The Sudanese army said it had wrested back full control of Khartoum, nearly two years after losing the capital to rival paramilitaries, capping a weeklong blitz that saw it recapture the presidential palace, the airport and other strategic sites.
"Our forces today have... forcibly cleansed the last pockets of the remnants of the Daglo terrorist militia in Khartoum locality," army spokesman Nabil Abdullah said in a statement late Thursday, using the government's term for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, which have been battling the military since April 2023.
Standing inside the newly reclaimed presidential palace, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had on Wednesday declared the capital "free" from the RSF.
The army, after suffering a string of defeats for a year and a half, launched a counteroffensive that steadily pushed through central Sudan toward the capital.
Since its forces stormed the presidential palace last week, witnesses and activists have reported RSF fighters retreating across Khartoum.
An army source told AFP on Wednesday that RSF troops were fleeing across the Jebel Awliya bridge, their last escape route from the greater Khartoum area.
The RSF, however, vowed there would be "no retreat and no surrender", saying its forces had only repositioned.
"We will deliver crushing defeats to the enemy on all fronts," it said in a statement, its first direct comment since the army's offensive in Khartoum this week.
Blue Nile battle
Just hours after Burhan walked back into the presidential palace for the first time in two years, the RSF announced a "military alliance" with a rebel group controlling large swaths of South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile near the Ethiopian border.
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, had clashed with both sides before signing a political charter with the RSF last month to establish a rival government.
On Thursday evening, witnesses in the Blue Nile state capital Damazin reported that both its airport and the nearby Roseires Dam came under drone attack by the paramilitaries and their allies for the first time in the war.
The army's 4th Infantry Division in Damazin said in a statement on Friday that its air defenses intercepted the drones.
The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced more than 12 million and created the "biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded", according to the International Rescue Committee.
It has also split Africa's third-largest country in two, with the army holding the north and east, and the RSF controlling parts of the south and nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, which borders Chad.
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