Sudanese troops recaptured the presidential palace in the fighting-covered capital Khartoum early on Friday, signaling a potential turning point for Sudan’s catastrophic civil war, and are now approaching its third year.
Soldiers posted a victory selfie video at the entrance to a devastated palace overlooking the Nile days after a fierce battle with RSF, a powerful paramilitary group that the Army is fighting for Sudan’s control.
“We’re inside!” In one video posted Friday morning, cheering soldiers roamed around him, shouting at an unidentified officer. “We’re in the Republican palace!”
Still, the RSF fought back for the rest of Friday, launching missiles from armed drones floating on the palace grounds, Sudanese military officials said. One of them attacked the crew from a Sudanian state television station, killing two journalists and a driver.
Two officers in the military media building, including Khartoum’s top officials, were also killed in attacks outside the palace.
For two centuries, the palace, a symbol of Sudan’s power, appeared to be in abandoned. However, it was a great iconic victory for the Sudanese army, losing most of Khartoum to the RSF in the early days of the war in April 2023, trapping its troops in a handful of wars scattered across vast cities.
It was a strategic victory, and after six months of counterattack that shook the balance of the military’s favorable war, it raised the willingness of the army to completely expel paramilitary groups from Khartoum.
Just a few days ago, RSF leader Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan had vowed to take his position. “Don’t think we’ll retreat from the palace,” he said last week at a video address from a private location.
However, on Thursday, the military launched a ferocious attack on the RSF position, pushing it hard against the target with an attack that ultimately forced the paramilitary out of the air.
The victory celebration on Friday was shared by an unlikely coalition of Sudanese militias fighting under the Army. They included strong Muslims. Fighter planes tested in combat from the western region of Darfur. And some of the civil revolutionaries who helped Sudan’s authoritarian leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, kick out the president he had ruled for 30 years in 2019.
By Friday evening it was unclear whether the RSF intended to protect the territory it still held south of the city, or whether it began retreating to its western Sudan base. Analysts said there is a single escape route left for the paramilitary organization. It is a narrow bridge at a major dam on the Nile River in Jebel Oria, 25 miles south of the capital.
Sudanese troops previously bombed approach roads to the dam, causing quiet surprises among international aid groups, and worried that serious damage to the dam could lead to catastrophic floods.
The Sudan war broke out in April 2023 after months of tensions between military chief General Abdul Fatta al Burhan and RSF General Abdul Fatta al Burhan and RSF General Hamdan in 2021, but lost power in a military coup in 2021, but was unable to agree on how to unite the troops.
The RSF was supported by external support from external sponsors from foreign sponsors, including the UAE and Russian Wagner mercenaries, and had the advantage for the first 18 months of the war.
However, since the troops launched a massive counterattack in September, the forces recaptured the provinces of southeastern Sudan, gradually pushing the RSF out of Khartoum.
After crossing several strategic bridges over the Nile, the military has seized the city’s north and east over the past few months, then set sights on the President’s Palace.
Its vast compounds on the southern shore of the Blue Nile have long occupied the central location of Sudan’s history. Established in the early 19th century under the Ottoman and Egyptian colonization, the palace was destroyed several times and rebuilt.
It was a scene from a famous colonial episode of 1885, when Muhammad Ahmad, a follower of the revolutionary clergy, was known as Mahdi, killed Governor Charles Gordon, the British ruler of Sudan, on the palace steps.
In 2015, Albasir opened a new palace funded and built by China next door to the colonial era. The new palace was also the focus of the uprising that followed the ouster of Al Bashir when jocking between civil and military leaders led to the 2021 military coup in 2019.
The new palace, protected by Republican security guards, is reported to have secret tunnels and rooms, and was the focus of most of the roaring celebrations on Friday.
The harsh casualties of the war have been revealed as RSF fighters have withdrawn from the eastern and north Khartoum since January.
The entire district has become a scorched wasteland, as New York Times reporters have seen in the city over the past week.
The vehicles surrounded by bullets are scattered across abandoned streets. The apartment blocks were either standing or looted, and the banks were blown away. White smoke swirling from a giant wheat silo.
In the city centre, Army snipers trained their rifles through the windows of a luxurious abandoned apartment overlooking the Nile River. At a far bank, the river fell to the side. A surveillance drone rang overhead.
Lace curtains swirling around the sergeant. Major General Ismail Hassan looked through binoculars at the bombed presidential residence.
“They deploy a lot of snipers in tall buildings,” Major Hassan said. “That’s what makes it so difficult.”
The RSF’s best snipers came from Ethiopia, he added, citing military intelligence reports. Documents found by the Times at a discarded RSF base in the city that lists recent Ethiopian recruits supported the idea.
Some estimates have reduced the front-line population of approximately 8 million capital to 2 million. In the recently recaptured area, the Army has moved residents to temporary camps on the edge of the city. There, the Army is reviewing RSF sympathizers, several residents said.
For those still in town there was a clear sense of security that the RSF fighter jets were gone.
“Before they left, they asked for money,” said Kamal Juma, 42, as he pounded water from a broken pipe in the street. “If you couldn’t pay, they shot you.”
Even if the military could drive the RSF out of Khartoum, there is little prospect of the war coming to an end anytime soon, analysts say.
What began as a feud of power between the two generals exploded into a much wider conflict fueled by bewildered foreign forces.
In parts of the city, bushes germinated in empty streets, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere. The pre-war faded signs promoted the item at one tenth of its current price.
However, this photo was markedly different in Omdurman, located west of the Nile, and was ruled by the Army. There, the markets and restaurants were bustling and even the jewelry stores were reopened as residents returned.
But even Omdurmann’s death is never far away.
On Monday night, a volley of RSF rocket landed on a quiet street where six neighbors gathered under the palm trees for a drink of coffee.
After an explosion rocked his house, Momar Atyatala stumbled through a cloud of dust and under the palm tree to his friend, “What happened, everyone?”
No one answered. All six men were killed, including a carpenter, a carpenter, a carpenter, a cart trader and a rickshaw driver, and two other men who were passing by the streets.
An hour after the strike, the lamented woman spilled down the dark street. There, stone-like male men picked up scraps of meat from the ground and gathered them in plastic bags. A distraught young girl ran in the past.
“Father!” she cried. “father!”
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed the report.
