Sudan Army Breaks Paramilitary Siege on Key Base

Sudanese army soldiers patrol an area in Khartoum North on November 3, 2024. Amaury Falt-Brown / AFP/File
Sudanese army soldiers patrol an area in Khartoum North on November 3, 2024. Amaury Falt-Brown / AFP/File
TT

Sudan Army Breaks Paramilitary Siege on Key Base

Sudanese army soldiers patrol an area in Khartoum North on November 3, 2024. Amaury Falt-Brown / AFP/File
Sudanese army soldiers patrol an area in Khartoum North on November 3, 2024. Amaury Falt-Brown / AFP/File

The Sudanese army broke a paramilitary siege on one of its key Khartoum-area bases on Friday, paving the way to also freeing the besieged military headquarters, a military source said.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had since the outbreak of the war with Sudan's army in April 2023 encircled both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command of the Armed Forces, its headquarters just south across the Blue Nile river.

"Our forces were able to lift the siege on the Signal Corps," the source in the Sudanese army told AFP.

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

The RSF could not be immediately reached for comment.

"This victory opens the way to link our forces in Bahri (Khartoum North) with our forces in the General Command," the military source said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A military source had previously told AFP the army was advancing closer to Khartoum North following days of military operations aimed at dislodging the RSF from fortified positions in the city.

This comes around two weeks after the army reclaimed Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.

The army and the RSF had seemed to be in a stalemate since the military nearly a year ago seized control of Omdurman -- Khartoum's twin city on the west bank of the Nile.

RSF has controlled Khartoum North on the east bank.

They have regularly exchanged artillery fire across the river, with civilians reporting bombs and shrapnel often hitting homes.

The military source said Friday's advance "will secure Omdurman from the artillery shelling launched from Bahri".

Across the northeast African country, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and uprooted more than 12 million people in what the United Nations calls the world's largest internal displacement crisis.

Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.

Before leaving office on Monday, the administration of United States president Joe Biden sanctioned Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals and using food deprivation as a weapon of war.

That designation came about one week after Washington sanctioned RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo and said his forces had "committed genocide."



Israeli Ex-General Says War Did Not End Well for His Country

People walk along Gaza's coastal al-Rashid Street to cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into the north on January 27, 2025. (AFP)
People walk along Gaza's coastal al-Rashid Street to cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into the north on January 27, 2025. (AFP)
TT

Israeli Ex-General Says War Did Not End Well for His Country

People walk along Gaza's coastal al-Rashid Street to cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into the north on January 27, 2025. (AFP)
People walk along Gaza's coastal al-Rashid Street to cross the Netzarim corridor from the southern Gaza Strip into the north on January 27, 2025. (AFP)

A former Israeli general who had proposed a surrender-or-starve strategy for northern Gaza says “the war has ended very badly” for Israel.

Giora Eiland spoke to Israeli Army Radio on Monday as tens of thousands of Palestinians returned to the heavily destroyed north in accordance with a ceasefire reached with Hamas.

Eiland said that by opening the Netzarim corridor, an Israeli military zone bisecting the territory, Israel had lost leverage over Hamas and would not be able to restore it, even if it resumes the war. “We are at the mercy of Hamas,” he said.

Eiland was the main author of the so-called Generals’ Plan, which called for giving civilians in the northern third of Gaza a week to evacuate. The whole area would then be declared a closed military zone, sealed off from humanitarian aid, and anyone remaining would be considered a combatant.

Last fall, the plan was presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has not said whether it adopted parts of it. The Israeli military has denied carrying out the plan.

Around the time it was publicized, in October, Israel launched a major operation in northern Gaza and sealed it off, allowing in hardly any aid. Tens of thousands of people were forced out, and the operation caused heavy destruction.

Eiland said Israel had failed to achieve its stated goals, including destroying Hamas, removing it from power, restoring a sense of safety to Israeli border communities or safely returning dozens of hostages abducted in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war.

He said that Hamas, by contrast, “has largely achieved everything it wanted.”