The Sudanese Armed Forces have retaken the presidential palace and other government buildings in downtown Khartoum, dealing a strategic blow to the rival paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces.
The victory brings the SAF closer to ousting the RSF from the capital altogether for the first time in two years of war, but raises the prospect of Sudan’s more permanent partition.
The army posted videos on Friday of soldiers loyal to the de facto president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan celebrating the recapture of the palace, which has been scarred by intense battles, its windows shattered and walls pockmarked with bullet holes.
Ultimately RSF fighters were encircled, cut off from supply lines and in the final stages of the fighting — according to the army — abandoned large amounts of weaponry.
The war — which has displaced more than 12mn people, claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused widespread famine — erupted in downtown Khartoum in April 2023, with the RSF eventually driving the army out of the capital to Port Sudan after a dispute over integration.
Friday’s reversal follows several months in which the SAF and allied Islamist militias have regained military momentum, capturing swaths of territory and cities in the eastern half of the country. Since February they have also claimed large parts of the capital.
“We are moving forward along all fighting axes until victory is complete by cleansing every inch of our country from the filth of this militia and its collaborators,” said Brigadier General Nabil Abdallah, army spokesman, on Friday.
The RSF did not immediately comment. Its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, who has been accused of genocide by the US, called in a video statement earlier this week for his fighters to hold their ground.
The RSF retains control of most of the west of the country including Darfur, where it is trying to set up a parallel administration, with buy-in from some civilian politicians. RSF fighters also remain holed out in southern parts of the capital with limited means of escaping, and are likely to continue resisting army advances.
Khartoum has been ruined in the latest conflict, after being spared the worst of the decades-long civil war that led to the secession of South Sudan in 2011 and remaining largely untouched during subsequent conflicts in Darfur.
Homes have been stripped bare by looting, buildings destroyed, and many of the city’s wealthier inhabitants have been scattered around the region and further afield.
Both sides in the conflict have been accused of atrocities. While army control of the capital could bring greater stability and advance Burhan’s ambition to form a new transitional government, it brings its own risks.
A teacher who fled Khartoum earlier in the conflict, but remains in touch with neighbours, said that some people had been fleeing the capital in recent weeks because they fear being targeted by the Islamist militias, whose alignment with the army contributed to recent battlefield successes.
“The RSF have been looting everything. But when people hear the SAF is approaching, many are also leaving, especially South Sudanese, because these brigades have been targeting them,” he said.
