Sudan Army Says Enters Key RSF-Held Al-Jazira State Capital

Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
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Sudan Army Says Enters Key RSF-Held Al-Jazira State Capital

Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)

The Sudanese military and allied armed groups launched an offensive Saturday on key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, entering the city after more than a year of paramilitary control, the army said.

In a statement, the armed forces "congratulated" the Sudanese people on "our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning".

Sudan's army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries have been at war since April 2023, leading to what the UN calls the world's worst displacement crisis and declarations of famine in parts of the northeast African country.

A video the army shared on social media showed fighters claiming to be inside Wad Madani, after an army source told AFP they had "stormed the city's eastern entrance".

The footage appeared to be shot on the western side of Hantoub Bridge in northern Wad Madani, which has been under RSF control since December 2023.

The office of army-allied government spokesman and Information and Culture Minister Khalid al-Aiser said the army had "liberated" the city.

Sudan's foreign ministry hailed "the great victory achieved today", saying the army had regained Wad Madani.

The army, meanwhile, said its forces were "currently working on clearing the remnants of the rebels inside the city".

With a months-long communications blackout in place, AFP was not able to independently verify the situation on the ground.

Wad Madani is a strategic crossroads of key supply highways linking several states, and is the nearest major town to the capital Khartoum.

A victory in Al-Jazira would be the army's biggest breakthrough since it seized control of the capital's twin city of Omdurman nearly a year ago.

"The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city's streets," one eyewitness told AFP from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

- Celebrations -

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

But the paramilitaries specifically have been notorious for summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

The United States on Tuesday said the RSF had "committed genocide" and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed the Wad Madani advance as an end to "the tyranny" of the RSF.

Eyewitnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens taking to the streets in celebration.

Chants of "one army, one people" broke out in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Wad Madani, an eyewitness told AFP, requesting anonymity for their safety.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 12 million people, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.

In the early months of the war, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira, before a lightning RSF offensive displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the UN.

Most have been repeatedly displaced since, as the feared paramilitaries moved further and further south.

"We're going back!" crowds in the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea shouted in the street on Saturday after the army's announcements.

The RSF still holds most of the rest of the central agricultural state, as well as nearly all of Sudan's western Darfur region and swathes of the country's south.

The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital.



Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
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Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

An Israeli soldier who was found to have struck Palestinian detainees while they were restrained and blindfolded has been sentenced to seven months in jail by an Israeli military court.
The Israeli military on Thursday announced the court had accepted a plea agreement with the soldier, a reservist who it said admitted to having "severely abused" Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman military detention centre near the border with the Gaza Strip.
"The defendant was convicted of several incidents in which he struck detainees with his fists and his weapon while they were bound and blindfolded," the military said. It did not name the soldier or detail the charges he was convicted of, Reuters reported.
The military statement did not identify where the Palestinian detainees were from, why they had been detained or whether they had since been charged or convicted of crimes or released from detention.
In addition to seven months imprisonment, the court handed the soldier a suspended sentence and demoted him to the rank of private. The military said the soldier had served as a security guard at the detention center but did not say what rank he had held. Israeli media reported the soldier's jail sentence included time that he had already spent in detention.
The military court found that other masked soldiers had participated in the abuse but that their identities had not been determined, the military said, without saying how many.
The convicted soldier had beaten the detainees in front of other soldiers, some of whom had told him to stop, the military said, adding that a recording of the abuse had been found on the mobile phone of the convicted soldier.
The military has been investigating allegations that soldiers had abused Palestinians from Gaza held in military detention since the start of the war in October 2023. The military on Thursday did not say whether investigations were still ongoing or if any other soldiers had been charged.
In July last year, right-wing Israeli protesters broke into Sde Teiman detention facility and another Israeli military compound after investigators arrived to question soldiers about suspected abuse.