Cargo plane bombed in Sudan's Darfur

A Sudanese army officer walks near an armoured vehicle seized after their capture of a base used by the rival RSF paramilitaries after the latter group evacuated from the Salha area of Omdurman, the twin-city of Sudan's capital, on May 26, 2025. [AFP]

A cargo plane was bombed on Wednesday shortly after landing at a paramilitary-controlled airport in Sudan's western Darfur region, three eyewitnesses reported.

The airport in Nyala, the South Darfur state capital, has in recent weeks come under repeated air strikes by the Sudanese military, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.

Neither the army, under Sudan's de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, nor the RSF, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, have released information on the latest attack.

"At 5:30 in the morning, I saw a cargo plane landing on the runway," one eyewitness who lives near the airport told AFP. "Half an hour later, I heard explosions and saw smoke rising from it."

The testimony was corroborated by two other witnesses in the area. Several others said explosions were heard across the city for about an hour.

All spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity for their safety, amid a crackdown by the RSF on the civilian population in Nyala, which the paramilitaries have controlled since 2023.

Early last month, a cargo plane reportedly resupplying the RSF garrison in the city  was bombed as it landed at the airport.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said that in recent months "indiscriminate" military air strikes had killed dozens in the city, Darfur's largest.

In early February, when the army was pushing an aggressive counteroffensive to reclaim territory across Sudan, it "used unguided air-dropped bombs on residential and commercial neighbourhoods in Nyala", HRW added.

In one attack on February 3, five bombs on densely populated neighbourhoods killed 32 people, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

The inaccurate attacks "have killed scores of men, women, and children, destroyed families, and caused fear and displacement", HRW's Jean-Baptiste Gallopin said in a statement.

The army accuses the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF, specifically via advanced drones arriving at the airport in Nyala.

Abu Dhabi denies it supplies weapons to the RSF, despite numerous reports from UN experts, US political officials and international organisations.

Satellite images released by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab have shown multiple Chinese-made long-range drones at the city's airport.

Sudan cut ties with the UAE last month following a series of drone attacks on its wartime capital Port Sudan on Sudan's Red Sea coast.

The RSF has in turn accused Egypt of arming the army, which Cairo has also denied.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the centre, north and east while the RSF controls nearly all of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.