Sudan has lodged formal complaints against Ethiopia with both the United Nations Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, after a series of deadly drone attacks this year that Khartoum alleges were launched from Ethiopian territory by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. In a statement late on Sunday, November 1, 2026, Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the RSF of using Ethiopian territory to launch what it called brazen aggression against civilian sites and power stations in Sudan, resulting in hundreds of casualties and disruptions to essential services. The ministry said the use of Ethiopian territory by the RSF to target Sudanese territory is a hostile act that places Ethiopia in violation of international law, and Sudan said it reserved its right to self-defence under international law. Those are Sudan’s allegations, not findings by the United Nations or the African Union, and Ethiopia has denied previous allegations that it supports the RSF, while accusing the Sudanese army, in turn, of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a charge Khartoum rejects.
The complaints were accompanied by a report from Sudan’s army-led Transitional Sovereignty Council, which alleged 70 assaults from February 15 to October 27, 2026, involving 187 one-way attack drones. According to that report, the attacks killed or wounded 484 civilians and killed 176 Sudanese soldiers, with another 200 soldiers wounded. The report identified alleged launch sites at Asosa Airport in western Ethiopia, the Kurmuk-Gizen border area, and Bahir Dar airbase in northwestern Ethiopia’s Amhara region. It also said the campaign intensified in recent months, with October alone accounting for 28 attacks involving 97 one-way attack drones, and it said 82 munitions were dropped from drones in the period covered. Those figures are from the Sudanese council’s report, and they have not been independently verified by USN, or, in the reporting available at the time of writing, by the United Nations. Readers should treat them as Khartoum’s documented allegations, which the complaints ask international bodies to consider, not as a confirmed casualty count from an independent investigation.
The context is a civil war that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF, triggered by disagreements over the integration of the paramilitary group into the armed forces, which has left tens of thousands dead and displaced around 13 million people amid a worsening humanitarian and hunger crisis. In that war, drone attacks have become a central feature, not only as a battlefield tactic but as a weapon against infrastructure. Sudanese authorities and human rights groups have repeatedly accused the RSF of attacking civilian infrastructure, including electricity facilities, while the RSF generally does not respond directly to such allegations and maintains that it works to protect civilians. The United Nations has said that more than 1,100 people were killed in drone attacks across Sudan in the first half of the year, a figure that covers drone attacks by the parties to the conflict generally, not only the alleged Ethiopian-launched attacks that are the subject of Sudan’s complaints, and that distinction is important for understanding the scale of the drone problem beyond this specific diplomatic dispute.
What Sudan alleges about Ethiopia and RSF drone launches
Sudan’s military has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of aiding the RSF, and the new complaints are the most formal expression of that accusation to date, because they ask two international bodies, the Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, to take up the matter. The Foreign Ministry’s statement said the RSF used Ethiopian territory to launch explosive-laden drones against civilian facilities and vital infrastructure, and it pointed to attacks on 13 electricity stations in Khartoum, Al-Jazira, Sennar and Al-Qadarif states since the previous Monday, causing casualties and disrupting essential services. The specific identification of Asosa Airport, the Kurmuk-Gizen border area and Bahir Dar airbase as alleged launch sites is a new level of detail in Sudan’s public allegations, and it will likely be the focus of any international scrutiny, because a claim that drones took off from named airports and airbases is, in principle, checkable against satellite imagery, flight data and other evidence, even if no such verification has been published yet.
Ethiopia’s position, as reported in connection with previous allegations, is denial, and the absence of an immediate Ethiopian response to the latest complaints, as reported on November 2, does not mean that denial has changed or that Ethiopia has accepted the allegations. Ethiopia has separately accused the Sudanese military of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which Khartoum denies, and that counter-accusation reflects a long and complicated border and regional relationship, in which Sudan and Ethiopia have been both neighbours with shared interests and rivals over issues including the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, border demarcation and regional proxy dynamics. The Security Council and the African Union will therefore be asked to consider not only a factual question, whether drones were launched from Ethiopian territory, but also a political question, how to handle a complaint between two states that each accuse the other of supporting armed groups. That political context does not make Sudan’s allegations true or false; it explains why international bodies may move cautiously, and why they may seek independent verification before taking a position.
