At the fighting-injured presidential palace in the heart of Sudan’s crushed capital, soldiers gathered under the chandelier on Sunday afternoon, with rifles and rocket launchers hanging over their shoulders to listen to their orders.
They then ran down the red carpet where foreign officials were once welcomed, heading towards the abandoned centre of the city on a mission to wash away the final pockets of resistance from paramilitary fighters that had been clashing for two years.
As Sudanese troops captured the Presidential Palace on Friday, in a fierce battle that left hundreds of deaths, it controlled the central part of Khartoum and marked a significant change in property that is likely to change the path of Sudan’s catastrophic civil war.
By Sunday, the military had seized the central bank, the headquarters of the National Intelligence Agency, and the towering Corinthian Hotel along the Nile River.
New York Times journalists were the first to go from western outlets crossing the Nile or visiting palaces since the outbreak of war in April 2023. What we saw there revealed that recent events had decisively changed the direction of the war, but it gave little hope to end soon.
“We will never leave our country to mercenaries,” said special forces officer Mohamed Ibrahim, referring to the RSF, a paramilitary force that the Sudanese army once raised, but now they are rivals for the highest rule.
Our vehicles ran down abandoned streets along the Nile River, controlled by the RSF until a few days ago, revealing the scale of the damage in one of Africa’s biggest cities.
The trees lined up the road were barely peeled off by the explosion. There was a shooting at the mosque. Towering ministries and office blocks were built with money from Sudan’s vast oil and gold reserves, burned into shells.
The military headquarters, where a group of senior generals were trapped for the first 18 months of the war, was shredded by bombs.
Khartoum University, once a hub for political debate, was plundered.
And then the area where tens of thousands of young Sudanese people had fitted with the popular uprising that expelled the country’s dictatorial leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in 2019, was abandoned. All of those hopeful times were murals covered in a handful of faded bullets.
Instead, some of those democratic protesters picked up guns to fight in the war. They gathered at the ruins of the President’s Palace on Sunday.
The presidential palace built in China, shared by the country’s fighting military leaders just a few years ago, was reduced to the shell of abuse. Dust and debris were covering the minister’s lawsuit and state rooms. The ceiling collapsed. A gaping hole overlooks the Nile River.
On the grounds of an adjacent old palace built by British settlers a century ago, soldiers took a nap under the burnt arches of a bombed building.
The war began as a feud between rival generals, but soon enveloped the entire country, causing suffering on a grand scale. The conflict forced 12 million people from homes, killed tens of thousands, and caused the world’s worst hunger in decades, the United Nations said.
Foreign forces like the UAE and Russia are worried that they can burn the fight by supplying weapons to either side, and that many will be able to swirl into regional conflicts by portraying vulnerable neighbors like South Sudan and Chad.
American efforts to mediate peace in Sudan last year failed. Supporters are unclear whether President Trump is interested, but supporters say the country’s vast mineral resources can attract his attention.
Pile of bloody rubs on the steps of the palace testified to the ferociousness of Friday’s battle. Once the troops were shut down, RSF leader Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan issued a video message pleading for their troops to stand in their position. At least 500 paramilitary fighters were still inside when the final attack began, several officers said.
However, as they tried to escape, they encountered a fatal ambush. A video filmed half a mile from the palace shows dozens of bodies scattered along the street beside a vehicle with incineration or bullets.
“This is the season to hunt mice,” the officer who filmed the video declared that he was on a date on Saturday.
The RSF fighter jets stationed on Tuti Island tried to escape by boat at the junction of the Blue and White Nile Rivers, soldiers said. It was unclear how many people had fled.
Without providing details, a Sudanian military spokesman said “hundreds” of paramilitary fighters had been killed. However, dozens of troops have also been killed, soldiers personally said in RSF drone attacks and other battles.
Alambozwell, director of the International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Project, said it was “a matter of time” before Sudanese troops seize the entire city and force the RSF to retreat to bases in the western region of Darfur.
“Dropped quite a bit from where they were during the first year and a half of the war, when they had a large part of Khartoum,” Boswell said.
However, few believe that the war is coming to an end. Both the RSF and the Sudanese army are supported by powerful foreign powers that have poured weapons into Sudan over the past two years. Sudan’s assistant leader Malik Agar recently estimated that a country with a large population of 48 million currently has 36 million small arms.
International efforts to mediate the purpose of negotiating conflicts have collapsed, and the country’s military chief General Abdel Fatta al-Burhan recently said he prefers to fight rather than speak.
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On the palace stairs, on Friday morning, RSF drone-fueled missiles killed four employees and two service members from a Sudan television. When we visited on Sunday, another drone floated overhead, urging the soldiers to jog between the buildings. They urged us to follow immediately.
Colonel Argony Ali Esil, commander who leads a group of democratic protesters, said RSF drones were flying from bases in Darfur and Chad. Colonel Esil did not provide evidence to support these claims, but the Times reported last year that Emirates operates two Chinese-made wing drones from the Chad runway, which is within the prominent range of Khartoum.
The Sudanese army also relies heavily on the help of drones and other foreign countries. Last year it acquired an Iranian drone that would help capture the ground in Khartoum. Also, last year, US officials acquired eight Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones that they say are particularly tribute to the African conflict, according to documents obtained by The Times. The document was first reported by the Washington Post.
Once the city centre was cleared, the battle for Khartoum has now moved to the international airport, a mile and a half from the palace. Satellite images show that the runway is clogged with shellfires, scattered with ruins of passenger planes that were destroyed after the outbreak of combat in 2023.
If the city switches from RSF to military control, human rights officials are concerned that civilians accused of working with rebels could face retaliation. In January, the Army was accused of brutal assault on alleged RSF sympathizers after reclaiming the city of Wad Madani. Volunteers in the emergency room, which operates hundreds of soup kitchens across Khartoum, said they are afraid they will be targeted too.
If the Army succeeds in Khartoum, the focus of the war could shift to Darfur. In Darfur, RSF fighters are building a siege punished by the hunger-hit city of Elfasher. On Friday, they seized the town of Al Marha, about 130 miles north of El Fascher. City residents said in reports of arrests and murders that the occupied fighters were preventing them from leaving.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed to reporting from Khartoum and Ronen Bergman of Tel Aviv.
