Sudan's army has retaken the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum, marking a significant gain for the military after two years of civil war.
Soldiers were seen rejoicing in the palace grounds on Friday and a Sudanese military officer announced on social media that troops were inside the compound.
The site, known officially as the Republican Palace, is surrounded by government ministries and located in central Khartoum along the Nile River.
It served as the main office of the government until Sudan's civil war erupted in April 2023.
After president Omar al-Bashir's 2019 deposition in a military coup, the palace came under Sudanese Armed Forces's (SAF) control before being seized by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The complex became the seat of power during the British colonisation of the nation and also saw some of the first flags of independent Sudan raised in 1956.
Its recapture has symbolic weight and comes as another advance for the army against its rival RSF in recent months, but it does not necessarily signify that a suspension of fighting is any closer.
Strategic turn
The palace appeared to be in ruins on Friday, with broken tiles, walls pockmarked by rifle rounds, and dead bodies strewn around the compound.
Brigadier General Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, said its troops were holding the palace, surrounding ministry buildings and the Arab Market to the south of the complex.
Sporadic gunfire could be heard throughout Khartoum though it was not clear whether it involved fighting or was celebratory.
Suleiman Sandal, a politician associated with the RSF, acknowledged the military had taken the palace and called it part of "the ups and downs" of history but the RSF later issued a statement saying its forces were still in the area and fighting.
While the army's victory in Khartoum means that most RSF fighters will be expelled from the city, the group still holds much of western Sudan, particularly most of the Darfur region.
Khartoum International Airport, only about 2.5 kilometres south-east of the palace, has also remained under RSF control since the start of the war.
Friday's events in the capital likely just move the war into a new chapter, creating a de facto partition of Sudan into military- and RSF-run zones.
They could also cause cracks in the military's coalition, which includes factions such as the Darfur rebels and Islamist brigades, which are historic rivals united only by the goal of fighting the RSF.
Prospect of partition
Sudan faces what is considered the worst displacement crisis and largest humanitarian crisis in the world, forcing 14 million residents from their homes, by some estimates.
There is no definitive death toll since the onset of war in 2023, with estimates varying from 28,700 to 150,000 people killed.
The nation of 50 million had already been wracked by more than two decades of violence and economic and political instability before the current conflict between the SAF and RSF began.
Head of UNICEF Catherine Russell said on Thursday that about 30 million Sudanese would be in need of aid this year, more than half of them children.
Christopher Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, who was in Khartoum province six weeks ago, told the UN Security Council that both sides in the conflict were compounding the suffering of civilians.
He said government forces had indiscriminately bombed populated areas, and RSF and allied militias had engaged in systematic sexual violence, abductions, mass killings, the looting of humanitarian aid and occupation of medical facilities.
RSF forces under General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have been accused of numerous atrocities, including genocide by the US, which they deny. The military has also been accused of abuses and denies that.
In February the RSF and its allies signed a charter in Kenya's capital Nairobi establishing a "parallel government". The 16-page charter calls for "a secular, democratic and decentralized state", maintaining what it called Sudan's "voluntary integrity of its territory and peoples" — a nod to Sudan's many communities demanding autonomy from Khartoum.
The army led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan has also spoken of setting up a transitional government, raising the potential for two rival administrations jockeying for support as their forces battle, effectively entrenching Sudan's partition.
Generals Dagalo and Burhan had been allies who were meant to have overseen Sudan's democratic transition after the uprising against former president Omar al-Bashir, but instead worked together to thwart a return to civilian rule.
Meanwhile Mr Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in the western Darfur region with the Janjaweed militia, a precursor to the RSF.
ABC/AP
