Sudan's army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan on Wednesday declared Khartoum "free" of the Rapid Support Forces, after his troops and allied volunteers regained control of the capital's international airport on a day of major battlefield gains against the paramilitary group.
"Khartoum is now free. That's it. Khartoum is free," Gen Al Burhan, surrounded by cheering soldiers raising their rifles, said in a video shared online. The footage appeared to show him visiting the presidential palace in the capital.
Troops and volunteers reclaimed the Nile-side palace last weekend, after the RSF had held it since the early days of the war in April 2023.
Another video clip released by the military showed a smiling Gen Al Burhan sitting inside a helicopter flying low over the airport, with the tarmac visible through one of the aircraft's windows. A military statement said the helicopter landed at the airport, where he visited the troops that seized it. He later visited the armed forces' headquarters in Khartoum, it said.
The appearance of Gen Al Burhan at the palace and his visit to the airport are milestone moments for the general who was run out of the capital more than a year ago, after he had spent months hiding in the nearby headquarters of the armed forces as RSF fighters besieged it.
The RSF remains in control of most of the vast Darfur region, where only one major city, El Fasher, is still held by the army and allies from the area. The RSF also controls parts of Kordofan, in south-western Sudan, where it has joined forces with a powerful rebel group.
Army spokesman Brig Gen Nabil Ali said on Wednesday troops and volunteers had also taken over the strategic Jebel Auliya area in southern Khartoum. It is home to a key hydroelectric dam on the White Nile and several major military bases, including one hosting thousands of RSF fighters, and a large police base.
The Jebel Auliya area was “their last stronghold in Khartoum”, Brig Gen Ali said. “What remains of the presence of these thugs are mere pockets here and there that will be eliminated soon,” he added in a statement issued hours before Gen Al Burhan spoke at the palace.
Gen Abdel Raman Al Bilawy, the armed forces' head of operations in Khartoum, confirmed in a statement that the army has retaken the airport and the military's air force headquarters, which is on the military side of the airport. “We will soon announce the army’s control of the entire capital.”
The Khartoum airport, the only one in the capital that receives international flights, has been closed since the start of the war, when it was seized by the RSF. Retaking it had posed a serious challenge to the army because the RSF controlled residential areas around it, with snipers deployed on rooftops.
Witnesses said RSF fighters appeared in most cases to have pulled out from Khartoum districts on Wednesday, including those near the airport, with little or no resistance.
In Jebel Auliya, aerial footage shared online showed hundreds of RSF fighters and their vehicles heading west along the road over the dam.
There have been conflicting reports on whether the fleeing fighters were heading to the Darfur region, the paramilitary's birthplace and stronghold, or trying to join RSF contingents in Omdurman, greater Khartoum. It was not immediately clear either why the army was not targeting the withdrawing fighters and their hardware.
Video posted on X by the Sudan News outlet purports to show RSF fighters fleeing across the White Nile on the road over the Jebel Auliya Dam and roads leading to it.
"The Rapid Support Forces' command structure in the capital has melted down," said Osman Al Mirghany, a Sudanese analyst. "This was by no means an orderly withdrawal. In some cases, the army regained control of Khartoum areas without firing a single shot.
"Whatever the case, the army must now build up on the current momentum and take back Darfur and Kordofan."
Video posted online showed troops and volunteer fighters, some in civilian clothes, celebrating outside buildings in the capital that were charred or destroyed, and streets strewn with debris.
"At last we will have Eid [Al Fitr] without the Janjaweed," said the narrator of one video, referring to the RSF by the name of its forerunner, a notorious militia accused of war crimes in Darfur in the 2000s.
The army's victories in the capital come less than three weeks before the second anniversary of the start of the war on April 15, 2023. Simmering tension between Gen Al Burhan and former ally RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo erupted into a conflict that has engulfed most of the vast nation of 50 million people.
The war has left tens of thousands dead, displaced more than 12 million and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with about half the population facing acute hunger, including many on the brink of famine.
Military sources in Khartoum told The National that RSF fighters began to retreat from their positions in and around the airport and headed to Jebel Auliya on Tuesday, as the army surrounded it from the north, south and east.
In a video released on Wednesday morning, former RSF commander Abu Aqla Kikal, who defected to the armed forces in October, said the war would end during Ramadan as the army had promised.
The army and the allied volunteers have been focusing their effort on central Sudan and the capital for months, throwing the RSF out of the agriculture-rich Al Jazira state and regaining most of Khartoum's sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman.
They made their most significant gains in Khartoum at the weekend, when they reclaimed several key sites, including the symbolically significant presidential palace, government ministries, the central bank and the Sudan museum, all in the heart of the city.
The gains in the capital reversed the embarrassing setbacks suffered by the army in the early days of the war and later when its leadership was run out of Khartoum and set up base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
Of particular benefit to the RSF in the capital was its capture or siege of military industrial facilities and bases, which enabled it to isolate the army from its resources.
In a Facebook post, Culture and Information Minister Khaled Al Issa called on RSF leaders to surrender. "Be satisfied with these losses, and do not drown in more sins that have led young people to death without benefit or a convincing reason,” he wrote.
Addressing RSF fighters, he said their leaders “deceived you and put you in the midst of a historic holocaust, while they enjoy safety far from the horrors of war”.
Al Shafie Ahmed contributed to this report from Kampala, Uganda
