Extremists, accompanied by Sudanese Armed Forces and police officers, destroyed a Pentecostal Church complex in Khartoum this week, according to a watchdog group.
The Pentecostal Church, initially constructed in the early 1990s and destroyed on Tuesday, was located in the El Haj Yousif area, according to the United Kingdom-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
El Haj Yousif is under the control of the Sudan Armed Forces — the faction engaged in a civil conflict with the Rapid Support Forces and which had declared Khartoum “completely liberated” from RSF control in May.
While fighting between the SAF and RSF has intensified in Darfur and Omdurman, targeted attacks on churches have continued since the civil conflict began in April 2023. Both armed factions were accused of desecrating religious spaces during military operations.
In December 2024, an SAF airstrike on a church in Khartoum killed 11 people, including eight children. In June 2025, RSF troops bombed three churches — the Sudanese Episcopal Church, African Inland Church and Roman Catholic Church — in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, over a two-day period.
CSW Chief Executive Scot Bower said the demolition in El Haj Yousif appeared to have been supported by local authorities, adding that “intentional attacks on places dedicated to religion are grave crimes under the Rome Statute.”
The El Haj Yousif area has also witnessed earlier church demolitions.
In February 2018, authorities destroyed a Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church compound in the same neighborhood. Rev. Abdul Harim, pastor of the church, told International Christian Concern at the time that government bulldozers and police arrived after the morning service, forcibly removed furniture and Bibles, and razed the building.
The demolition was carried out despite a pending court case disputing the land’s ownership, Harim said, which the state claimed should be transferred to a private Muslim developer. The church’s belongings, including Bibles and chairs, were confiscated.
Christian communities displaced by Sudan’s civil war have faced restrictions on worship in refugee areas.
In Wadi Halfa, a town in Northern State, displaced Christians were blocked from holding a Christmas service in a public park where they had taken shelter. Pastor Mugadam Shraf Aldin Hassan of the United Church of Smyrna said at the time that officials told the congregation they needed written permission to conduct Christian activities in a Muslim area, despite prior verbal approval from national security officers.
Sudan ranks as the fifth-worst country when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors' 2025 World Watch List, which notes that over 100 churches, Christian buildings and homes have been forcibly occupied during the ongoing civil conflict.
