Sudan's army has said it has recaptured Khartoum’s strategic Al Rawad residential area, a day after seizing the city of Wad Medani from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Al Rawad complex is a strategic location 2km from the Nile and 5km from Khartoum airport. It had been used by the RSF as a base for snipers and to launch attacks on the Armoured Corps, the army said on Sunday in a Facebook post.
Since September, the army has been conducting major military operations in the capital, regaining large parts of various districts including Bahri, Al Muqran and neighbourhoods in the nearby city of Omdurman. The advances are a significant victory for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in its war with the RSF, which has been raging since April 2023 and has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the world’s largest displacement crisis.
The army’s latest gains have boosted the morale of its soldiers and many ordinary Sudanese, with televised footage showing troops in Al Rawad raising their rifles to the sky in celebration. Civilians have taken to the streets in several Sudanese provinces, including Port Sudan, El Gezirah, Sinnar, River Nile province and Khartoum to celebrate the army’s recent capture of the strategic city of Wad Medani, an essential commercial hub that had been under RSF control since December 2023.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, admitted in a speech that the paramilitary had been defeated in Wad Medani, but vowed to bolster its ranks and return to fight. He said the RSF had “lost a battle but not the war”.
"We will reclaim it. People just need to regroup, reorganise and reassess themselves," he said. He accused Iran, which he says shares an Islamist vision with the de facto Sudanese government, of supplying the army with drones that were instrumental in the recapture of Wad Medani. The paramilitary leader vowed to "figure out a solution for those drones soon”.
General Dagalo and several of his family members were recently banned from entering the United States in a new round of sanctions that accused the RSF of committing genocide in Sudan.
The army’s recapture of Wad Medani is a significant blow to the RSF as the city's location allows easier access to other parts of the country, including Sennar, Blue Nile, and White Nile states. Euphoria over the army's gains was palpable during a long speech delivered by Malik Agar Eyre, vice president of Sudan’s de facto government – the SAF-dominated Transitional Sovereignty Council – during which he laid out the council’s plan for a postwar Sudan.
Mr Eyre made a heartfelt plea to displaced Sudanese, urging them to return to villages and homes retaken by the army, as this would cement its hold on the areas. Drawing on his own experience of living in displacement camps, Mr Eyre assured them that basic services such as water, electricity and health care would be restored upon their return.
He urged Islamist factions in Sudan to accept that the country, with its distinctive ethnic, cultural and religious plurality, cannot be built on narrow, unilateral projects that only benefit one ethnic or religious group. He also warned of attempts by some external organisations to divide Sudan under the pretext of humanitarian services or civilian protection.
Mr Eyre said these groups are exploiting a famine to gain entry and support the RSF with the delivery of arms and other supplies. “The government will not compromise on Sudan's sovereignty or accept any initiative that endangers its national security,” he said.
Concerns that foreign powers are meddling in Sudan have been underscored by its de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, who accused "colonial powers" of fuelling conflicts in Africa during a meeting with Guinea-Bissau's President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on Sunday. General Al Burhan has been on a tour of the continent since Saturday that started with Mali and is expected to include stops in Sierra Leone and Senegal.
"Africa is now experiencing an awakening, enabling it to resist foreign interference," he said. He commended the efforts of some African nations that he said had risen up against both old and new forms of colonialism.
