The military declares victory in Khartoum, retaking key positions after months of intense battles against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Sudanese army has claimed to have cleared Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters from the capital Khartoum, nearly two years after losing the capital to the paramilitary group.
“Our forces today have … forcibly cleansed the last pockets of the remnants of the Daglo terrorist militia in Khartoum locality,” military spokesman Nabil Abdullah said in a statement late on Thursday, using the government’s term for the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, which have been battling the military since April 2023.
The announcement came after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Wednesday declared the capital “free” from the RSF while standing inside the newly reclaimed presidential palace.
The army, after suffering a string of defeats for a year and a half, launched a counteroffensive that steadily pushed through central Sudan towards the capital.
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said the army was able to take full control of the city after retaking its southern Jebel Awliya area.
“That is where Jebel Awliya Bridge lies, and it’s from there the RSF fighters have been escaping the capital … going westwards towards Darfur,” she said.
With the army now taking control of Khartoum city and Jebel Awliya, Morgan said RSF fighters have “nowhere to go” and do not have the means to resupply themselves to fight the Sudanese armed forces.
According to army sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, there were still areas in Khartoum where RSF fighters were “holed up” in residential buildings, unable to leave because they were afraid of being captured, Morgan added.
However, the RSF pledged there would be “no retreat and no surrender”, saying its forces had only repositioned.
“We will deliver crushing defeats to the enemy on all fronts,” it said in a statement, its first direct comment since the army’s offensive began in Khartoum this week.
Blue Nile battle
Hours after al-Burhan walked back into the presidential palace for the first time in two years, the RSF announced a “military alliance” with a rebel group controlling large swaths of South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile state near the Ethiopian border.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, had clashed with both sides before signing a political charter with the RSF last month to establish a rival government.
On Thursday evening, witnesses in the Blue Nile state capital Damazin reported that both its airport and the nearby Roseires Dam came under drone attack by the paramilitaries and their allies for the first time in the war.
The army’s 4th Infantry Division in Damazin said in a statement on Friday that its air defences intercepted the drones.
The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced more than 12 million and created the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”, according to the International Rescue Committee.
It has also split Africa’s third-largest country in two, with the army holding the north and east, and the RSF controlling parts of the south and nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur.