Sudan’s military retakes presidential palace in devastated capital

Khartoum, Sudan: Sudanese military forces recaptured the presidential palace early Friday in the battle-scarred capital, Khartoum, signaling a potential turning point in Sudan’s devastating civil war, now approaching its third year.

Videos and photos showed soldiers standing triumphantly at the entrance of the devastated palace, which overlooks the Nile River, after days of heavy fighting with the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, the powerful paramilitary group that the army has been battling.

“We’re inside!” shouted an unidentified officer as cheering soldiers swarmed around him in one video posted Friday morning. “We’re in the Republican Palace!”

Sudan’s information minister and its military spokesperson confirmed that the palace was back in government control. “Today the flag is raised, the palace is back, and the journey continues until victory is complete,” the minister, Khaled Ali al-Aiser, wrote on social media.

Retaking the palace was a major symbolic victory for Sudan’s army, which lost most of Khartoum to the RSF in the early days of the war in April 2023.

It was also a significant boost to the military’s drive to expel the paramilitaries from Khartoum entirely, six months into a giant counteroffensive that has swung the balance of the war toward the military in the eastern half of Sudan.

Days earlier, the RSF leader, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, had vowed to stand his ground. “Do not think that we will retreat from the palace,” he said last week.

But the military and allied militias, which have gradually seized most of the northern and eastern parts of the city, pressed hard on their target. Early Thursday, the military launched a blistering ambush on an RSF convoy south of the palace, apparently as RSF troops attempted to flee, video footage showed.

On Friday, the victory celebrations were shared by the diverse Sudanese militias that fought alongside the army.

“God is the greatest. We captured the Republican Palace,” wrote Misbah Abu Zeid, leader of the Bara Ibn Malik Battalion, a militia that played a frontline role as the battle moved into downtown Khartoum, on social media.

Sudan’s war erupted in April 2023 after months of tension between the military chief, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and Dagalo of the RSF. The two men had seized power together in a military coup in 2021, but they could not agree on how to integrate their forces.