Sudan’s military sweeps across capital, hoping to turn the war

Khartoum, Sudan — At the battle-scarred presidential palace in the heart of Sudan’s shattered capital, soldiers gathered under a chandelier Sunday afternoon, rifles and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, listening to their orders.

Then they trooped out, down a red carpet that once welcomed foreign dignitaries, and into the deserted center of the city on a mission to flush out the last pockets of resistance from the paramilitary fighters with whom they have been clashing for two years.

Since Sudan’s military captured the presidential palace Friday, in a fierce battle that left hundreds dead, it has taken control of most of central Khartoum, marking a momentous change of fortunes that is likely to change the course of Sudan’s ruinous civil war.

By Sunday, the military had seized the Central Bank, the headquarters of the national intelligence service and the towering Corinthia Hotel along the Nile.

Journalists from The New York Times were the first from a Western outlet to cross the Nile, into central Khartoum, or to visit the palace, since the war erupted in April 2023. What we saw there made clear how decisively the events of recent days have shifted the direction of the war, but offered little hope that it will end soon.

“We will never leave our country to the mercenaries,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a special forces officer, referring to the Rapid Support Forces — the paramilitary force that Sudan’s army once nurtured, but is now its rival for supreme control.

As our vehicle raced down a deserted street along the Nile that until a few days ago had been controlled by the RSF, the scale of the damage in one of Africa’s biggest cities was starkly evident.

Trees lining the road had been stripped bare by explosions. A mosque was peppered with gunfire. Towering ministries and office blocks, some built with money from Sudan’s vast reserves of oil and gold, were burned to a shell.

The military headquarters, where a group of senior generals were trapped for the first 18 months of the war, had been shredded by bombs.

Khartoum University, once a hub of political debate, had been looted.

And an area where tens of thousands of young Sudanese mounted a popular uprising in 2019 that ousted the country’s autocratic leader, President Omar al-Bashir, was deserted. All that remain of those hopeful times was a handful of faded, bullet-pocked murals.

Instead, some of those pro-democracy protesters have picked up guns to fight in the war; they were assembled in the ruins of the presidential palace Sunday.

The Chinese-built presidential palace, only a few years ago shared by the country’s warring military leaders, had been reduced to a battered husk. Dust and debris covered ministerial suites and state rooms. Ceilings had collapsed. Gaping holes looked out over the Nile.

On the grounds of an older palace next door, erected a century ago by British colonists, soldiers napped under the charred arches of a bombed-out building.

The war started as a feud between rival generals, but quickly enveloped the entire country, bringing suffering on an epic scale. The conflict has forced 12 million people from their homes, killed tens of thousands, and set off the world’s worst famine in decades, the United Nations says.

Foreign powers such as the United Arab Emirates and Russia fuel the fight by supplying weapons to either side, and many worry it could spiral into a regional conflict by drawing in fragile neighboring countries like South Sudan or Chad.

US efforts to broker peace in Sudan last year failed. It is unclear if President Donald Trump will take any interest, although supporters say the country’s vast mineral resources could draw his attention.

Piles of bloodstained rubble on the palace steps testified to the ferocity of the battle Friday. As the military closed in, the RSF leader, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, issued a video message imploring his troops to stand their ground. When the final assault began, at least 500 paramilitary fighters were still inside, several officers said.

But when they tried to flee, they ran into deadly ambushes. A video filmed half a mile from the palace, and verified by the Times, showed dozens of bodies scattered along a street, beside incinerated or bullet-pocked vehicles.

“This is the season for hunting mice,” declared the officer who took the video, dating it to Saturday.

RSF fighters stationed on Tuti Island, at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers, tried to flee on boats, soldiers said. It was unclear how many escaped.

Without offering details, a Sudanese military spokesperson said “hundreds” of paramilitary fighters had been killed. But dozens of the military’s forces also died, soldiers said privately, in RSF drone attacks and in other fighting.

Alan Boswell, director of the Horn of Africa project at the International Crisis Group, said it was “just a matter of time” before Sudan’s military took the entire city, forcing the RSF to retreat to its stronghold in the western region of Darfur.

“Quite a fall from where they were for the first year and a half of the war, when they held most of Khartoum,” Boswell said.

Few believe the war is nearing an end, though. Both the RSF and the Sudanese military are backed by powerful foreign powers that have poured weapons into Sudan over the past two years. Sudan’s deputy leader, Malik Agar, recently estimated that there are now 36 million small arms in the country, which had a prewar population of 48 million.

International efforts to broker a negotiated end to the conflict have collapsed, and the country’s military chief, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, recently said he preferred to fight, not talk.

On the steps of the palace, a fresh bloodstain marked the spot where an RSF drone-fired missile had killed four employees from Sudanese state TV and two military officers Friday morning. As we visited Sunday, another drone hovered overhead, prompting soldiers to jog between buildings. They urged us to follow quickly.

Col. Algoney Ali Eseil, a commander leading a group of pro-democracy protesters turned fighters, said the RSF drones were being flown from bases in Darfur and Chad, where they were operated by the United Arab Emirates, the RSF’s main foreign sponsor. Eseil offered no evidence to support those claims, but the Times reported last year that the Emirates was operating Chinese-made Wing Loong 2 drones from an airstrip in Chad that is within striking range of Khartoum.

Sudan’s military has also relied heavily on drones and other foreign help. Last year it acquired Iranian drones that helped it capture ground in Khartoum. Also last year it acquired eight Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, which US officials say are especially prized in African conflicts, according to documents obtained by the Times. The documents were first reported by The Washington Post.

With the city center cleared out, the battle for Khartoum has now moved to the international airport, 1 1/2 miles from the palace. Satellite images show that its runways are pocked with shellfire and littered with the remains of passenger airliners destroyed after fighting broke out in 2023.

As the city switches from RSF to military control, human rights officials are concerned that civilians accused of collaborating with the rebels may face reprisals. In January, the army was accused of brutal assaults on suspected RSF sympathizers after recapturing the city of Wad Madani. Volunteers with the Emergency Response Rooms, which runs hundreds of soup kitchens across Khartoum, said they feared they could also be targeted.

If the army succeeds in Khartoum, the focus of the war will likely shift to Darfur, where RSF fighters are laying a punishing siege on the famine-stricken city of El Fasher, the only city in Darfur that it does not control. On Friday, they seized the town of Al Malha, about 130 miles north of El Fasher. Residents of the city said the occupying fighters were preventing them from leaving, amid reports of arrests and killings.