Sudan Files UN and African Union Complaints Against Ethiopia Over Deadly Drone Spree From Ethiopian Territory

Sudan has taken its bitterest accusation against a neighbour to the world’s two most important diplomatic stages at once, filing formal complaints against Ethiopia with the United Nations Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council. The complaints, lodged late on Sunday 1 November 2026, accuse Ethiopia of allowing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to launch explosive drones from Ethiopian territory against Sudanese civilian sites and power stations. Khartoum calls the alleged use of Ethiopian soil a hostile act and a violation of international law, and it demands that Addis Ababa halt what it describes as blatant aggression. Ethiopia denies the accusations outright, and the exchange has turned a long-running border and proxy quarrel into a formal legal and diplomatic confrontation. This Sudan Ethiopia UN drone complaint November 2026 therefore matters far beyond one filing, because it tests whether international bodies can restrain a drone war that is already killing civilians and darkening cities.

1. The Complaint Lands in New York and Addis Ababa

1.1 What Khartoum filed on Sunday

Sudan’s army-aligned foreign ministry said late on Sunday that it had submitted complaints to both the UN Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, accompanied by documents it says show the Rapid Support Forces using Ethiopian territory to launch attacks. The ministry described explosive-laden and missile-equipped drones striking civilian facilities and vital infrastructure, and it said the campaign had caused civilian casualties and disrupted essential services across several Sudanese states. The dual filing is itself a signal: Khartoum is not content with a bilateral protest note, and it wants the complaint on the record in New York and in Addis Ababa, where the African Union is headquartered. Diplomats will now watch for whether either body issues a statement, requests a briefing, or quietly urges restraint behind closed doors. For now, the filing stands as Sudan’s most formal statement yet of a charge it has repeated for months, and it raises the stakes for any further drone attack that can be linked, credibly or not, to Ethiopian soil.

1.2 The language of ‘blatant aggression’

The foreign ministry’s statement used unusually blunt language, calling the alleged use of Ethiopian territory by what it calls a terrorist militia a hostile act that places Ethiopia in violation of international law. That wording matters because it frames the dispute not as a neighbourly misunderstanding but as a breach of the UN Charter, which rests on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. Khartoum also called on Ethiopia to halt hostile actions, a demand that leaves little room for ambiguity about what Sudan wants next. Strong language, however, does not by itself prove the underlying claim, and international lawyers will ask for the documents Khartoum says it submitted, for satellite or debris evidence, and for any independent corroboration. The ministry’s choice of words also tells its domestic audience that the army-led government is acting, not merely complaining, at a moment when power cuts and civilian deaths are fuelling anger inside Sudan.

2. The Drone Campaign at the Centre of the Case

2.1 Seventy attacks, 187 drones

Alongside the complaints, Sudan’s army-led Transitional Sovereignty Council published a report alleging 70 attacks involving 187 one-way attack drones launched from Ethiopian territory this year alone, from 15 February to 27 October 2026. One-way attack drones, often called suicide drones, are designed to fly to a target and detonate on impact, which makes them cheap, hard to intercept in large numbers, and terrifying for civilians who hear them before they strike. The report says October alone saw 28 attacks carried out by 97 drones, a sharp concentration that suggests the campaign intensified as the year went on rather than fading. Those figures come from Khartoum, not from an independent count, and they should be read as allegations that need verification, not as settled fact. Yet even if the precise totals are disputed, the pattern they describe matches a wider trend reported by the United Nations: drone attacks across Sudan have escalated sharply, with more than 1,100 people killed in drone attacks during the first half of the year alone.

2.2 Power stations in the crosshairs

The most recent wave, according to Sudan, has systematically targeted electricity infrastructure. The complaints followed drone attacks on 13 electricity stations in Khartoum, Al-Jazira, Sennar and Al-Qadarif since the previous Monday, and a separate account listed more than fourteen power distribution stations damaged or targeted across Gedarif, Khartoum, Al Jazirah, Red Sea, Sennar, White Nile, South Kordofan, River Nile and Northern states. Power stations are not incidental targets in this account: knocking out electricity also knocks out water pumping, hospital lighting, refrigeration for medicines and vaccines, and communications, so a strike on a substation ripples through civilian life long after the explosion. Sudan says residential complexes, hospitals and fuel stations were also hit, which, if confirmed, would strengthen its argument that the campaign targets civilian life rather than purely military objectives. Attackers, by contrast, often claim power infrastructure has military uses, and that dispute over dual use is one reason independent investigation matters so much here.

