Panic in Port Sudan as drone strikes rattle haven city

"Panic is setting in, people are terrified," Port Sudan native Sami Hussein Abdel Wahab told AFP as smoke billowed behind him.

Giant plumes of thick smoke have hung in Port Sudan's skies since Sunday, when the first drone strikes, blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), struck the city.

Tuesday's dawn attack on the wartime de facto capital struck the airport, fuel depots and a power substation, grounding all international flights in and out of Sudan and causing a city-wide blackout.

"It's us, the citizens, that they're targeting," Mohamed Ahmed Karar, 57, told AFP, referring to the RSF, at war with the regular army since April 2023.

Another resident, Salem Omar Ibrahim, said: "They hit everything that benefits civilians."

Port Sudan, a strategic target for the RSF, is also Sudan's largest operational port and a "lifeline for humanitarian operations", the United Nations said Tuesday.

Nearly all aid into the country -- home to nearly 25 million people suffering dire food insecurity -- transits through Port Sudan, where massive fires raged in fuel depots for over 36 hours.

At petrol stations across the city, queues of cars stretched for more than a kilometre (0.6 miles) as drivers scrambled to fill their tanks, an AFP correspondent reported.

But most were unsure where they would go. Even territories the army has reclaimed, including parts of the capital Khartoum, suffer without basic services.

"Yesterday and today just confirm to us that this war will follow us no matter where we go," said Hussein Ibrahim, 64, who has fled RSF attacks on his hometown in Al-Jazira state, about 1,000 kilometres away.

In markets and street corners, anxious neighbours exchanged half-formed plans. They could stay, waiting for more attacks, or head back to where they had been uprooted from.
'No alternative'
Until Sunday, Port Sudan had been a rare safe refuge in the war between the army and the RSF that has ripped the country apart.

The city has hosted government ministries and the United Nations and sheltered hundreds of thousands of people, mostly displaced from Khartoum and central Sudan.

The war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created what the UN describes as the world's worst largest hunger and displacement crises.

The conflict has effectively divided the country in two, with the army controlling the north, east and centre and the RSF holding nearly all of the western Darfur region and parts of the south.

Now, the sense of safety that had defined Port Sudan has been shattered.

"The sound of the explosion was terrifying, it's caused us to panic," said Soad Babiker, 45, who had also fled the violence in Al-Jazira.

Ahmed Ali, a shopkeeper near the market, said the atmosphere was unlike anything he had seen before.

"There is no electricity, no water," he said.

"The market is half-asleep. People are scared. Some families fled their homes overnight."

Despite the fear, some residents cautiously clung to their daily routine.

Though schools were closed on Tuesday, central Port Sudan bustled with an eerie semblance of normal life.

Shops in the city's main market were open and long rows of public minibuses waited for passengers as usual.

"There's no alternative," said resident Al-Nour Mokhtar Othman.

"What are people supposed to do? We just have to keep going and hope for stability."