Water treatment stations attacked by RSF can no longer provide clean water in Khartoum state, which reported 90 percent of the cases.
Sudan’s Ministry of Health has reported a spike in cholera cases in the war-torn country, with 2,700 infections and 172 deaths in the past week.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said 90 percent of cases were reported in Khartoum state, where water and electricity supply have been severely disrupted in recent weeks by drone strikes blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023.
Cases were also reported in the south, centre and north of the country.
Cholera is endemic to Sudan, but outbreaks have become far worse and more frequent since the war broke out, wrecking already fragile water and sanitation and health infrastructure.
Last Tuesday, the ministry said 51 people had died of cholera out of more than 2,300 reported cases over the past three weeks, 90 percent of them in Khartoum state.
The RSF this month launched drone strikes across Khartoum, including on three power stations, before being completely pushed out of their last holdout positions in the capital last week.
Water treatment stations out of service
The strikes knocked the electricity – and subsequently the local water network – out of service, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), forcing residents to turn to unsafe water sources.
“Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, said in a statement.
Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal illness caused by ingesting contaminated water or food, can kill within hours if untreated. Yet, it is easily preventable and treatable when clean water, sanitation and timely medical care are available.
Sudan’s already fragile healthcare system has been pushed to the “breaking point” by the war, according to the World Health Organization.
Up to 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have at some point been forced to close because of the fighting, according to the doctors’ union, with health facilities regularly stormed, bombed and looted.
The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
In 2015, as a civil war was raging in South Sudan, the United Nations Security Council imposed the first set of sanctions on the country, including asset freezes and travel bans on various senior officials. Three years later, after a ceasefire agreement was repeatedly violated, the UNSC mustered the votes to impose a full arms embargo. Fragile peace eventually settled in, but the embargo was kept in place and was extended every year.
The review of the embargo is now coming up on May 29 and there is a push from African members of the UNSC – Sierra Leone, Somalia and Algeria – to lift it. On March 18, the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) publicly called for this measure to end.
But lifting the embargo on South Sudan at this moment would be a mistake. Violence has come back to plague the country, killing at least 180 people between March and mid-April, amid deepening divisions between President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been placed under house arrest.
Allowing more weapons to enter the country would only escalate the dire situation. This would not be in the interest of neighbouring countries and the African Union as a whole.
Under the AU’s development plan, Agenda 2063, the continent set itself an ambitious goal of “Silencing the Guns” by 2020, later extended to 2030. With this, the AU wants to “end all wars and violent conflicts and promote dialogue-based mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution”.
Yet, the AUPSC’s call for lifting the embargo on South Sudan does not fall in line with these goals. The justification for this stance is that free access to more weapons can enable the unification of government and opposition forces and reform the security sector.
But this logic ignores the growing fractures in South Sudan amid the renewed tensions between Kiir and Machar. Placing more guns in the hands of warring parties involved in serious human rights violations and crimes under international law would only make the situation worse.
South Sudan’s security and defence forces have attacked the very people they are tasked to protect: Civilians. The South Sudanese army, National Security Service and armed opposition forces have been implicated in war crimes and human rights violations for well more than a decade, including by the AU’s Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan and the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.
Indeed, around the time the AUPSC called for the lifting of the arms embargo, South Sudan’s government reportedly used improvised incendiary weapons in aerial attacks, killing at least 58 people and injuring others, including children.
To be sure, the existence of the arms embargo is not enough – its enforcement is key. That is already faltering after in early March, Uganda sent troops and military equipment to South Sudan without providing notification or receiving special exemption from the UNSC Sanctions Committee. This is a clear violation of the embargo.
South Sudan’s Mi-24 helicopters also seem to be on the move, despite the government’s fleet reportedly being non-functional and grounded since the arms embargo was imposed in 2018. This suggests spare parts have been sourced in violation of the embargo.
On May 4, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, reported that two helicopter gunships had bombed its medical facility in Old Fangak the day before and fired at the town, killing seven and injuring 20 others. Deliberate attacks on a medical facility performing its humanitarian function violate international humanitarian law and would constitute a war crime. This is yet another indication of why the UNSC must renew the arms embargo and strengthen its enforcement.
