Omdurman (AFP) – Sudanese army forces advancing on Khartoum converged on Monday with troops in the capital’s centre, a military spokesman said, increasing pressure on rival paramilitaries and inching closer to retaking the city.
The latest push by the army, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, comes after troops had broken prolonged sieges on key military sites after months of apparent stalemate in Khartoum.
Army spokesman Nabil Abdullah Ali said Armoured Corps troops advancing from the south captured a key hospital from the RSF, enabling them to merge with General Command forces already in the city centre.
A Sudanese military expert, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity for safety concerns, said that the latest army manoeuvre would cement its control over much of central Khartoum.
It would also increase pressure on RSF fighters near the presidential palace, with army forces now approaching them from both the south and the east, the expert said.
The war between the RSF and the army has escalated in recent months, with army forces seeking to reclaim territory lost to the RSF early in the conflict in the capital Khartoum and beyond.
The Armoured Corps last October broke out of a months-long paramilitary siege on its headquarters, and in January the army ended an almost two-year RSF siege of its General Command headquarters.
Later on Monday evening, RSF artillery fire killed ten people in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city just across the Nile River, a medical source told AFP.
AFP journalists in the area reported a series of artillery rounds striking Omdurman, under army control since last year.
A day before, RSF shelling had killed six civilians and wounded 36 others, a doctor at Al-Nao Hospital told AFP, also requesting anonymity for security reasons.
Two of the dead and half of those wounded were children, said the doctor.
The media office of the army-aligned Khartoum regional government said Sunday’s bombardment had struck residential areas in northern Omdurman, hitting civilians inside their homes and children playing on a football field.
Intensified fighting
In a video address shared on Telegram Saturday, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed his troops “will not leave the Republican Palace”, the seat of power in central Khartoum.
AFP journalists saw thick plumes of smoke rising over the city centre as fighting raged across the capital, with gunfire and explosions heard in several areas.
Nationwide, the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
In Khartoum alone, at least 3.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to the violence, according to the United Nations.
Away from the capital, in the North Kordofan state capital of El-Obeid — about 400 kilometres (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum — RSF shelling killed two civilians and wounded 15 others on Monday, a medical source at the city’s main hospital told AFP.
Last month, the military broke through a nearly two-year RSF siege of the southern city, a key crossroads linking Khartoum to the vast Darfur region in the west, which is under near-total RSF control.
Across North Kordofan, more than 200,000 people are currently displaced, while nearly a million are facing acute food insecurity, according to UN figures.
Clashes have also erupted in Blue Nile state, which borders South Sudan and Ethiopia, and where the RSF claimed Sunday to have destroyed military vehicles and taken prisoners from the army and allied forces.
In almost two years, the war has nearly torn Sudan into two, with the RSF in control of nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south, while the army holds the country’s north and east.
The army has made gains in central Sudan and Khartoum in recent months, and appears to be on the verge of reclaiming the entire capital.
