RSF Drone Strikes Knock Out Power Across Four Sudanese States

Lead

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out a coordinated drone attack on Sudan’s electricity grid in the final days of October 2026, striking power stations in at least three army-held states and following up with a strike on a transformer facility that cut power to large parts of Khartoum and Gezira state. The campaign, which utility officials and Sudanese government sources attribute to the paramilitary group, is the latest escalation in a war that has increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure rather than only front-line positions. No single incident has been independently verified by a neutral body, and the RSF has not publicly claimed or commented on the strikes, but the pattern, timing and target set are consistent with a monthslong RSF campaign against Sudan’s power network.

What Happened

According to a Sudanese government official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, RSF drones struck five power stations on Monday, 26 October 2026: two in Al-Jazira state, two in Gedaref state, and one in White Nile state. All three states are controlled by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), which has fought the RSF since the war began in April 2023. The strikes cut electricity across large parts of all three states; an AFP correspondent in Al-Jazira reported power had been out since roughly 2 a.m. local time, and a resident of Al-Fao in Gedaref reported an outage from the same hour. Separate reporting attributed to the state-run Sudanese Electricity Holding Company put the number of stations hit at six, naming Sinja, El Hawata, Al Fao, Mashkour and a facility in Al-Junaid, Al-Jazira state, and described “severe damage” to equipment. Reuters said it could not independently verify the operator’s account.

The following day, Tuesday 27 October, a further RSF drone strike reportedly hit the Al-Markhiyat transformer station, disrupting electricity supply for millions of people across large parts of Khartoum and Gezira state for more than twelve hours. The state-run Sudanese Electricity Distribution Company acknowledged “serious damage and technical faults” to its distribution network and several main stations and power lines, and said rationing would last longer than usual while repairs continued, without giving a timeline. The company said technical teams were working around the clock.

The same week, a separate drone strike on a market in northern Nyala, in Sudan’s Darfur region, killed at least 21 people and injured about 40, a medic at Nyala Hospital told AFP. Responsibility for that attack was not confirmed in available reporting; the Sudanese military regularly strikes RSF-held Nyala, and one resident said the market was frequented by armed men, including RSF fighters. The incident underscores that both sides are now conducting drone strikes with limited independent verification of who struck what, and claims from either side should be read with that caveat.

The Drones Behind the Campaign

Sudanese officials and independent monitors have documented the RSF’s growing use of Chinese-origin unmanned aircraft over the course of 2026, most prominently the Feihong FH-95 (also referred to by some observers under its export designation CH-95), a fixed-wing system reported to have an operational endurance of up to roughly 12 to 24 hours depending on the source. The Sudanese army said it shot down an FH-95 near El Obeid earlier in 2026, and a Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report separately identified Chinese-made UAVs at an RSF-controlled airport in South Darfur. Neither the manufacturer nor any state government has confirmed a direct supply relationship to the RSF, and the full logistics chain behind the paramilitary’s drone fleet, which analysts say also includes smaller loitering munitions and modified commercial platforms, remains unconfirmed in open sources. Claims about the exact munitions used against the power stations named in this report have not been independently verified.

Because the RSF is a paramilitary force rather than a state military with its own declared defense-industrial base, it has no declared official supplier and does not issue procurement announcements. What is established is a pattern: the army has periodically reported downing RSF drones over Kordofan and the Nile Valley, the UN has catalogued a rising number of attacks on infrastructure through 2026, and both the government side and the RSF have increasingly used one-way attack drones against fixed targets far from the active front lines.

A Monthslong Campaign Against the Grid

The late-October strikes extend a pattern seen through 2026. Earlier in the year, drone strikes disabled the El Obeid power station after a fire broke out following an attack, and the Merowe Dam, which the Sudanese army said it fended off at least one attempted strike against, has been described by officials as supplying roughly 40% of Sudan’s electricity. A UN tally cited in reporting around the same period found that drone strikes in the first three weeks of October 2026 alone killed more than 300 people and injured hundreds more, on top of a broader war death toll that aid workers estimate at over 200,000 since April 2023. The UN has repeatedly warned that strikes on power infrastructure threaten health systems, water pumping, and food security for millions of civilians who have no connection to the fighting.

The humanitarian backdrop to the latest outages is severe. Sudan faces what aid agencies describe as the world’s largest hunger crisis, with close to 20 million people facing acute food insecurity, alongside triple-digit inflation and a currency that has lost more than a quarter of its value in recent weeks. Residents interviewed by AFP in Gedaref and Al-Jazira described the practical toll of the blackout: a father worried about refrigerating his diabetic son’s insulin, a grocer at risk of losing refrigerated stock, and a farmer in Al-Junaid noting that a station only recently repaired after an earlier RSF strike had been hit again, dashing hopes of restarting irrigation pumps ahead of the planting season.

