By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The Sudanese government has alleged that Ethiopia is behind a recent drone attacks on sites including Khartoum airport and ordered immediate recall of its ambassador on Tuesday.
In a swift response however, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it “rejects the baseless accusations.”
A military spokesperson in Sudan said the government has evidence of four drone strikes since March 1 originating from neighbouring Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport. It also accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying the drones.
While previous attacks were launched toward the Sudanese states of Kordofan, Blue Nile and White Nile, an attack on Monday targeted the airport in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
Sudan’s military has been at war with a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, when the RSF stormed the capital. The battles have now shifted toward more drone warfare concentrating in the Kordofan and Blue Nile states.
Sudan has long accused the UAE of supporting the RSF, and U.N. experts and rights groups have also accused it of providing arms to the group, an allegation the UAE has denied.
Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Asim Awad Abdelwahab told a press conference on Tuesday that the government had analyzed data and evidence from a drone that entered Sudanese airspace heading for El-Obeid in Kordofan state on March 17 and found that it had originated from the UAE and took off from Ethiopia.
“We do not want to initiate aggression against any country, but whoever attacks us will be met with a response,” Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mohi al-Din Salem said.
The Ethiopian foreign ministry in a statement accused Sudan of violating its territorial integrity by supporting rebels in the northern Tigray region, but said it had exercised restraint from publicizing the violations due to the ties between the two countries.
“It is evident that these hostile actions, as well as the recent and earlier series of allegations by officials of Sudanese armed forces, are undertaken at the behest of external patrons seeking to advance their own nefarious agenda,” the statement said.
Public facilities have been largely damaged as a result of the war that has entered its 4th year.
The gradual reopening last year of Sudan’s airport marked a key step in efforts to restore normal life in Khartoum, with ministries and millions of people starting their return back to the capital and surrounding states.
The U.N migration agency said that around 4 million people have returned back to Sudan.
A drone strike on Saturday in Omdurman, the capital’s sister city, killed five people in a civilian bus, while another strike the following day in central Sudan state of Al Jazirah killed relatives of Abu Agla Kaikal, a commander with the Sudan Shield Forces, a group allied with the Sudanese military, who defected from the RSF earlier in the war.
