Sudan’s army retakes the presidential palace in Khartoum, striking a blow to the Rapid Support Forces in a key symbolic victory.
Sudan’s army and its supporters are celebrating across the country after troops recaptured the presidential palace in the capital, Khartoum.
Friday’s victory is perhaps the army’s most symbolic since launching a key counteroffensive against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in September last year.
The RSF continues to control pockets in southern Khartoum, but has lost most of the capital since Sudan erupted into a civil war in April 2023.
The development comes just days after RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo released a video urging his fighters not to give up the palace.
Civilians have generally welcomed the army as liberators despite some reports of army-aligned militias carrying out human rights abuses following RSF withdrawals.
The RSF has committed countless atrocities in Sudan, including in Khartoum.
A recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), found that RSF fighters had detained at least 10,000 people in Khartoum since the start of the war until June last year.
“In areas the RSF controls, they kill people, rape women and destroy all humanity. Whenever the army arrives, people become happy because they feel safer. Even the children are joyous,” said Yousef, a young Sudanese man.
A different scenario outside Khartoum
The army’s capture of the presidential palace raises fears that Sudan is increasingly approaching a de facto partition, say analysts.
The RSF is already backing a parallel government and remains in control of four of the five regions in the sprawling region of Darfur, which is approximately the size of France.
The RSF recently captured the strategic desert city al-Maliha in North Darfur, which is the last region where the army and its aligned armed groups still have some control.
Despite the gain, the RSF is struggling to capture el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur where the army still has a garrison.
Sharath Srinivasan, an expert on Sudan and a professor at Cambridge University, told Al Jazeera that Sudan appears to be heading to a “Libya scenario”, referencing the split in governance between two competing authorities who are aligned with a web of armed groups and militias.
“It feels the geographic bifurcation is getting stronger, except el-Fasher of course. RSF has to secure el-Fasher to claim a de facto state, which is not certain at all,” he said.
Time for peace?
The army has long refused to engage in peace talks with the RSF and has repeatedly said it plans to recapture the entire country.
The RSF has also used diplomacy as a cover to escalate military operations in Sudan, analysts previously told Al Jazeera. In January last year, Hemedti signed a “Declaration of Principles” with an ostensibly antiwar coalition known as Taqaddum.
Hemedti then visited several heads of state across Africa while his forces continued to pillage, kill and terrorise civilians in Sudan’s Gezira state, a major breadbasket.
Both sides have recently promised to keep fighting, raising fears that clashes could intensify in the west of the country, particularly in the Kordofan and Darfur regions.
Fighting may also escalate in Khartoum due to the range of sophisticated weapons pouring into the country. Just moments after the army celebrated regaining the presidential palace, a drone struck and killed three journalists in the area, it said.
Ongoing fighting could spin vast regions of Sudan deeper into turmoil. The conflict has already triggered the largest humanitarian crisis in the world by most measures.
Tens of thousands of people have died, thousands have gone missing and millions are suffering from catastrophic levels of food insecurity.