Why It Matters

The shift toward systematic strikes on power generation and distribution infrastructure, rather than solely military positions, reflects how drone proliferation has changed the character of Sudan’s war. Inexpensive, difficult-to-intercept drones allow a force without an air force or an extensive air-defense network of its own to project damaging effects deep into government-held territory, well beyond the areas it physically controls. For Sudan’s electricity utilities, repeated strikes on the same handful of vulnerable chokepoints — substations, transformer yards, and generation plants — mean that restoration work is increasingly outpaced by fresh damage, a dynamic with few precedents at this scale outside of interstate wars such as Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s energy grid.

For the broader region, the campaign is a reminder that Sudan’s conflict, now in its fourth year, continues to generate large-scale civilian harm with comparatively limited international attention relative to its scale. The targeting of civilian infrastructure by drones also raises questions, so far unanswered by any government, about the extent to which foreign-supplied or foreign-origin platforms are reaching a non-state armed group, and about what, if any, leverage outside powers with influence over the drone supply chain are prepared to exert.

What Happens Next

Sudanese utility officials have said repair crews are working continuously, but neither utility has published a restoration timeline for the stations hit on 26 and 27 October, and previous strikes on the same facilities suggest repairs often take weeks. Monitoring groups and the UN are likely to continue tracking the frequency of drone strikes on infrastructure as a distinct indicator of the war’s trajectory, separate from front-line territorial control. Absent a ceasefire or an external agreement curbing drone proliferation to both sides, further strikes on the grid during the current dry season, when agricultural pumping and urban demand both rise, appear likely based on the pattern observed since the start of 2026.

FAQ

What caused the Sudan power outages in late October 2026?

Sudanese officials attributed the outages to a coordinated RSF drone attack on five to six power stations in Al-Jazira, Gedaref and White Nile states on 26 October 2026, followed by a strike on the Al-Markhiyat transformer station on 27 October that cut power across parts of Khartoum and Gezira state.

Which power stations were hit?

Reporting attributed to the Sudanese Electricity Holding Company names stations at Sinja, El Hawata, Al Fao, Mashkour and Al-Junaid, along with the Al-Markhiyat transformer station near Khartoum. Government sources separately described the strikes as hitting two stations each in Al-Jazira and Gedaref and one in White Nile, without naming individual sites.

What drones does the RSF use against infrastructure targets?

Sudanese military sources and independent researchers have documented RSF use of Chinese-origin platforms such as the Feihong FH-95, alongside smaller loitering munitions and modified commercial drones. No government or manufacturer has confirmed a direct supply chain to the RSF, and specifics of the munitions used in the late-October power station strikes have not been independently verified.

How many people have been killed by drone strikes in Sudan in 2026?

A UN tally cited in contemporaneous reporting found that drone strikes killed more than 300 people in the first three weeks of October 2026 alone, part of a broader war that aid organizations estimate has killed more than 200,000 people since fighting began in April 2023.

Why is Sudan’s electricity grid a recurring target?

Power stations and dams are fixed, high-value targets that a drone-equipped force without territorial control can strike repeatedly to pressure the government and disrupt daily life, including water pumping, hospitals, refrigeration and irrigation, across areas it cannot otherwise reach militarily.

Sources

• AFP via Africanews, “Sudan experiences massive power outages after RSF drone strikes,” 26 October 2026 — government official account of the five-station attack and state-level outages.
• Reuters via The Print / Internazionale, “Drone strikes cut power across southeast Sudan, operator says,” 26 October 2026 — Sudanese Electricity Holding Company account naming individual stations; unverified by Reuters.
• Asharq Al-Awsat (aawsat.com), “Mass Outages in Sudan After RSF Drones Hit Five Power Stations,” late October 2026 — state/outage details and UN infrastructure warnings.
• Al Jazeera, “Drone strike kills at least 21 and injures 40 in Sudan’s Nyala,” 27 October 2026 — Nyala market strike casualties and war death-toll context.
• Al Ahram Online (english.ahram.org.eg), “Sudan drone strikes kill 21, cause mass outages in east,” late October 2026 — corroborating casualty and outage figures.
• Associated Press, reporting on the Al-Markhiyat transformer station strike and Khartoum/Gezira outage, 27 October 2026 — distribution company statement on damage and rationing.