Tensions have risen along Sudan’s border with the Central African Republic after a drone entered the airspace above the RSF-controlled town of Um Dafuq in South Darfur, prompting Rapid Support Forces troops to open fire, according to witnesses and military sources.
Residents told local Sudanese media that the drone flew over several parts of the town on Saturday, causing concern among civilians before RSF forces engaged it.
Military sources said the aircraft entered from the direction of the Central African Republic and made several passes over the Sudanese town before RSF fire forced it to retreat towards Central African territory.
The operator, mission and exact origin of the drone remain unknown. No public statement from the RSF or the Sudan Founding Alliance, TASIS, identifying the aircraft had been located at the time of publication.
The incident comes amid mounting tension along a strategically important stretch of the Sudan-CAR frontier, where Central African opposition fighters have been operating close to RSF-held territory and Sudan’s war has increasingly overlapped with CAR’s own security crisis.
Darfur24 reported in September that the RSF deployed reinforcements along the border after fighters belonging to Central African opposition groups moved towards Sudanese territory near Um Dafuq. RSF forces and local traditional authorities subsequently ordered the fighters to leave and prevented them from using Sudanese territory to launch attacks inside CAR.
The confrontation also carries a wider Sudanese military dimension.
Regional security assessments have reported longstanding links between Central African rebel leader Noureddine Adam and Sudan’s army. Critical Threats, citing regional reporting, said the Sudanese Armed Forces had provided unspecified support to Adam for several years amid rivalry between SAF and actors aligned with Central African President Faustin-Archange Touadéra.
An associate of Adam based in Port Sudan was also accused by a regional source of helping plan an earlier rebel assault on Am Dafock in the Central African Republic, although the allegation has not been independently verified.
The relationships are not straightforward, however, with other reporting also alleging contacts between elements of the same Central African rebel network and figures linked to the RSF.
Um Dafuq itself has meanwhile become an explicit objective in the Sudanese army’s war against the RSF.
In July, SAF Assistant Commander-in-Chief Yasir al-Atta said army forces had been ordered to advance westwards through Kordofan and Darfur towards Um Dafuq on the Central African border. The Sudanese side of the frontier remains under RSF control.
The latest drone incident therefore comes against a backdrop of competing armed networks, SAF ambitions to reach the CAR frontier and growing concern that fighting in Sudan and the Central African Republic could increasingly spill across the border.
There was no evidence as of Sunday directly linking Saturday’s drone flight to SAF or to any Central African armed group.