If properly implemented and enforced, a renewed UNSC arms embargo would not obstruct security sector reform. Instead, it would block the disorderly and destabilising accumulation of arms in South Sudan, which is spurring the current conflict and contributing to violations against civilians.
If the AU is serious about silencing the guns, it should back the strict controls prohibiting arms transfers to South Sudan, and the African states in the UNSC should vote to renew the arms embargo.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
May 22 (UPI) — The United States will impose sanctions on Sudan after determining that its military used chemical weapons against its breakaway paramilitary forces during their civil war, the State Department said.
The determination that the government of Sudan used chemical weapons last year was made by the United States on April 24 under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 and was delivered to Congress on Thursday.
The sanctions, which include restrictions on U.S. exports and access to U.S. government lines of credit, will be imposed on June 6, following the 15-day Congressional notification period, the department said.
The Sudanese government has yet to respond to the development.
The Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a brutal civil war since April 15, 2023, following years of political instability.
In March, the Sudanese military captured the capital, Khartoum, marking a significant victory in the war that has killed an estimated 150,000 people and continues to rage.
The United States has accused both SAF and RSF of committing crimes against humanity and, last month, said atrocities committed by the paramilitary forces meet the threshold of genocide.
In January, The New York Times reported that the SAF used chemical weapons at least twice against the RSF since the war began in remote areas of the country. Officials cited in the report said the chemical weapon used was chlorine gas.
Sudan has denied the accusation.
The Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 is a U.S. law that requires the president to impose sanctions on countries determined to use chemical weapons.
Sudan is also a signatory to the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which obliges all signatories to chemically disarm by destroying their stockpiles of chemical weapons.
“The United States calls on the Government of Sudan to cease all chemical weapons use and uphold its obligations under the CWC,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
“The United States remains fully committed to hold to account those responsible for contributing to chemical weapons proliferation.”
The US will cut exports to Sudan and lines of government credit after determining banned weapons were used in the conflict between government forces and the RSF.
The United States will impose sanctions on Sudan after determining that the country’s military used chemical weapons last year while fighting against paramilitary forces.
“The United States calls on the Government of Sudan to cease all chemical weapons use and uphold its obligations” under the Chemical Weapons Convention, US Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement on Thursday.
Bruce said the US Congress has been notified of the State Department’s decision, and sanctions will be imposed around June 6.
They will include restrictions on US exports to Sudan and a block on access to US government lines of credit. Bruce’s statement did not include further details about when and where the chemical weapons were used by Sudanese government forces.
The New York Times reported in January that government forces had used chemical weapons on at least two occasions in remote parts of Sudan against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The report cited unnamed US officials who said the weapon may have been chlorine gas, which can lead to severe respiratory pain and death.
Sudan’s army and the RSF have been locked in a civil war since April 2023 following a power struggle between the two sides.
The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and a famine across Sudan, killing thousands and displacing 13 million people.
The US has also previously accused the RSF and its allies of committing genocide, and sanctioned top leaders like the RSF head, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
In January, the US also sanctioned Sudan’s military chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, for refusing to participate in international peace talks.
South Sudan relies on oil for more than 90 percent of its government revenues, and the country depends entirely on Sudan to export the precious resource.
But this month, Sudan’s army-backed government said it was preparing to shut down the facilities that its southern neighbour uses to export its oil, according to an official government letter seen by Al Jazeera.
That decision could collapse South Sudan’s economy and drag it directly into Sudan’s intractable civil war between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts warned.
The announcement was made on May 9 after the RSF launched suicide drones for six consecutive days at Port Sudan, the army’s wartime capital on the strategic Red Sea coast.
The strikes destroyed a fuel depot and damaged electricity grids, shattering the sense of security in the city, which lies far from the country’s front lines.
Sudan’s army claims the damage now hampers it from exporting South Sudan’s oil.
