the drone attacks.
The strikes interrupted a period of relative calm in Khartoum, which the army recaptured the previous year. AFP reported that 2.3 million displaced people had returned to a city still facing damaged infrastructure, uncleared remnants of war and restricted electricity and water. More than half a million Khartoum North residents were already without power before the reported transformer explosion.
Estimates of the war’s toll vary. Aid workers cited by AFP put deaths above 200,000, while The National reported that about 14 million people had been displaced and an estimated 20 million were struggling with hunger.