3. The Human Toll Behind the Numbers

3.1 Civilians killed and wounded

The Transitional Sovereignty Council report says the alleged Ethiopian-launched attacks killed or wounded nearly 500 civilians, with a more precise version putting the figure at 484 civilians killed or wounded, alongside 176 Sudanese soldiers killed and another 200 soldiers wounded. Those numbers sit inside a far larger civilian catastrophe: the United Nations has said more than 1,100 people were killed in drone attacks across Sudan in the first half of 2026, and the UN Secretary-General’s spokesman said on Saturday that he was appalled by the impact of drone strikes in Sudan. Behind each number is a family that lost power, water or a relative, and a hospital that had to treat blast injuries by torchlight or generator. The figures also underline why Khartoum chose this moment to file: a complaint framed only around sovereignty might be ignored, but a complaint tied to hundreds of civilian casualties is harder for the Security Council and the African Union to set aside without comment.

3.2 The Wad el-Mahi attack

One incident cited in the report stands out for its horror and its location. On 9 October, according to Khartoum, an attack on displaced families in Wad el-Mahi, in Sudan’s Blue Nile region near the Ethiopian border, killed 30 civilians, including 26 women and four children, and wounded 100 more. Displaced families are among the most vulnerable people in any war, having already fled their homes, and an attack on them carries particular weight in international humanitarian law. The report presents Wad el-Mahi as part of the same alleged Ethiopian-launched campaign, but that linkage, like the launch-site claims, rests on Khartoum’s account and has not been independently confirmed in the reporting so far. Separately, days before the UN spokesman’s statement, another strike on a market in RSF-controlled territory in Darfur killed more than 100 people, a reminder that drone violence in Sudan is not one-sided and that civilians are being killed by attacks attributed to different parties. Any serious inquiry must therefore look at the whole pattern, not only at the attacks Sudan attributes to Ethiopia.

4. The Launch Sites Sudan Names

4.1 Asosa, Kurmuk-Gizen and Bahir Dar

Sudan’s report names three alleged launch areas with unusual specificity: Asosa Airport in western Ethiopia, the Kurmuk-Gizen border area, and Bahir Dar airbase in north-western Ethiopia’s Amhara region. Naming airfields and a border zone is a deliberate choice, because it invites satellite imagery analysts, journalists and UN investigators to check whether drone activity, new infrastructure or flight patterns match the claim. It also puts Ethiopia in a difficult position: a vague denial is easier than a detailed rebuttal of named sites, and each named site can be examined against flight data, local reporting and commercial satellite images. At the same time, specificity alone is not proof, and airfields in border regions can host many kinds of legitimate activity. The coming days will show whether independent analysts publish imagery or flight evidence that supports, contradicts or simply cannot resolve Khartoum’s list.

4.2 Why the geography matters

The geography of the alleged launches matters because Ethiopia and Sudan share a long, porous and historically contested border, and because western Ethiopia sits close to Sudan’s Blue Nile and Gedarif regions, where several of the reported strikes occurred. Short flight distances make one-way drones more practical, since they need less fuel and can carry larger payloads over shorter ranges. The border area has also been a corridor for refugees, traders and armed groups for decades, which makes attribution genuinely difficult: a drone launched near a border is not automatically a drone launched by a neighbouring state, and non-state actors can exploit borderlands precisely because control there is thin. That is why Sudan’s claim that Ethiopia is hosting, permitting or actively supporting the launches is a much stronger charge than simply saying drones crossed from Ethiopian airspace, and why Addis Ababa’s response focuses on sovereignty and denial rather than on technical detail.

5. Ethiopia’s Denial and Counter-Accusation

5.1 Addis Ababa rejects the claims

Ethiopia denies Sudan’s accusations and says it respects Sudan’s sovereignty, a position it has maintained through repeated rounds of mutual blame. Ethiopian officials have not, in the reporting so far, published a detailed point-by-point rebuttal of the Asosa, Kurmuk-Gizen and Bahir Dar claims, but the core denial is clear: Addis Ababa rejects the idea that it is allowing the Rapid Support Forces to use its territory for drone attacks. Denials of this kind are common in proxy disputes, and they rarely settle the argument on their own, but they do set up the central evidentiary contest that the UN and African Union would have to resolve if they investigate. Without access to the launch areas, flight logs or recovered drone debris, outside observers may be left weighing two governments’ words against each other, which is a fragile basis for any finding.

5.2 The Tigray counter-charge

Ethiopia has turned the accusation back on Khartoum, accusing the Sudanese army of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, an allegation Sudan rejects. That counter-charge reaches back to Ethiopia’s own recent civil war in Tigray and to long-standing suspicions on both sides that each neighbour shelters the other’s enemies. The exchange therefore looks less like a single incident and more like a cycle: Sudan accuses Ethiopia of hosting RSF drones, Ethiopia accuses Sudan of hosting Tigray-linked rebels, and each denial hardens the other’s suspicion. For regional diplomats, the danger is that the drone complaint becomes another layer in that cycle rather than a step towards de-escalation, especially because both governments face internal pressures that reward tough language towards a neighbour. Breaking that cycle would require a verification mechanism both sides accept, and neither side has yet proposed one in public.

