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KHARTOUM: Drones targeted the army-held Sudanese capital and its airport on Thursday, witnesses told AFP, marking the third consecutive day of such strikes.
“At 4:00 am (0200 GMT) I heard the sound of two drones passing above us,” one witness said, adding that the drones were headed toward military facilities.
Another witness meanwhile said he saw the drones heading toward the airport, adding that he heard explosions shortly afterwards.
Since Tuesday, the airport — out of service for over two years — has come under repeated drone attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the regular army has been battling since April 2023.
The airport was due to reopen on Wednesday, but this was postponed “under further notice,” an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Following a months-long offensive, the army recaptured Khartoum from the RSF in March, but the city remains largely devastated, with frequent power outages and the paramilitaries intensifying drone attacks on the city.
More than a million people who had been displaced by the war have returned over the past 10 months, according to the United Nations’ migration agency.
In the past weeks, the government has sought to reopen key services and move institutions back to Khartoum after they had largely fled to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
Now well into its third year, the war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced about 12 million more and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

NEW YORK: Twelve international United Nations employees who had been held by Yemen’s Houthis inside their compound flew out of the rebel-held capital on Wednesday, the UN said.
The Iran-backed Houthis raided the UN compound in the capital Sanaa last weekend, holding 20 staff, including 15 foreigners. Five Yemeni nationals were released on Sunday.
The rebels have harassed and detained UN staff and aid workers for years, accusing them of spying, but they have accelerated arrests since the start of the Gaza war.
“Earlier today, 12 UN international staff who were among those previously held in the UN compound in Yemen departed Sanaa on a UN Humanitarian Air Service flight,” said a statement released by UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres’s spokesperson.
Some of them will relocate to Amman, Jordan, UN spokesman Farhan Haq told a news conference, not ruling out further travel or a return to Yemen.
The three remaining staff are now “free to move or travel,” the UN said.
“We do intend to maintain some international staff in Sanaa,” Haq said.
Among the 15 detained was UNICEF’s representative in Yemen Peter Hawkins.
The Houthis, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, have frequently fired on Red Sea shipping and Israeli territory during the two-year Gaza war, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians.
Israel has launched numerous retaliatory strikes, including a major attack in August that killed the Houthis’s premier and nearly half of his cabinet.
Rebel leader Abdulmalik Al-Houthi accused detained UN employees of having a hand in the attack, without giving evidence. The UN has rejected the claim.
A total of 53 UN workers are still arbitrarily detained by the Houthis, according to the international body.
The rebels stormed UN offices in Sanaa on August 31, detaining more than 11 employees, it said.
A senior Houthi official told AFP the UN staff were suspected of spying for the United States and Israel.
In mid-September, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen was transferred from Sanaa to Aden, the interim capital of the internationally recognized government.