Sudan has closed Ethiopia's consulate in the eastern Sudanese city of Gedaref and expelled the diplomats working there, two Sudanese officials told Reuters on Wednesday — a direct retaliation for Ethiopia's expulsion of six Sudanese consular staff from Assosa earlier this week, as the two neighbours' row over Sudan's civil war turned into a tit-for-tat diplomatic rupture.

Source: Reuters

AFP reported the same sequence from the Sudanese side: two Sudanese government officials told the agency that Ethiopia and Sudan traded expulsions on Wednesday. Ethiopia had declared the employees of the Sudanese consulate in Asosa, in the Benishangul region, persona non grata on November 2 and given them 48 hours to leave; Sudan responded by informing the staff of the Ethiopian consulate in Gedaref, near the border, that they were persona non grata and gave them 48 hours to leave the country, one official told AFP. Ethiopian authorities did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

Source: AFP

What each side accuses the other of

Sudan accuses Ethiopia of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023. Ethiopia accuses Sudan of backing rebels in its northern Tigray region, who launched an offensive against government forces in September. Addis Ababa denies it supports the RSF, Reuters reported, and Ethiopia has also accused Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea of supporting the Tigrayan rebels. Both sets of allegations are denied by the side accused.

Source: Reuters

On Sunday, Sudan's government said it had lodged a complaint against Ethiopia with the United Nations Security Council and the African Union's Peace and Security Council, accusing Ethiopia of allowing the RSF to use its territory to launch suicide drones against civilian infrastructure in Sudan. The same day, drone strikes on electricity substations in the northern Sudanese towns of Al-Dabbah and Abu Hamad knocked out power, Al Jazeera reported, citing the complaints and official statements.

Source: Al Jazeera

A report by Sudan's army-led Transitional Sovereignty Council alleged that 70 attacks involving 187 one-way attack drones originated from Ethiopian territory between February 15 and October 27, killing 176 Sudanese soldiers and 484 civilians. Those figures are Sudan's own claims, published in its complaint, and have not been independently verified; Ethiopia rejects the accusation. The spokesperson for the Ethiopian prime minister's office did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Source: Reuters

A war spilling across a border

The diplomatic rupture lands on top of a civil war that erupted in April 2023 between Sudan's military and the RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 14 million, according to UN figures cited by Reuters, and created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. The fear now, voiced by analysts in regional coverage, is that Sudan's war and Ethiopia's Tigray conflict could bleed into each other across their long shared border, drawing two of the Horn of Africa's largest states into open confrontation.

Source: Reuters

What happens next

Both expulsions run on 48-hour clocks, so the consular staff are expected to be out within days. Neither capital has announced a next diplomatic step, and Ethiopia's foreign ministry had not publicly announced its Assosa measures, Reuters and AP reported earlier. Whether the African Union or IGAD — the regional bloc through which Ethiopia has previously positioned itself as a mediator in Sudan — can pull the two governments back from the brink will be the test of the coming week; for civilians in the border states of Gedaref and Benishangul-Gumuz, the immediate effect is that the last routine consular channels between the two countries have gone dark while a drone war is being fought over their heads.