Sudanese army air defenses responded on Thursday to a drone attack targeting Omdurman, west of the capital Khartoum, for the second consecutive day, eyewitnesses said.

Eyewitnesses told Anadolu that the army’s ground-based air defenses locked onto drones attacking western parts of the city, with no immediate reports of casualties or material damage.

The El-Fasher Resistance Committee, an activist group, said drones belonging to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were flying over Omdurman, Bahri and Khartoum.

The group reported multiple explosions as ground-based air defenses engaged the drones.

Multi-city drone attacks

On Wednesday, Bahri and Omdurman in the central Khartoum metropolitan area, Atbara and Ad-Damir in northern River Nile state, and El-Obeid, the capital of southern North Kordofan state, were targeted by drone attacks attributed to the RSF.

Witnesses said swarms of drones flew over Omdurman and Bahri before army air defenses engaged them, with explosions heard in several areas.

In River Nile and North Kordofan states, witnesses told Anadolu that anti-aircraft fire echoed across Atbara and Al-Damar, while the army shot down a drone over El-Obeid.

Sudan News said the drone launches coincided with setbacks suffered by the RSF on multiple fronts in the Kordofan region, where army forces have recently stepped up military operations.

Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the RSF over plans to integrate the paramilitary force into the regular military. The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises