The AFP news agency's reporter in Port Sudan witnessed high explosions at dawn, followed by thick smoke pillars rising towards the sky. Flames are seen flaring up under an enormous pillar of black smoke.
All flights from the city airport, the only one in the country operating international lines, were put on hold.
The drone was directed at the civilian part of the airport, says an official to AFP.
Power station struck
A second drone is said to have hit a military base and a hotel in central Port Sudan. Both are located near the residence of army chief Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan. A third drone attack was directed at a fuel depot near the port, according to a military source.
The city's main power station was also hit, which according to Sudan's state-owned power company cut off power to the entire Port Sudan.
The attacks come two days after a drone attack on a military base at Port Sudan's airport, an attack that the war-torn country's army accused the paramilitary RSF of.
Alternative capital
The regular army and the RSF militia, which has formed its own political administration together with allied groups, have been waging a bloody war since April 2023.
No one has, however, formally taken responsibility for Tuesday's attacks.
The metropolis of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast serves as a kind of alternative capital for the army-backed government, which moved there from the actual capital Khartum when the civil war broke out. The UN has also moved its headquarters to Port Sudan, as have hundreds of thousands of fleeing civilians.
The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 when a split occurred within the country's ruling military junta. The military had seized power a couple of years earlier, after the long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir's fall.
On one side stands General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan, who commands the regular army. On the other side stands his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who leads the so-called RSF militia.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war. Over 14 million people have been driven into flight. The country has in practice been divided into two: the army controls areas in the north and east, and the RSF with coordinated groups controls areas in the west and south. The capital Khartum has also been divided and heavily contested, but there the military regained control in March 2025.
Both parties have repeatedly been accused of war crimes.
The RSF has its origins in the notorious janjaweed militias, which under al-Bashir's rule were sent out to spread terror and quell the uprising in Darfur in western Sudan in the early 2000s.
