KHARTOUM, March 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has declared, “Khartoum is free” hours after his forces recaptured Khartoum airport from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Al-Burhan was speaking from the presidential palace that government forces took control of Friday in a key victory. It was his first time inside the presidential palace for nearly two years.
Earlier, soldiers also encircled areas surrounding the airport in the Sudanese capital on Wednesday, a pivotal development in a two-year-old conflict between the SAF and rival RSF, with the paramilitary’s forces fleeing across a bridge out of that part of the capital.
SAF troops “surrounded the strategic Jebel Awliya area” south of central Khartoum, the last large RSF stronghold in the area, a military source said.
The army also secured both sides of the Manshiya Bridge, which crosses the Blue Nile River in Khartoum, leaving the Jebel Awliya Bridge just south of the capital as the only crossing out of the area still under RSF control.
The military, at war with the RSF since April 2023, launched a campaign this week to push the paramilitary forces out of central Khartoum.
RSF fighters had been stationed inside the airport, just east of central Khartoum’s government and business district, since the war began.
Across the city, witnesses and activists reported that RSF fighters have been retreating southwards from neighbourhoods they previously controlled, ostensibly towards Jebel Awliya.
Witnesses said that RSF had mainly stationed its forces in southern Khartoum to secure their withdrawal from the capital via bridges to the neighbouring city of Omdurman.
Elbashir Idris, an independent Sudan analyst and activist, said: “The RSF’s collapse has been quicker than the army’s ability to deploy itself.”
In Khartoum, “we have seen videos yesterday of many residents, and even prisoners who were under RSF-controlled territory, freeing themselves and running with full jubilation in the streets – without seeing an RSF militiaman in sight,” he noted.
“This news [about the army retaking the airport] is very welcome to a lot of Sudanese people who have lost their homes within the capital city two years ago, and this win has come at the RSF’s collapse,” Idris added.
In nearly two years, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises. — NNN-AGENCIES
