PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Sudanese paramilitaries on Sunday struck Port Sudan, the army said, in the first attack on the seat of the army-aligned government in the country’s two-year war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), battling the regular army since April 2023, have increased their use of drones since losing territory including much of the capital Khartoum in March.

Army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said in a statement that the RSF “targeted Osman Digna Air Base, a goods warehouse and some civilian facilities in the city of Port Sudan with suicide drones”.

He reported no casualties but “limited damage” in the city on the Red Sea coast. AFP images showed smoke billowing from the airport area of Port Sudan, about 650 kilometers (400 miles) from the nearest known RSF positions on the outskirts of Khartoum. Later Sunday, an AFP correspondent reported anti-aircraft missiles trying to shoot down another drone flying towards an air base west of the city. In the eastern border town of Kassala, some 500 kilometers south of Port Sudan, near Eritrea, witnesses said three drones hit the airport for the second day in a row.

At dawn on Sunday, an AFP correspondent in Port Sudan said his home about 20 kilometers from the airport shook as explosions were heard. A passenger told AFP from the airport that “we were on the way to the plane when we were quickly evacuated and taken out of the terminal”.

Flights to and from Port Sudan, the country’s main port of entry since the war began, were suspended until further notice, a government source told AFP.

The rare attacks on the airports in Port Sudan and Kassala, both far from areas that have seen much of the fighting since April 2023, come as the RSF expanded both the scope and frequency of its drone strikes. The paramilitaries led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo are battling the regular army, headed by Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in a devastating war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.

In the conflict’s early days, the government relocated from Khartoum to Port Sudan, which until Sunday’s attack had been spared the violence. UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge. The conflict has left Africa’s third largest country effectively divided. The army controls the center, east and north, while the RSF has conquered nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and parts of the south. Lacking the army’s fighter jets, the RSF has relied on drones, including makeshift ones, for air power. In a report issued in April, it said the Chinese-made drones “may be capable of long-range surveillance and strikes”.

Meanwhile, at least seven people were killed and 20 injured and the last remaining hospital and pharmacy in the country’s Fangak county were destroyed in bombings, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Saturday. MSF said a bomb was dropped on the pharmacy, burning it to the ground and damaging the hospital, followed by another drone bomb on Old Fangak, a town in the Greater Upper Nile region, where at least seven people were killed.

“Old Fangak Hospital is the only hospital in Fangak county, serving a population of over 110,000 people who already had extremely limited access to healthcare,” MSF said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack or what the motive was. Government and army spokespeople could not immediately be reached for comment. South Sudan has formally been at peace since a 2018 peace deal ended a five-year civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those loyal to First Vice President Riek Machar. However, the March arrest of Machar on charges of trying to stir up a rebellion has sparked international concern that conflict could flare anew. — Agencies