Sudanese Army Says Capital’s Center Recaptured From Militia

(Bloomberg) -- Sudan’s army recaptured central Khartoum including the international airport, an official said, edging closer to routing the Rapid Support Forces from the capital in what would be a turning point in the two-year civil war.

“The game is over in Khartoum city,” Major-General Zafir Omer said Wednesday by text message.

Sudan’s army, which has been battling the RSF paramilitary group for control of the North African nation since April 2023, has recaptured swathes of the country’s center and south in recent months. It seized back the presidential palace in Khartoum last week and is pressing forward to push the militia from the capital.

Videos online showed streams of RSF fighters fleeing across a bridge linked to the Jebel Awlia Dam south of Khartoum, while in other parts of the city civilians celebrated the army’s advance in the streets.

The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had held the airport and city center since the opening days of a conflict in which as many as 150,000 people may have died. The group still controls large parts of the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

Though the army appeared set to regain control of the capital city and its surrounding conglomerations, battles with the RSF continued to rage in the vast Darfur region.

The Centre for Information Resilience, a London-based non-profit group, verified footage posted online of a deadly air strike by the Sudanese Armed Forces on Monday night that hit a crowded market in North Darfur.

At least 300 people were killed in the village of Tora, according to Adam Rigal, spokesperson for the Coordinating Committee for Refugees and Displaced People, an activist group documenting atrocities in Sudan. Bloomberg couldn’t independently verify the figure.

The Emergency Lawyers human rights group said in a statement the strike targeted a “densely populated” area with civilians and constituted a “systematic war crime.”

(Updates with details throughout, including air strikes in Darfur from seventh paragraph.)

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