Sudan’s army shelled parts of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman from early yesterday morning, residents said, after declaring victory over their Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rivals in a two-year battle for the capital.
Khartoum residents expressed delight fighting was over for the first time since it erupted in April 2023.
“During the last two years, the RSF made our life hell killing and stealing. They didn’t respect anybody including women and old men,” teacher Ahmed Hassan, 49, said by phone.
The war has ruined much of Khartoum, uprooted more than 12 million Sudanese from their homes, and left about half of the 50 million population suffering acute hunger in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
Overall deaths are hard to estimate but a study published last year said the toll may have reached 61,000 in Khartoum state alone in the first 14 months of the conflict.
The conflict has added to instability around northeast Africa, with Sudan’s neighbours Libya, Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan each weathering internal bouts of conflict over recent years.
In a video posted on Thursday from the recaptured presidential palace, army chief Abdul Fattah al-Burhan declared: “Khartoum is free.”
The RSF said in a statement that it had never lost a battle, but that its forces had “strategically repositioned and expanded across the battlefronts to secure their military objectives”, without naming Khartoum or other locations.
While the seizure of Khartoum marks a significant turning point, the war looks far from over.
Residents in the western state of Darfur said the RSF was shelling army positions in al-Fashir, the main city there, on Thursday.
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