At the presidential palace marked by the battle in the heart of the broken capital of Sudan, the soldiers gathered under a chandelier on Sunday afternoon, rifles and launchers suspended above their shoulders, listening to their orders.
Then, they took place, on a red carpet which formerly welcomed foreign dignitaries, and in the city center of the city on a mission to eliminate the last pockets of resistance from the paramilitary fighters with which they have come up against two years.
Since the soldiers of Sudan captured the presidential palace on Friday, in a fierce battle which left hundreds of deaths, he took control of most of the center of Khartoum, marking a capital change of fortune likely to change the course of the ruinous civil war of Sudan.
The military had seized the central bank, the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service and the Corinthia Hotel on Sunday, imposing along the Nile.
The journalists of the New York Times were the first of a Western point of sale to cross the Nile, in the center of Khartoum, or to visit the palace, since the war broke out in April 2023. What we saw there clearly indicated how the events of the last days have changed the direction of the war, but have given little hope that this will soon end.
“We will never leave our country to mercenaries,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, an officer of the special forces, referring to the RSF – the paramilitary force that the Army of Sudan has been nourished, but is now his rival for supreme control.
While our vehicle was running on a deserted street along the Nile which, until a few days ago, was controlled by the RSF, the extent of damage in one of the largest cities in Africa was clearly obvious.
Trees lining the road had been stripped naked by explosions. A mosque was dotted with shots. The imposing ministries and offices, some built with money from the vast oil and gold reserves in Sudan, were burned to a shell.
The military headquarters, where a group of senior generals was trapped during the first 18 months of the war, had been shredded by bombs.
The University of Khartoum, formerly a hub for political debate, had been pillaged.
And an area where tens of thousands of Sudanese young people set up a popular uprising in 2019 which ousted the country’s autocratic leader, President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, was deserted. All that remains of these times of hope was a handful of faded and bullets.
Instead, some of these pro-democracy demonstrators have picked up firearms to fight in war; On Sunday, they were gathered in the ruins of the presidential palace.
The presidential palace built by Chinese only a few years ago, shared by the country’s military leaders in the country, had been reduced to a battered bullet. Dust and debris covered ministerial consequences and state rooms. The ceilings had collapsed. Being holes looked at the Nile.
On the land of an older palace next to it, erected a century ago by British settlers, soldiers took a nap under the charred arcs of a bombed building.
War began as a quarrel between rival generals, but quickly wrapped the whole country, making an epic scale suffer. The conflict has forced 12 million people at home, killed tens of thousands and sparked the worst famine in the world for decades, said the United Nations.
Foreign powers such as the United Arab Emirates and Russia fuel the fight by providing weapons on each side, and many fear that it can slip into a regional conflict by attracting fragiles from neighboring countries like South Sudan or Chad.
American efforts to negotiate peace in Sudan failed last year. It is not clear if President Trump will be interested, although supporters say that the country’s vast mineral resources could draw his attention.
Friday, lots of rubbish stained with blood on the steps of the palace testified to the ferocity of the battle. While the soldiers closed, the head of the RSF, Lieutenant-General Mohamed Hamdan, published a video message imploring his troops to stand up. When the final assault started, at least 500 paramilitary fighters were still inside, several officers said.
But when they tried to flee, they met deadly ambushes. A video Filmed half a mile from the palaceAnd checked by the Times, showed dozens of bodies dispersed along a street, next to the incinerated or ball vehicles.
“It was the season of hunting mice,” said the officer who took the video, dating from Saturday.
The RSF fighters stationed on the island of Tuti, at the confluence of the Blue Rivers of the Nile and the White Nile, tried to flee from boats, said soldiers. We didn’t know how many people escaped.
Without offering details, a Sudanese military spokesman said “hundreds” of paramilitary fighters had been killed. But dozens of military forces have also died, soldiers said in private, in RSF drone attacks and other fights.
Alan Boswell, director of the Horn of Africa Project at Group International Crisis, said that it was “just a matter of time” before the Army of Sudan took the whole city, forcing the RSF to retire in its bastion in the western region of Darfur.
“A fall in the place where they were for the first year and a half of war when they held most of Khartoum,” said Boswell.
Few believe that war is approaching an end, however. The RSF and the Sudanese army are both supported by powerful foreign powers which have paid weapons to Sudan in the past two years. Sudan deputy chief Malik Agar recently estimated that there were now 36 million light weapons in the country, which had 48 million pre-war inhabitants.
International efforts to negotiate an end negotiated in the conflict collapsed, and the country’s military leader, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, recently said that he preferred to fight, not to speak.
On the palace steps, a good blood blood marked the place where an RSF drone missile killed four Sudanese state television employees and two military officers on Friday morning. As we visited on Sunday, another drone hovered over the head, which prompted the soldiers to jog between the buildings. They urged us to follow quickly.
Colonel Algoney Ali Eseil, a commander leading a group of pro-democracy demonstrators who have become combatants, said that RSF drones were transported by the bases of Darfur and Chad, where they were operated by the United Arab Emirates, the main foreign RSF sponsor. Colonel Eseil did not propose any evidence in support of these statements, but the Times reported last year that the Emirates operated Wing Loong 2 drones from Wing Loong 2 from a landing track in Chad which is in the Khartoum range.
The Sudan army has also largely supported drones and other foreign aids. Last year, he acquired Iranian drones who helped him capture land in Khartoum. Last year, he also acquired eight Bayraktar TB2 drones of Turkish manufacture, which, according to American officials, were particularly popular in African conflicts, according to the documents obtained by the Times. The documents were reported for the first time by the Washington Post.
The city center is eliminated, the battle of Khartoum has now moved to the international airport, a mile and a half of the palace. The satellite images show that its tracks are placed with shell leaves and strewn with aerial aeractions of passengers destroyed after the fight broke out in 2023.
While the city goes from the RSF to military control, human rights officials fear that civilians accused of collaborating with the rebels can face reprisals. In January, the army was Accused of brutal aggression On alleged RSF sympathizers after taking over the city of Wad Madani. Volunteers in emergency intervention rooms, which manages hundreds of popular soups in Khartoum, said they feared that they were also targeted.
If the army succeeds in Khartoum, the war will probably concentrate towards Darfur, where the RSF fighters throw a punitive seat on the city struck by the famine of El Fasher, the only city of Darfur that it does not control. Friday, they seized the city of Al Malha, about 130 miles north of El Fasher. The city residents said that the occupying fighters prevented them from leaving, in the midst of arrest and murder reports.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed Khartoum’s reports, and Ronen Bergman of Tel Aviv.
