Sudan’s Army Says It Seized Key Buildings in Khartoum after Retaking the Republican Palace

Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
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Sudan’s Army Says It Seized Key Buildings in Khartoum after Retaking the Republican Palace

Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)

Sudan ’s military on Saturday consolidated its grip on the capital, retaking more key government buildings a day after it gained control of the Republican Palace from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, said troops expelled the RSF from the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service and Corinthia Hotel in central Khartoum.

The army also retook the headquarters of the Central Bank of Sudan and other government and educational buildings in the area, Abdullah said. Hundreds of RSF fighters were killed while trying to flee the capital city, he said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The army's gain came as a Sudanese pro-democracy activist group said RSF fighters had killed at least 45 people in a city in the western region of Darfur.

On Friday, the military retook the Republican Palace, the prewar seat of the government, in a major symbolic victory for the Sudanese military in its nearly two years of war against the RSF.

A drone attack on the palace Friday believed to have been launched by the RSF killed two journalists and a driver with Sudanese state television, according to the ministry of information. Lt. Col. Hassan Ibrahim, from the military’s media office, was also killed in the attack, the military said.

Volker Perthes, former UN envoy for Sudan, the latest military advances will force the RSF to withdraw to its stronghold in the western region of Darfur.

“The army has gained an important and significant victory in Khartoum militarily and politically,” Perthes told The Associated Press, adding that the military will soon clear the capital and its surrounding areas from the RSF.

But the advances don’t mean the end of the war as the RSF holds territory in the western Darfur region and elsewhere. Perthes argued that the war will likely turn into an insurgency between the Darfur-based RSF and the military-led government in the capital.

“The RSF will be largely restricted to Darfur ... We will return to the early 2000s,” he said, in reference to the conflict between rebel groups and the Khartoum government, then led by former President Omar al-Bashir.

At the start of the war in April 2023, the RSF took over multiple government and military buildings in the capital including the Republican Palace, the headquarters of the state television and the besieged military’s headquarters, known as the General Command. It also occupied people’s houses and turned them into bases for their attacks against troops.

In recent months, the military took the lead in the fighting. It reclaimed much of Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North, along with other cities elsewhere in the country. In late January, troops lifted the RSF siege on the General Command, paving the way to retake the palace less than two months later.

The military is now likely to try to retake the Khartoum International Airport, only some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) southeast of the palace, which has been held by the RSF since the start of the war. Videos posted on social media Saturday purportedly showed soldiers on a road leading to the airport.

The RSF was accused on Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 45 people in the Darfur city of al-Maliha.

The pro-democracy Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war, said the RSF entered the city on Thursday and carried out attacks. The dead included at least a dozen women, according to a partial casualty list published by the group.

Al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur near the borders with Chad and Libya, is around 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the city of el-Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by besieging RSF.

The war, which has wrecked the capital and other urban cities, has claimed the lives of more than 28,000 people, forced millions more to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.

The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.



RSF Shelling On Camp Kills 8 in Sudan's Darfur, Say Rescuers

A view of a street in the city of Omdurman damaged in the year-long civil war in Sudan, April 7, 2024. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
A view of a street in the city of Omdurman damaged in the year-long civil war in Sudan, April 7, 2024. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
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RSF Shelling On Camp Kills 8 in Sudan's Darfur, Say Rescuers

A view of a street in the city of Omdurman damaged in the year-long civil war in Sudan, April 7, 2024. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
A view of a street in the city of Omdurman damaged in the year-long civil war in Sudan, April 7, 2024. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shelled a displacement camp in Sudan's Darfur region on Thursday, killing eight civilians and injuring others, a local rescue group said.

The bombardment hit Abu Shouk camp, which hosts tens of thousands of displaced people on the outskirts of El Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur.

El-Fasher remains the last major stronghold in Sudan's western Darfur region not under the control of the RSF, who have been at war with the regular army since April 2023, AFP reported.

"The Abu Shouk camp witnessed heavy artillery bombardment by the RSF... killing eight people," the camp's Emergency Response Room said in a statement.

In recent weeks, El-Fasher, which has been under RSF siege since last year, has been locked in intense fighting between warring sides in a region also gripped by famine.

Thursday's offensive comes just days after a series of attacks by the RSF targeted another battleground region of Sudan.

More than 450 people, including 35 children, were killed in several villages of North Kordofan, southwest of the capital Khartoum, according to a statement released this week by the UN's children agency.

"No child should ever experience such horrors," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. "Violence against children is unconscionable and must end now."

On Sunday, the RSF claimed to have killed more than 470 army personnel near the town of El-Obeid, also in North Kordofan, in a statement posted to its Telegram channel.

Independent verification of casualties in Sudan remains difficult due to restricted access to its conflict zones.

Now in its third year, the conflict has killed tens of thousands and forced millions to flee, creating what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement crisis.

In December last year, famine was officially declared in three displacement camps near El-Fasher, namely Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam, according to the UN.

Since the Sudanese army regained control of the capital Khartoum in March, the RSF has shifted its operations westward, focusing on Darfur and Kordofan in a bid to consolidate territorial gains.

In April, RSF fighters seized the Zamzam displacement camp, located near Abu Shouk.

The assault forced nearly 400,000 people to flee, according to UN figures, effectively emptying one of the country's largest camps for the displaced.

Sudanese analyst Mohaned el-Nour told AFP the RSF aims to redefine its role in the conflict.

"Their goal is no longer to be seen as a militia, but as an alternative government in western Sudan, undermining the legitimacy of the authorities in Port Sudan."

He added that the recent surge in violence in North Kordofan was likely intended to divert the army's attention from El Fasher, where the military is trying "at all costs" to maintain.