The power-grid attacks that accompanied the complaints illustrate why infrastructure has become a target, and why it matters for civilians. Early on Monday, November 2, drone strikes hit two electricity substations in eastern Sudan, in Aroma and New Halfa, in Kassala state, triggering widespread power outages, according to local sources and witnesses cited by Anadolu Agency. Those strikes brought to 15 the number of electricity stations targeted by drones across Sudan over the past week, including facilities in Khartoum, Gezira, Sennar, Red Sea, Gedaref, Kassala and River Nile states. On Sunday, drones targeted the Abu Hamad electricity substation in River Nile state and the Al-Dabbah substation in Northern state, and a photograph from October 28 showed damage at the Al-Markhiyat power station north of Omdurman following a reported drone strike by the RSF. Attacks on power stations do not only affect lighting; they affect hospitals, water pumping, cold storage for food and medicine, and communications, which is why international humanitarian law treats attacks on civilian infrastructure with particular seriousness, and why the United Nations secretary-general’s spokesman said on Saturday that he was appalled by the impact of drone strikes in Sudan.
UN condemnation and the Darfur market strike
The secretary-general’s statement, issued days after another strike on an RSF-controlled territory in Darfur killed more than 100 people, said that Antonio Guterres strongly condemns the escalating drone attacks in Sudan by the parties to the conflict and the catastrophic toll these attacks are inflicting on civilians, and that the strikes constitute violations of international humanitarian law. That condemnation is directed at drone attacks by all parties, not only at the alleged Ethiopian-launched attacks, and it reflects a broader United Nations concern that drone warfare in Sudan has expanded beyond military targets to markets, power stations and other civilian sites. The Darfur market strike, in particular, shows that civilian harm from drones is not confined to government-held areas or to one side’s operations: markets, like power stations, are civilian objects, and an attack on a market, whoever carries it out, raises questions under international humanitarian law about distinction, proportionality and precautions, which are the legal principles that require parties to distinguish between military and civilian targets and to avoid excessive civilian harm.
That broader context is essential for readers trying to understand Sudan’s complaints without oversimplifying them. Sudan is asking the Security Council and the African Union to address a specific alleged cross-border dimension, the use of Ethiopian territory, but the underlying war involves drone attacks by multiple actors, on multiple fronts, with civilian casualties that the United Nations has already condemned in general terms. A Security Council discussion of Sudan’s complaints could therefore lead in several directions: it could focus narrowly on the alleged Ethiopian launches and on whether Ethiopia took steps to prevent them, it could broaden into a discussion of drone attacks in Sudan generally and of arms supplies to the parties, or it could result in no formal action, if members disagree on the evidence or on the appropriate response. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council, which is the continent’s primary body for peace and security, could similarly choose to investigate, to mediate between Sudan and Ethiopia, or to issue a statement without taking enforcement action. None of those outcomes can be predicted from the filing of a complaint alone.
For civilians in Sudan, the diplomatic process will feel distant from the immediate reality of power cuts, market attacks and displacement, and that gap is part of the story. A complaint to the Security Council does not restore electricity to Kassala, reopen a market in Darfur, or return displaced families to their homes. What it can do, if it leads to verification, mediation or pressure on a neighbouring state to prevent its territory from being used for attacks, is affect the conditions under which the war is fought, and that is why Khartoum has chosen a formal, public route rather than a private diplomatic note. Whether that route succeeds will depend on evidence that has not yet been published, on Ethiopia’s response, and on whether Security Council and African Union members see the alleged cross-border launches as a threat to regional peace that warrants action, or as an allegation in an already complex war that requires further investigation before any conclusion can be drawn.
Sources
Sources: USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/2/sudan-files-complaints-against-ethiopia-with-un-over-deadly-drone-spree), Kuwait Times (https://kuwaittimes.com/article/528856/world/sudan-complains-to-un-security-council-over-drone-attacks-from-ethiopia/amp/) and Turkiye Today (https://www.turkiyetoday.com/world/drone-strikes-plunge-eastern-sudan-into-darkness-as-attacks-on-power-grid-intensify-3231527).