Sudan’s army is edging closer to recapturing the country’s capital Khartoum in what allies of its leader Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said would be their most significant victory in two years of brutal civil war.
The army claimed to have recaptured nearly all of Khartoum North, across the Blue Nile river from the city centre, during intense fighting with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.
A former military officer in touch with units on the ground said Sudanese Armed Forces were now within 2km of the presidential palace, with RSF resistance concentrated in the partially destroyed city centre in the south. The army claims to have captured all but a small part of Kafouri, the once-affluent northern part of the city where the RSF had its stronghold.
The army’s recent battlefield gains around Khartoum build on its capture last month of the city of Wad Madani, a victory that broke what had been a sustained stalemate in the fighting.
Allies of Gen Burhan, the de facto president, said the tide of the war had turned as a result of stretched supply lines and declining morale among RSF fighters, the army’s air superiority and the re-emergence of allied Islamist militias that have been involved in recent fighting.
The recapture of Khartoum would be a huge victory for the SAF but would leave the country split between army-controlled areas of the east and the west, including Darfur, most of which is controlled by the RSF.
But some experts fear the battle for Khartoum could yet become more protracted, with guerrilla fighting street by street.
“It’s a strategic decision that the SAF still has to make about whether to press through a bloodier but more lasting solution, versus enabling the RSF and allies to exit Khartoum with limited damage and fighting,” said Jonas Horner, a Sudan expert and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The war, which has displaced more than 10 million people, claimed tens of thousands of lives and is in danger of provoking a famine, erupted in the centre of the capital in April 2023.
The RSF, which has allegedly drawn support from the UAE, eventually drove the army out altogether. The UAE says it has remained neutral in the war.
The US has imposed sanctions on both Gen Burhan and Hemeti for atrocities during the conflict and accused the RSF of committing genocide.
The two forces had ousted the civilians with whom they had shared power after the 2019 popular uprising that ended former autocrat Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year rule.
Gen Burhan withdrew to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, and the army suffered defeat after defeat, ceding much of the west and centre of Sudan to the RSF before its recent gains.
Gen Burhan told allied politicians on Saturday that he would set up a new technocratic government once Khartoum was taken.
“We can call it a caretaker government, a wartime government, it’s a government that will help us complete what remains of our military objectives, which is freeing Sudan from these rebels,” he said at a meeting in Port Sudan.
It was not immediately clear whether such a government would include politicians from the civilian opposition or who would select its members.
A source close to the military government in Port Sudan said the first objective should the army consolidate control of the capital and east would be to take the battle to the RSF in Darfur.
Former Islamist and other former rebel groups now allied to the SAF in the city of El Fasher have been resisting a sustained siege for months.
The RSF had its origins in the Janjaweed Arab militias that ravaged Darfur in the early 2000s and drove many black Sudanese from their land.
The source in Port Sudan believed it could be a month before the army had fully cleared Khartoum of RSF fighters but said the momentum in the battle had decisively changed.
RSF officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hemeti, in a video address at the end of last month, acknowledged the recent setbacks but urged his fighters to hold on to Khartoum. − Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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