CAIRO — Sudan’s army mentioned Friday it retook the Republican Palace in Khartoum, the final closely guarded bastion of rival paramilitary forces within the capital, after almost two years of preventing.
Social media movies confirmed its troopers inside giving the date because the twenty first day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim fasting month, which corresponds to Friday. A Sudanese army officer sporting a captain’s epaulettes made the announcement within the video, and confirmed the troops have been contained in the compound.
The palace seemed to be partly in ruins, with troopers’ steps crunching damaged tiles beneath their boots. Troopers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers chanted: “God is the best!”
Khaled al-Aiser, Sudan’s data minister, mentioned the army had retaken the palace in a submit on the social platform X.
“In the present day the flag is raised, the palace is again and the journey continues till victory is full,” he wrote.
The autumn of the Republican Palace, a compound alongside the Nile River that was the seat of presidency earlier than the warfare erupted and is immortalized on Sudanese banknotes and postage stamps, marks one other battlefield achieve for Sudan’s army. It has made regular advances in latest months underneath military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
It means the rival Speedy Help Forces, underneath Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have been principally expelled from the capital of Khartoum after Sudan’s warfare started in April 2023. Sporadic gunfire may very well be heard all through the capital Friday, although it wasn’t clear if it concerned preventing or was celebratory.
The group didn’t instantly acknowledge the loss, which likely won’t stop the fighting because the RSF and its allies nonetheless maintain territory elsewhere in Sudan.
Late Thursday, the RSF claimed it seized management of the Sudanese metropolis of al-Maliha, a strategic desert metropolis in North Darfur close to the borders of Chad and Libya. Sudan’s army has acknowledged preventing round al-Maliha, however has not mentioned it misplaced town.
Al-Maliha is round 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of town of El Fasher, which stays held by the Sudanese army regardless of near-daily strikes by the encircling RSF.
The top of the U.N. kids’s company has mentioned the battle created the world’s largest and humanitarian crisis.
The warfare has killed greater than 28,000 folks, pressured thousands and thousands to flee their houses and left some households consuming grass in a determined try to survive as famine sweeps elements of the nation. Different estimates counsel a far increased dying toll.
The Republican Palace had been the seat of energy through the British colonization of Sudan. It additionally noticed a few of the first impartial Sudanese flags raised over the nation in 1956. It additionally had been the principle workplace of Sudan’s president and different prime officers.
The Sudanese army have lengthy focused the palace and its grounds, shelling and firing on the compound.
Sudan, a nation in northeastern Africa, has been unstable since a preferred rebellion pressured the removing of longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in 2019. A brief-lived transition to democracy was derailed when Burhan and Dagalo led a military coup in 2021.
The RSF and Sudan’s army then began fighting each other in 2023.
Burhan’s forces, together with Sudan’s army and allied militias, have superior in opposition to the RSF for the reason that begin of this yr. They retook a key refinery north of Khartoum. They then pushed in on RSF positions across the capital itself. The preventing has led to an increase in civilian casualties.
Al-Bashir faces prices on the Worldwide Prison Courtroom over finishing up a genocidal marketing campaign within the early 2000s within the western Darfur area with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights teams and the U.N. accuse the RSF and allied Arab militias of once more attacking ethnic African teams on this warfare.
For the reason that warfare started, each the Sudanese army and the RSF have confronted allegations of human rights abuses. Earlier than U.S. President Joe Biden left workplace, the State Department declared the RSF are committing genocide.
The army and the RSF have denied committing abuses.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
