What happened

A fire broke out in one of the cables at the Merowe Dam power station, Sudan's largest hydroelectric plant and the backbone of the national grid, severely damaging the main feeders of the Merowe-Al Murkhiyat and Merowe-Atbara transmission lines. The resulting outages spread across Khartoum, River Nile, Northern and Red Sea states. Sudan's Ministry of Energy said a technical assessment found extensive feeder damage and that repairs would take several days; Energy Minister Al-Mutasim Ibrahim Ahmed travelled to the site to oversee the response and ordered maximum output from alternative generating stations and grid reconfiguration to distribute available power. By 4 August the ministry said several thermal generation units had been restored to the grid. Sudan's electricity sector has faced repeated attacks and damage to plants, substations and transmission lines since the civil war began in April 2023, including earlier documented drone strikes on this same dam, but the cited reporting on this specific fire did not identify a cause.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.