Sudan's army consolidates grip on capital after seizing more key sites from RSF

Military and allied forces wrests back control of the central bank, National Museum and an island in the Nile

Sudanese troops and allied fighters celebrate after retaking control of the presidential palace in Khartoum. AP

Sudan's army and allied militias have regained control of the country's central bank headquarters and other key sites in the capital from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, witnesses said on Saturday. It comes a day after the army retook the presidential palace.

Troops also drove the RSF out the National Museum, the Chinese-built Friendship Hall – the capital's largest conference complex, the National Intelligence Service's headquarters, the main campus of Sudan University and the Corinthia Hotel, a Khartoum landmark, witnesses said. The army also retook Tuti Island, a residential area on the Blue Nile.

The recent gains reverse some of the losses the army suffered in the days after the war began on April 15, 2023, when the RSF seized control of the presidential palace, most of the armed forces' headquarters, the city's international airport and key military bases and industrial complexes.

The RSF, whose forerunner is a notorious militia from Darfur called the Janjaweed, still controls the airport and about dozen residential districts in Khartoum and its sister city of Omdurman which, together with Bahri, make up the greater capital region.

Sudanese army troops inside the presidential palace in Khartoum on Friday. AFP

Videos widely shared online on Saturday purported to show soldiers and allied volunteers celebrating their victories at some of the recaptured sites. Most were in Al Muqran area near the city centre, at the point where the Blue and White Niles meet before they flow through northern Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean.

Speaking late on Friday, army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan vowed to press on with the offensive until the RSF was defeated.

“We are all determined to finish off this mutiny and eliminate those criminals and murderers,” he told mourners at the funeral of an army officer killed on Friday when an RSF drone hit the presidential palace.

He ruled out any negotiations to end the war, saying: “We have had thousands of martyrs and we are not about to let their blood be wasted. We cannot let them die and then we sit with those people [the RSF] and say let bygones be bygones.”

The oval-shaped Corinthia Hotel stands out in the Khartoum skyline along the Blue Nile. AFP

Saudi Arabia and the US brokered several ceasefires shortly after the war broke out. But none of them halted the fighting, which is believed to have killed tens of thousands, displaced more than 12 million and left more than half of Sudan's 50 million people facing acute hunger. Eight million are believed to be on the brink of famine.

The war broke out after months of tension between Gen Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo, his one-time ally, over control of Sudan.

With the army and its allies now poised to regain full control of the capital, attention will slowly shift to Darfur in the west and Kordofan to the south-west – vast, arid regions controlled by the RSF. Both the RSF and the army have local allies there.

“The war may have entered the countdown stage now, but it's not over yet,” said Sudanese military analyst Salah Mansour, a retired brigadier general. “You still have to clean up Khartoum and then move on to Darfur and Kordofan. But any further advances by the army will make the end of the war just a matter of time.

“The RSF has been significantly weakened but can still prolong the war with street warfare tactics.”