“The announcement read like a desperate plea [to South Sudan] for help to stop these [RSF] attacks,” said Alan Boswell, an expert on the Horn of Africa with the International Crisis Group.
“But I think doing so overestimates the leverage that South Sudan has … over the RSF,” he added.
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir [Michael Tewelde/AFP]
Predatory economics
Since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, the former has relied on the latter to export its oil via Port Sudan.
In return, Sudan has collected fees from Juba as part of their 2005 peace agreement, which ended the 22-year north-south civil war and ultimately led to the secession of South Sudan from Sudan.
When Sudan erupted into another civil war between the army and RSF in 2023, the former continued collecting the fees from Juba.
“[Sudan and South Sudan] are tied at the hip financially due to the oil export infrastructure,” Boswell told Al Jazeera.
Local media have recently reported that high-level officials from South Sudan and Sudan are engaged in talks to avert a shutdown of oil exports.
Al Jazeera sent written questions to Port Sudan’s energy and petroleum minister, Mohieddein Naiem Mohamed, asking if the army is negotiating higher rent fees from South Sudan before resuming oil exports, which some experts suspected to be a likely scenario.
Naiem Mohamed did not respond before publication.
According to the International Crisis Group, Juba also pays off the RSF to not damage oil pipelines that run through territory under its control.
In addition, South Sudan has allowed the RSF to operate in villages along the Sudan-South Sudan border.
The RSF has increased its presence along the sprawling, porous border after forming a strategic alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) in February.
The SPLM-N fought alongside secessionist forces against Sudan’s army. It controls swaths of territory in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions and has historically close ties with Juba.
South Sudan’s relationship with the SPLM-N and RSF has increasingly frustrated Sudan’s army, said Edmund Yakani, a South Sudanese civil society leader and commentator.
“[Sudan’s army] is suspicious that Juba is helping RSF in its military capability and political space to manoeuvre its struggle against Sudan’s army,” Yakani told Al Jazeera.
House of cards
According to a report by the International Crisis Group from 2021, about 60 percent of South Sudan’s oil profits go to the multinational companies producing the oil.
The report explained that most of the remaining 40 percent goes to paying off outstanding loans and to South Sudan’s ruling elites in the bloated security sector and bureaucracy.
South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, will likely not be able to keep his patronage network together without a quick resumption in oil revenue.
His fragile government – a coalition of longtime loyalists and coopted opponents – could collapse like a house of cards, experts warned.
Al Jazeera emailed written questions to South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to ask if the country has any contingency plan in case oil exports stop indefinitely. The ministry did not respond before publication.
Experts warned that South Sudan has no alternative to oil.
Soldiers relax at their outpost near Nzara, South Sudan, on February 15, 2025 [File: Brian Inganga/AP]
Security personnel and civil servants are already owed months of back pay, and they may turn against Kiir – and each other – if they have no incentive to uphold the fragile peace agreement that ended South Sudan’s own five-year civil war in 2018.
“Kiir is on extremely fragile footing, and there is no backup plan for when the oil runs out,” said Matthew Benson, a scholar on Sudan and South Sudan at the London School of Economics.
A halt in oil revenue would also drive up inflation, exacerbating the daily struggles of millions of civilians.
The World Food Programme estimated that about 60 percent of the population is experiencing acute food shortages while the World Bank found that nearly 80 percent live below the poverty line.
The hardship and pervasive corruption have given way to a predatory economy in which armed groups erect checkpoints to shake down civilians for bribes and taxes.
Civilians will likely be unable to cough up any more money if the oil revenue dries up.
“I’m not sure people can be squeezed more than they already are,” Benson said.
Proxy war?
Some commentators and activists also fear that Sudan’s army is deliberately turning off the oil to force South Sudan to cut off all contact with the RSF and SPLM-N.
This speculation is fuelling some resentment among civilians in South Sudan, according to Yakani.
Meanwhile, some supporters of Sudan’s army argued that South Sudan should not benefit from oil as long as it provides any degree of support to the RSF, which they view as a militia waging a rebellion against the state.
