The Sultan’s army says it has taken back the President’s Palace from the rebels

The Sudanese military said on Friday that it reoccupied the Republican palace in Khartoum, the capital’s last severely protected fortress for rival paramilitary forces after nearly two years of fighting.

The confiscation of the Republican palace surrounded by government ministries represents a major symbolic victory for the Sudanese army to quarantine the Military Rapid Support Force (RSF). However, this does not mean the end of the war, as the RSF owns territory in the Darfur region and elsewhere in western Sudan.

The war killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and let some families eat grass, desperately trying to survive as the famine swept across parts of the country. Other estimates suggest that death tolls are much higher.

Social media video shows soldiers inside it taking the date as the 21st day of Ramadan, the St. Muslim Fasting Month, corresponding to Friday. A Sudanese officer wearing the captain’s epauulettes made the announcement in the video and confirmed that the troops were inside the compound.

The palace seemed to be partially trapped in ruins, with soldiers’ footsteps creaking under their boots. The soldier carrying the grenade launcher with assault rifles and rockets shouted, “God is the greatest!”

Sudan’s Minister of Information Khaled Al-Aiser said the military reoccupied the palace in a post on social platform X.

He wrote: “Today, the flag was raised, the palace is back, and the journey continues until victory.”

The RSF then issued a statement claiming that its troops “still exist near the area and fight bravely.” A drone attack by the RSF on the palace was reportedly reportedly a force and journalist killed with Sudan State TV.

Humanitarian aid has been hampered by months of fighting

The Republican Palace is a kind of compound along the Nile River and has been the site of power during the Sudanese colonial colonies. It also saw some independent Sudan flags raised in the country in 1956.

Its fall marks another battlefield for the Sudanese army. It has made steady progress in recent months under the leadership of the Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Burhan.

This means that General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti)’s rival RSF (also known as Hemedti) was deported in the capital Khartoum after the Sudan war began in April 2023.

Throughout the capital Friday, sporadic gunfires were unclear whether combat or celebration involved.

brig. General Nabil Abdullah, spokesman for the Sudanese military, described his troops as occupying the palace, surrounding ministry buildings and the Arab market to the south of the palace. Since the beginning of the war, RSF has held Khartoum International Airport, about 2.5 kilometers southeast of the palace.

RSF-related politician Suleiman Sandal acknowledged the government’s occupation of the palace and called it a part of “the ups and downs in history.”

Late Thursday, the RSF claimed it controlled the Sudanese city of Al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in Northern Darfur, near the borders of Chad and Libya. The Sudanese army has admitted the battle surrounding Al-Maliha, but has not yet said it has lost the city.

Al-Maliha is located about 200 kilometers north of the city of El Fasher and is still held by the Sudanese military despite the daily strikes of the surrounding RSF.

The head of the United Nations Children’s Agency said the conflict caused the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis. UNICEF condemned the robbery of food aid on Friday, aiming to go to Al Bashir Hospital in Khartoum’s suburbs to malnourished children.

“Commercial supplies and humanitarian aid have been blocked for more than three months due to ongoing conflict along key routes,” UNICEF warned. “The result is a severe lack of food, medicine and other essentials, with thousands of civilians trapped in active combat.”

Turbulence since Bashir’s strike

The Sudanese military has long targeted the palace and its ground, shelling and shooting on the courtyard. Sudan has faced years of chaos and has been unstable since the mass uprising, forcing the long-term dictatorship Omar al-Bashir to be removed in 2019.

Al-Bashir faces charges from the International Criminal Court when he conducted a genocide campaign in the Darfur region in the early 2000s with Janjaweed, the predecessor of the RSF in the early 2000s. Rights groups and the United Nations accused the RSF and Allied Aried Arab militia of attacking the African group again in the war.

After Bashir was ousted when Burhan and Dagalo led the military coup in 2021, they made a brief transition to democracy. The RSF and the Sudanese military then began fighting each other in 2023.

Both the Sudanese army and the RSF have faced charges of human rights violations since the beginning of the war.

Before U.S. President Joe Biden left the office, the State Department declared RSF committed genocide. The Army and RSF denied abuse.