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.



Drone Strike Targets Port Sudan Naval Base 

A view shows a large plume of smoke and fire rising from fuel depot in Port Sudan, Sudan, May 6, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows a large plume of smoke and fire rising from fuel depot in Port Sudan, Sudan, May 6, 2025. (Reuters)
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Drone Strike Targets Port Sudan Naval Base 

A view shows a large plume of smoke and fire rising from fuel depot in Port Sudan, Sudan, May 6, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows a large plume of smoke and fire rising from fuel depot in Port Sudan, Sudan, May 6, 2025. (Reuters)

A drone strike targeted Sudan's biggest naval base on Wednesday, an army source told AFP, marking the fourth straight day the seat of the army-backed government has come under attack.

It comes a day after the government severed ties with the United Arab Emirates, which it accuses of supplying rival paramilitaries with weapons used to attack the army.

Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast had been a safe haven, hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people and United Nations offices, until Sunday when drone strikes blamed on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries began.

Wednesday's drone strikes "were met with anti-aircraft missiles", the army source said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

An AFP correspondent reported a series of explosions from the direction of the Flamingo Base, just north of the city.

Later Wednesday, residents reported air defenses in action against drones circling above the city.

War has raged since April 2023 between Sudan's regular armed forces and the RSF.

- 'Major escalation' -

Nearly 600 kilometers (375 miles) further south, "three drones attempted to strike airport facilities" in the army-held eastern city of Kassala on Wednesday, near the border with Eritrea, a security source said.

Witnesses told AFP they heard explosions from anti-aircraft missiles west of the city, which has also come under repeated attack this week.

In the city of Merowe in Northern state, around 420 kilometers from Khartoum, residents reported drones overhead being intercepted by anti-aircraft fire.

Nationwide, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.

It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the center, north and east, while the RSF holds nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.

The RSF has not directly commented on this week's attacks on Port Sudan, about 650 kilometers from its nearest known positions on the outskirts of the capital.

A spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called the drone strikes a "major escalation (that) could lead to large-scale civilian casualties and further destruction of critical infrastructure".

Port Sudan is the main entry point for humanitarian aid into Sudan, and Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the attacks "threaten to increase humanitarian needs and further complicate aid operations in the country".

Famine has been declared in some areas in Sudan and nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity.

The UN also has warned of more "human suffering in what is already the world's largest humanitarian crisis".

- 'Advanced weaponry' -

French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Wednesday its services in the northern River Nile state have been disrupted after drone attacks targeted a power plant in state capital Atbara.

The attacks caused a major power outage and affected the city's water treatment plant, disrupting access to clean water and risking a surge in waterborne diseases such as cholera, MSF said.

The attacks also scaled down production at the state's oxygen concentration factory, which provides health facilities with oxygen tanks.

MSF said such attacks on infrastructure "have a devastating impact on the health of the local communities" and harm "an already overburdened health system".

The drone campaign comes after the RSF in March lost control of nearly all of greater Khartoum.

The army-backed foreign ministry described the attack on Port Sudan as "a full-fledged crime of aggression", which it said was carried out with "strategic drones and advanced weaponry".

Sudan has accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with the weapons it has used to strike Port Sudan.

The UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF.

On Wednesday, it rejected the severing of ties, saying the decision was made by an administration that "does not represent the legitimate government of Sudan".