“What Port Sudan [the army] wants is for Juba to absolutely distance itself from aiding the RSF in any way, and that is the complication that the government of [Kiir] is in now,” Yakani told Al Jazeera.
“The majority of citizens of South Sudan – including myself – believe that South Sudan is becoming a land of proxy wars for Sudan’s warring parties and their [regional] allies,” he added.
Sudan’s army also believes that South Sudan’s government is relying increasingly on the RSF’s regional backers to buttress its own security.
Sudan’s army leaders were particularly spooked when Uganda, which it views as supporting the RSF, deployed troops to prop up Kiir in March, according to Boswell.
In addition, Sudan’s army has repeatedly accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF.
“The UAE has already made absolutely clear that it is not providing any support or supplies to either of two belligerent warring parties in Sudan,” the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously told Al Jazeera in an email.
Despite tensions between Sudan’s army and the UAE, analysts said Juba may request a large loan from the UAE to keep its patronage intact if Sudan’s army does not promptly resume oil exports.
“[Sudan’s army] has been worrying and watching closely over whether the UAE might loan South Sudan a significant amount of money,” Boswell said.
“I think a massive UAE loan to South Sudan would be … a red line for Sudan’s army”, he added.
The announcement comes weeks after the army made gains in and around the capital city to push back the RSF.
Sudan’s army has announced it has cleared the state of Khartoum of rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after weeks of intensive battles, with the civil war now in its third year.
The General Command of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) said in a statement on Tuesday that the state – which comprises the capital Khartoum, its twin city Omdurman, and the city of Khartoum North (Bahri) – is now “completely free of rebels”.
“We also renew our pledge to our people to continue our efforts until every inch of our country is liberated of every rebel, traitor, and agent,” said the SAF, headed by Sudan’s de facto leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
This comes after Sudan’s army secured a number of victories in battles in and around the capital in March, including the recapturing of the presidential palace and major urban centres that culminated in taking back the Khartoum airport from the RSF, headed by General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
In late March, al-Burhan had declared “Khartoum is free” hours after the recapture of the key airport, although smaller battles were ongoing with RSF militias in pockets around the state.
Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said intense battles raged in recent days in southern Omdurman’s Salha area, which was the last remaining major RSF stronghold and home to one of the group’s largest military bases.
“The army had been making gradual advances in the Salha area in the past few days until it was able to take control of the area completely from the RSF in the early hours of Tuesday morning,” she said.
“The army also said it was able to recover weapons and ammunitions that were used by the paramilitary, including drones and jamming systems.”
After more than two years of devastating civil war that has gradually attracted foreign funding and weapons, control of Sudan remains torn between the two generals and their allies.
The SAF dominates the north and the east – including the smallest state by area, but most populous, Khartoum – along with some central areas, while the RSF holds most of western Sudan, including most of Darfur.
Where the RSF has been forced back on the ground, it has been trying to inflict damage with drone strikes, including those that have targeted energy infrastructure in both Khartoum and Port Sudan.
Fighting has also been ongoing in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state in western Sudan, as well as some key supply lines in Kordofan.
More than 12 million people have been forcibly displaced by the war so far, with tens of thousands killed and many exposed to ethnicity-based violence.
A United States judge has rebuked the administration of President Donald Trump, saying that reports of deportations to South Sudan appear to violate his previous court order.
On Tuesday in Boston, Massachusetts, US District Court Judge Brian Murphy held a virtual hearing to weigh an emergency motion on behalf of deported migrants reportedly on board a flight to South Sudan.
He asked lawyers for the Trump administration to identify where the migrants were. He also indicated that he could ask for the flight to be turned around.
“Based on what I have been told, this seems like it may be contempt,” Judge Murphy told Elianis Perez, a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department.
In a recent annual report, the US Department of State accused South Sudan of “significant human rights issues”, including torture and extrajudicial killings.
But the Trump administration has been looking abroad for destinations to send undocumented immigrants currently detained in the US, particularly those whose home countries will not accept them.
In Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Murphy said the flight to South Sudan appeared to violate a preliminary injunction he issued on April 18, which prohibited migrants from being deported to third-party countries that were not their own.
That injunction required the Trump administration to give the migrants an adequate opportunity to appeal their removal.
The migrants, Judge Murphy ruled, were simply seeking “an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death”.
He cited the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to due process: in other words, a fair hearing in the US court system.
Earlier this month, on May 7, lawyers for the migrants had indicated that their clients were slated to be sent to Libya, another country with significant human rights concerns.
Judge Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled that such a deportation would be in violation of his injunction.
In Tuesday’s emergency court filing, the lawyers for those migrants emphasised how close a call that incident was. The migrants in question were already on a bus, sitting on the tarmac of an airport, when they were ordered to be returned.
The emergency motion identifies the migrants only by their initials and countries of origin, Myanmar and Vietnam among them.
But it explains what allegedly happened to them over the last 24 hours and seeks immediate action from the court.
The lawyers allege that one migrant from Myanmar, called NM in the court filings, received a notice of removal on Monday. It identified the destination as South Africa. Within 10 minutes, the court filing said the email was recalled by its sender.
A couple of hours later, a new notice of removal was sent, this time naming South Sudan as the destination.
In both instances, NM refused to sign the document. Lawyers in the emergency petition indicate that NM has “limited English proficiency” and was not provided a translator to understand the English-language document.
While one of NM’s lawyers stated her intention to meet with him on Tuesday morning, by the time their appointment time came, she was informed he had already been removed from his detention facility, en route to South Sudan.
The emergency filing includes a copy of an email sent to the lawyers from the family members of those deported.
“I believe my husband [name redacted] and 10 other individuals that were sent to Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, TX were deported to South Africa or Sudan,” the email begins.
“This is not right! I fear my husband and his group, which consist of people from Laos, Thailand, Pakistan, Korea, and Mexico are being sent to South Africa or Sudan against their will. Please help! They cannot be allowed to do this.”
Sudan’s devastating war is now entering its third year, and the conflict is far from over.
The United Nations has called this the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world.
Killings, rapes and famine are affecting millions of people. What will happen to the people of Sudan if things don’t change? And why is this crisis being mostly ignored by the international community?
Presenter: Stefanie Dekker
Guests: Elbashir Idris – Political affairs analyst Bayadir Mohamed-Osman – Activist and poet Omer Elnaiem – Head of UNHCR Africa content hub
Dagalo, who leads the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, also announces a government as war ravages Sudan.
Sudan’s army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has appointed former United Nations official Kamil Idris as prime minister as part of changes to his sovereign council as the nation’s civil war grinds on into its third year.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, critical infrastructure has been destroyed and more than 12 million people have been displaced as a result of the war, which shows no signs of stopping as vying leaders seek to consolidate their power.
“The chairman of the sovereignty council issued a constitutional decree appointing Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz as prime minister,” a statement from Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council read on Monday.
Idris, a career diplomat, spent decades at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisation and was its director general from 1997 to 2008.
He also held various roles in Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and used to serve in the country’s permanent mission to the UN.
Idris, whose higher education was in international law and international affairs, also ran as an independent candidate in Sudan’s presidential election in 2010 against longtime military ruler Omar al-Bashir, who was later ousted in a 2019 coup.
The new prime minister replaces veteran diplomat Dafallah al-Haj Ali, who was appointed by al-Burhan less than a month ago as acting premier.
On Monday, al-Burhan also added two women to the council.
The military leader reappointed Salma Abdel Jabbar Almubarak and named Nowara Abo Mohamed Mohamed Tahir to the governing body.
The al-Burhan-led military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have been at war for more than two years after the two generals failed to agree on a plan to integrate their forces.
As al-Burhan tried to form an army-led government, Dagalo also announced the formation of a rival administration last month, shortly after signing a charter with allies in Kenya’s Nairobi.
The army, which holds areas in the central, eastern and northern parts of Sudan, has managed to claim some military victories in recent months, including taking control of the capital, Khartoum.
