Sudan Clashes Intensify As Army Reinforcements Arrive and Paramilitaries Hold the Palace

Fierce fighting continues in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Government army troops from the south have now joined forces already stationed near the presidential palace, which remains under the control of paramilitary forces.

The army is trying to regain control of Khartoum.

Military spokesman General Nabil Abdullah said on Monday that the Armoured Corps coming from the south had joined the General Command forces already in central Khartoum, after seizing a hospital held until now by paramilitaries, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023.

In a video address shared on Telegram published on Saturday, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti, vowed his troops “will not leave the Republican Palace”.

He threatened to expand the war fronts to Blue Nile State and eastern Sudan, towards Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, where the government relocated the country’s administrative capital. He also promised his troops victory.

Intense fighting

Over the weekend, shelling by Sudan’s paramilitary RSF killed six civilians including two children in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, a doctor said on Monday, as the army inched closer to the capital’s presidential palace.

A Sunday attack wounded 36 civilians, half of whom were children, according to a doctor at Al-Nao hospital, according to a doctor, speaking to press agencies on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The bombardment struck residential areas in northern Omdurman, hitting civilians inside their homes and children playing on a football field, the Khartoum regional government’s media office said.

The war between the RSF and the army began in April 2023, and has since escalated, with army forces seeking to reclaim territory lost to the RSF early in the conflict in the capital Khartoum and beyond.

The army says its units are now positioned less than a kilometre from the presidential palace, which the RSF seized at the outset of the war.

The conflict has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of people nationwide, uprooted more than 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

Sudan war is world’s ‘worst humanitarian crisis’, the African Union says

In Khartoum alone, at least 3.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to the violence, according to the United Nations.

Further southwest, in the North Kordofan state capital of El-Obeid – roughly 400 kilometres from Khartoum – two civilians were killed and 15 others wounded after RSF forces shelled residential neighbourhoods on Monday morning, a medical source at the city’s main hospital told AFP.

Broken in two

In almost two years, the war has torn Sudan in two, with the RSF in control of nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south, while the army holds the country’s north and east.

The army has made gains in central Sudan and Khartoum in recent months, and appears to be on the verge of reclaiming the entire capital.

In February, the RSF also formed the Founding Alliance for Sudan during a meeting in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, a coalition built around General Hemedti, and aims to establish a parallel government to the one in Port Sudan, led by the Sudanese army.

UN condemns RSF’s parallel government in Sudan as ‘hellscape’ emerges

Last month, the military broke through a nearly two-year RSF siege of the southern city of El-Obeid, a key crossroads linking Khartoum to the vast Darfur region, which is under near-total RSF control.

Across North Kordofan, more than 200,000 people are currently displaced, while nearly a million are facing acute food insecurity, according to UN figures.

Clashes have also erupted in Blue Nile state, which borders South Sudan and Ethiopia, and where the RSF claimed Sunday to have destroyed military vehicles and taken prisoners from the army and allied forces.

By RFI website.