Sudan’s military said Friday it retook the Republican Palace in Khartoum, the last heavily guarded bastion of rival paramilitary forces in the capital, after nearly two years of fighting.
The seizure of the Republican Palace, surrounded by government ministries, represents a major symbolic victory for Sudan’s military against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). However, it likely doesn’t mean the end of the war as the RSF holds territory in Sudan’s western Darfur region and elsewhere.
The war has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.
Social media videos showed its soldiers inside giving the date as the 21st day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim fasting month, which corresponds to Friday. A Sudanese military officer wearing a captain’s epaulettes made the announcement in the video and confirmed the troops were inside the compound.
The palace appeared to be partly in ruins, with soldiers’ steps crunching broken tiles underneath their boots. Soldiers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers chanted: “God is the greatest!”
Khaled al-Aiser, Sudan’s information minister, said the military had retaken the palace in a post on the social platform X.
“Today the flag is raised, the palace is back and the journey continues until victory is complete,” he wrote.
The RSF later issued a statement claiming its forces “are still present of the vicinity of the area, fighting bravely.” A drone attack on the palace believed to have been launched by the RSF reportedly killed troops and journalists with Sudanese state television.
Humanitarian aid hampered by months of fighting
The Republican Palace, a compound along the Nile River, had been the seat of power during the British colonization of Sudan. It also saw some of the first independent Sudanese flags raised over the country in 1956.
Its fall marks another battlefield gain for Sudan’s military. It has made steady advances in recent months under army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan.
It means the rival RSF, under Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, have been mostly expelled from the capital, Khartoum, after Sudan’s war began in April 2023.
Sporadic gunfire could be heard throughout the capital Friday, though it wasn’t clear if it involved fighting or was celebratory.
Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, described its troops as holding the palace, surrounding ministry buildings and the Arab Market to the south of the palace. Khartoum International Airport, only some 2.5 kilometres southeast of the palace, has been held by the RSF since the start of the war.
Suleiman Sandal, a politician associated with the RSF, acknowledged the government took the palace and called it part of “the ups and downs” of history.
Late Thursday, the RSF claimed it seized control of the Sudanese city of al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur near the borders of Chad and Libya. Sudan’s military has acknowledged fighting around al-Maliha but has not said it lost the city.
Al-Maliha is around 200 kilometres north of the city of El Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by the surrounding RSF.
The head of the UN children’s agency has said the conflict created the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis. UNICEF on Friday separately decried the looting of food aid meant to go to malnourished children at Al Bashir Hospital on the outskirts of Khartoum.
“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 shortage of food, medicine and other essentials, with thousands of civilians trapped in active fighting.”
Turmoil since autocrat Bashir’s ouster
The Sudanese military has long targeted the palace and its grounds, shelling and firing on the compound. Sudan has faced years of chaos and has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in the western Darfur region with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the UN accuse the RSF and allied Arab militias of again attacking ethnic African groups in this war.
A short-lived transition to democracy after Bashir’s ouster was derailed when Burhan and Dagalo led a military coup in 2021. The RSF and Sudan’s military then began fighting each other in 2023.
Since the war began, both the Sudanese military and the RSF have faced allegations of human rights abuses.
Before U.S. President Joe Biden left office, the State Department declared the RSF are committing genocide. The military and the RSF have denied committing abuses.