6. A War That Has Moved Into the Air

6.1 From April 2023 to the drone war

Sudan’s war began in April 2023 as a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, and it has since become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine warnings, mass displacement and attacks on markets, hospitals and power systems. Drones have transformed that war by giving both sides a way to strike deep behind front lines without risking aircraft or pilots, and by making cities that once felt distant from the fighting suddenly vulnerable. The Nyala market strike in late October, which killed 21 people and injured 40 according to hospital accounts, showed how a single drone attack on a crowded civilian place can dominate headlines and deepen fear. The alleged Ethiopian-launched campaign described in the new complaint fits that wider shift: it is less about capturing territory and more about degrading infrastructure, spreading fear and forcing an enemy government to divert resources to air defence and repairs.

6.2 The United Nations’ alarm

The UN Secretary-General, through his spokesman, said on Saturday that he was appalled by the impact of drone strikes in Sudan and strongly condemned escalating drone attacks by the parties to the conflict, calling their toll catastrophic and saying the strikes constitute violations of international humanitarian law. That statement did not name Ethiopia, and it condemned drone attacks by all parties, which is an important distinction: the UN is alarmed by the weapon’s use against civilians generally, not only by Sudan’s specific complaint. For Khartoum, the statement is still useful, because it establishes that the international community already regards the drone campaign as a humanitarian emergency. For Ethiopia, the statement’s even-handed wording offers room to argue that blame cannot be assigned on the basis of one government’s report alone. The gap between those two readings is where the Security Council and the African Union will have to operate if they take up the complaint.

7. What the Complaint Could — and Could Not — Do

7.1 Security Council and AU routes

A complaint to the UN Security Council does not automatically trigger sanctions, an investigation or a resolution, especially when Council members disagree about a conflict or about the evidence. The Council can request a briefing, issue a press statement, call for restraint, or mandate a fact-finding effort, but each step requires political agreement that is often hard to obtain. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council has a different advantage: it is a regional body, headquartered in Addis Ababa itself, and it can engage both governments directly, propose mediation, or send an assessment mission. Its proximity, however, is also a complication, because Ethiopia hosts the AU and wields considerable influence within it. Realistic outcomes in the short term therefore include diplomatic pressure, a call for an independent verification mechanism, or quiet mediation, rather than a dramatic enforcement action.

7.2 The evidence question

Everything now turns on evidence that has not yet been made public in full. Sudan says it submitted documents with its complaints, but those documents have not been independently examined in the reporting available so far, and no satellite imagery, debris analysis or flight-track evidence has been published to confirm the named launch sites. Investigators would want to know the drone models used, where their components originated, whether wreckage matches known RSF stockpiles, and whether launch signatures can be traced to specific airfields. They would also want to interview witnesses in the struck areas and compare Sudanese casualty records with hospital and humanitarian sources. Until that work is done, the complaint should be reported as Sudan’s allegation, Ethiopia’s denial, and a set of figures from Khartoum that await independent confirmation, not as an established finding by any international body.

8. Questions Still Unanswered

8.1 Attribution and verification

The central unanswered question is attribution: can anyone independently prove that the drones that hit Sudanese power stations and civilian sites were launched from Asosa, Kurmuk-Gizen or Bahir Dar, and with whose knowledge or support? A related question is whether Ethiopia, even if drones crossed its airspace, actively hosted, permitted or merely failed to prevent launches by a non-state actor operating near a porous border. Those are legally and politically different findings, and they would lead to very different responses. A third question is whether the RSF, or another actor entirely, operated the drones, since Sudan’s war involves multiple armed groups and shifting alliances. Without answers to those questions, the complaint risks becoming a diplomatic signal rather than a proven case.

8.2 What happens next on the ground

The practical questions for Sudanese civilians are more immediate: will the power stations be repaired before the next wave of strikes, will hospitals and water systems hold up, and will the complaints deter further attacks or provoke retaliation? Diplomats will watch for any Security Council or African Union statement, any Ethiopian detailed rebuttal, any Sudanese release of its supporting documents, and any change in the tempo of drone attacks in the coming week. They will also watch the border itself, where a formal complaint can either cool tempers by channelling anger into procedure or inflame them by giving each side a new grievance. For now, the filing marks a sharp escalation in words, while the war it describes continues in the air over Sudan’s cities.

What remains unconfirmed includes the independent verification of the 70 attacks and 187 drones, the named launch sites, the full civilian and military casualty totals, whether Ethiopia hosted, permitted or merely failed to prevent any launches, the contents of the documents Sudan says it submitted, any Security Council or African Union response, any detailed Ethiopian rebuttal, and whether the drone campaign will intensify, pause or shift to new targets in the coming days.

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