The Sudanese army has recaptured the presidential palace in the capital, Khartoum, in a highly symbolic battlefield victory over the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the country’s catastrophic civil war.
Videos posted on social media showed soldiers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers inside the partly ruined building. An officer wearing a captain’s epaulettes announced the takeover of the palace in a video and confirmed that troops were inside the compound.
In a post on X, Khaled al-Aiser, Sudan’s information minister, said the military had retaken the palace. “Today the flag is raised, the palace is back and the journey continues until victory is complete,” he wrote.
Intermittent gunfire could be heard throughout the capital on Friday, but it was not clear if it involved fighting or was celebratory.
Following the capture, RSF – led by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – responded with deadly drone attacks. Shortly after state television broadcast scenes of fighters celebrating in the palace, three of its journalists were killed in a drone strike, an army source told Agence France-Presse.
In a statement on Telegram, the RSF said it had launched a “lightning operation” around the palace that “killed more than 89 enemy personnel and destroyed various military vehicles.”
“The battle for the Republican Palace is not over yet,” the militia vowed.
The RSF pledged to “continue to fight” to dislodge the army from areas it has retaken.
Its fighters are reportedly still scattered around the city centre, hiding in nearby buildings and stationed in part of the bombed out airport.
The seizure of the palace, which overlooks the Nile and was the seat of government before the war, follows months of steady advances for the army in the Khartoum area in recent months. Earlier this week, the army said its forces had merged from the north and south, hemming in the RSF.
RSF fighters, who seized much of the capital in the early stages of the war – forcing the army-aligned government to flee to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast – have been all but expelled from the city.
However, the army gain does not mean an end to the war is imminent. The RSF has consolidated control in the western Darfur region, hardening battle lines and moving the country towards de facto partition. The RSF is working to set up a parallel government in areas it controls, although that is not expected to receive widespread international recognition.
Late on Thursday, the RSF claimed it seized control of the Sudanese city of al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur near the borders of Chad and Libya. Sudan’s military has acknowledged fighting around al-Maliha but has not said it lost the city.
Al-Maliha is about 125 miles (200km) north of the city of El Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by the surrounding RSF.
The head of the UN children’s agency has said the conflict in Sudan has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The war has killed tens of thousands of people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.
Sudan, in north-eastern Africa, has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of the longtime autocratic president, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019. A short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Dagalo led a military coup in 2021. The RSF and Sudan’s military then began fighting each other in 2023.
Since the war began, the Sudanese military and the RSF have faced allegations of human rights abuses. Before Joe Biden left office, the US state department declared the RSF was committing genocide.
The military and the RSF have denied committing abuses.
The war has attracted external actors with interests in the country, including Chad, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Libya, Qatar and Russia. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been accused of providing financial and military support to the Sudanese army and the RSF respectively, but they have denied it.
AFP, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
Source: theguardian.com
