Omdurman, Mar. 26, (dpa/GNA) – The Sudanese government said on Wednesday that its forces had taken control of the capital Khartoum almost two years after the start of the ongoing civil war.

“Khartoum is free. It’s over,” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army chief and de facto leader of Sudan, said in the recently liberated presidential palace.

Al-Burhan’s claim of control over the entire capital could not be independently verified. A spokesman for the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) earlier acknowledged that the RSF had lost control of the palace, the airport and other parts of Khartoum.

The army under al-Burhan has been retaking control of the city gradually, with hundreds of RSF fighters fleeing.

The RSF continues to hold large parts in the west of the country. On Monday, dozens of civilians were killed in an air attack on an RSF-controlled town in North Darfur. Satellite images confirmed reports from human rights groups that the army had bombed a market, the New York Times reported.

After rebelling against al-Burhan in April 2023, the RSF under the leadership of former vice president Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti, seized large areas of Sudan, including the centre of Khartoum.

RSF fighters have been accused of war crimes on a large scale. Al-Burhan’s government retreated to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

The RSF is attempting to set up a rival government in the areas it controls. According to observers and diplomats, it is receiving support from the United Arab Emirates via Chad, Sudan’s neighbour to the west. Both countries deny this.

The civil war has caused the world’s largest humanitarian disaster in the view of the United Nations, which puts the number of displaced persons at 12.9 million among an estimate population of 46 million.

Estimates of the deaths caused range from 60,000 to 150,000, as a result of the fighting and of starvation and disease.

GNA

PDC