The RSF, which holds most of the western region of Darfur and some areas in the south with its allied militias, has been striking Port Sudan repeatedly this month to devastating effect.
Meanwhile, a worsening humanitarian crisis continues to engulf Sudan.
International organisations and some countries have warned of the risks of further escalating the conflict, including in cities like el-Fasher in Darfur that have served as humanitarian aid hubs.
Nearly 300 million people faced acute hunger in 2024.
The world is dangerously off course, comes the stark warning from the United Nations after it found that more than 295 million people faced acute hunger in 2024.
Fears are growing for the future as major donor countries are set to reduce funding this year.
Climate change and economic crises are affecting 96 million people in 18 countries, including Syria and Yemen.
Conflict and violence are the leading causes of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in Sudan, after two years of civil war.
In Gaza, Israel’s blockade of all food, water and medicine has entered a third month, creating a manufactured crisis.
So is global food hunger a failure of systems – or a failure of humanity?
Presenter:
Guests:
Chris Gunness – Former director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
Elise Nalbandian – Regional advocacy and campaign manager for Oxfam in Africa
Sara Hayat – Specialist in climate change law and policy
Israel’s ‘template for genocide’ is being used in Sudan, according to international law expert Luigi Daniele, who says the paramilitary RSF is using carefully chosen terminology to whitewash killing civilians.
On May 4, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a barrage of suicide drones at Port Sudan, the army’s de facto wartime capital on the Red Sea.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) accused foreign actors of supporting the RSF’s attacks and even threatened to sever ties with one of its biggest trading partners.
The RSF surprised many with the strikes. It had used drones before, but never hit targets as far away as Port Sudan, which used to be a haven, until last week.
“The strikes … led to a huge displacement from the city. Many people left Port Sudan,” Aza Aera, a local relief worker, told Al Jazeera. “If the aggression continues … I think I’ll leave like everyone else.”
A drone war
When a civil war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the army had aerial supremacy due to its fleet of warplanes and drones.
Yet the RSF is closing the gap with an arsenal of suicide drones, which it used on Port Sudan for six consecutive days, hitting an army base, a civilian airport, several hotels, and a fuel depot, which caused a massive blast.
“Sudan had already entered the phase of drone warfare over the last … few months at least,” said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank.
The army largely relies on the relatively affordable Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, reportedly receiving $120m worth of them since late 2023.
Bayraktars can travel long distances with a large payload, and the army says they helped it regain swaths of territory from the RSF in eastern and central Sudan between September 2024 and March 2025, including the capital Khartoum.
Despite losing significant ground, the RSF then stepped up its aggression against the SAF with Chinese-made drones, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.
The human rights group, Sudan’s de facto military government and other monitors all accuse the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of purchasing these drones – and other weapons – and supplying them to the RSF.
“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weapons to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” said Salem Aljaberi, a spokesperson for the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement on X.
Regardless, the increasing use of drones by both sides marks an escalation and risks exacerbating an already catastrophic situation for civilians, according to experts and human rights monitors.
Bold announcement
On May 6, the army-backed authorities in Port Sudan announced the severing of all ties with the UAE after accusing it of being behind the attacks.
The army relies on relatively affordable Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones [Courtesy: Creative Commons]
That announcement was not well thought-out, according to Baldo.
Sudan’s army could lose tens of millions of dollars in gold revenue, as well as access to vital banking operations, he told Al Jazeera.
A UAE-backed company, Emiral Resources, owns a majority of shares in Sudan’s largest gold mine, the Kush mine.
Kush is administered by Sudan’s army, which likely sells tens of millions of dollars worth of gold to the UAE.
According to the Central Bank of Sudan, about 97 percent of gold exports from army-controlled areas went to the UAE in 2023.
Kush exported at least one tonne of gold in 2024, although it is unclear how much higher the number is for production.
Furthermore, UAE banks own a majority share in the Bank of Khartoum, whose digital platform, Bankak, facilitates money transfers for millions of displaced Sudanese and public institutions.
The UAE state also owns El Nilein Bank, which manages and approves international transactions on behalf of Port Sudan, according to a report that Baldo co-authored in March for the Chatham House think tank.
“This was a rushed decision [to cut ties with the UAE] that will have serious consequences … due to the UAE’s control over [Sudan’s] national economy,” Baldo told Al Jazeera.
Major escalation?
Sudan’s army has not clarified how and when it will sever ties with the UAE.
On May 6, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed in a video to “defeat the militia (RSF) and those who help them”.
Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking if Port Sudan will implement the announced suspension.
No reply was received by time of publication.
For its part, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera in an email that it will not retaliate against Port Sudan.
“The statement issued by the so-called ‘Security and Defence Council’ will not affect the deep-rooted and enduring ties between the UAE and the Republic of the Sudan, and their peoples,” the emailed statement said.
Meanwhile, experts and observers believe the war in Sudan is trending towards a major escalation.
The army’s regional backers could respond to the RSF’s increased use of drones by doubling down on their support for the army, warned Alan Boswell, a Sudan expert for the International Crisis Group.
“The obvious risk [from the attacks on Port Sudan] is that it brings other [regional powers] into deeper involvement on the army’s side,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We could see an escalating war with greater and greater firepower, and nothing would be left of Sudan’s infrastructure by the end of it.”
Thousands of people have been pushed to informal campgrounds, like this one near Tawila in North Darfur, as the fighting rages on between the army and RSF. On February 11, 2025 [Unknown/AFP]
The latest attacks come as the African Union rejects any ‘interference’ in the civil war, which has killed more than 20,000 people.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have said the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed seven people in artillery shelling on el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state in western Sudan.
A statement from the military-aligned government said on Monday that the RSF shelling that began late on Sunday targeted residential neighbourhoods, killing seven people, including women and children, and wounding at least 15, who were taken to hospitals.
On Sunday, the army also said the RSF shelling in the city killed nine people.
El-Fasher has witnessed intense fighting between SAF and RSF since May 2024, despite international warnings about the risks of violence in a city that serves as a key humanitarian hub for the five Darfur states.
For more than a year, the RSF has sought to wrest control of it, located more than 800km (500 miles) southwest of the capital, Khartoum, from the Sudanese army, launching regular attacks on the city and two major famine-hit camps for displaced people on its outskirts.
The RSF and the SAF have been locked in a brutal power struggle since April 2023, resulting in thousands of deaths and pushing Sudan into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations.
More than 20,000 people have been killed and 15 million displaced in the brutal civil war now in its third year, according to UN and local figures. However, some United States-based researchers estimate the actual death toll to be as high as 130,000.
Won’t accept ‘any interference’
Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) said on Monday it would not accept “any interference” in Sudan after the RSF was accused of receiving weapons from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Last week, the Sudanese government severed diplomatic relations with the UAE, accusing it of supplying weapons to the RSF.
Amnesty International has also accused the UAE of supplying weapons to the RSF, in violation of a UN arms embargo.
The UAE has rejected the claims as “baseless”.
“The Commission’s position is that member states are sovereign states, and the AU Commission will not accept any interference in the internal affairs of Sudan,” said AU Chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf.
“We will not support any intervention, any interference in the crisis in Sudan,” he said.
However, Youssouf declined to comment on the UAE’s possible role in the conflict. “It is not the role of the AU. Sudan has accused the Emirates; it is up to Sudan to provide this evidence,” he said.
The foreign minister of Djibouti was elected head of the pan-African organisation in February, inheriting multiple conflicts and a record of ineffectual statements.
Among the top of his priorities coming into the post was the Sudan civil war, which has effectively cleaved the country in two.
Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.
In recent days, drone attacks attributed by the army to the RSF have increased, marking a turning point in the two-year conflict.
Drone attacks have also notably targeted strategic sites in Port Sudan, the temporary seat of government and the logistical humanitarian epicentre.
In February, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged a halt to the “flow of arms” into Sudan.
