Sudan’s Army Retakes Control Of Presidential Palace After Two Years

Sudan’s army has taken full control of the country’s presidential palace in Khartoum, two years after it was seized by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). After closing in on the building on the Blue Nile in recent days, the army-aligned government announced its capture on Friday. 

“Today the flag is raised, the palace is back and the journey continues until victory is complete,” Khaled al-Aiser, Sudan’s information minister, wrote on X. 

Footage posted on social media showed armed troops cheering inside the palace complex. The RSF seized the palace complex, and large swathes of the capital in April 2023, when its war with Sudan’s army began. 

It forced the government, which is led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to flee to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. 

The palace complex consists of two buildings: the original Ottoman-Egyptian republican palace built in 1825, and a much larger structure built in 2015 by former head of state, Omar al-Bashir. 

The older building is a highly symbolic structure. In 1885, followers of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah famously killed the British major-general Charles George Gordon on the Republican Palace’s stairs. The death of “Gordon Pasha” and the fall of Khartoum marked the end of Ottoman-Egyptian rule in Sudan.

Both the new and old buildings were damaged at the beginning of the fighting two years ago. On Friday, the army said it had also taken control of ministries and other key buildings in central Khartoum. 

Jihad Mashamoun, a Sudanese researcher and political analyst, said the victory at the palace paved the way for the army to make further gains in the capital, “and to encourage it to mostly delegate the conflict in Darfur to the allied armed movements”. 

“It also allows the de-facto government of Burhan to impose itself as the legitimate government of Sudan to the international community,” Mashamoun told Middle East Eye. 

Drone strike

An unnamed Sudanese army source told AFP that hours after the recapture, an RSF drone strike on the palace killed three journalists. The journalists had been reporting for Sudanese state television when an attack drone targeted the site. 

The RSF said that it remained in the vicinity of the palace, and that the battle was “not over”. The army has made key gains in central Sudan in recent months, capturing swathes of territory back from the paramilitary force. 

However, the RSF has consolidated its grip over the western Darfur region, where it has been accused of committing genocide. 

A report released last year by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre concluded that a genocide was taking place against non-Arab groups in Darfur at the hands of the RSF and allied militias. The United States has also accused the RSF of genocide and sanctioned its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemeti). Burhan has also been sanctioned.

BREAKING: Sudan’s Army retakes control of the Presidential Palace in central Khartoum from RSF militias after two years. pic.twitter.com/MWGaeLtHB5

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Last month, RSF leaders convened in Kenya to announce that the group was launching a parallel government. It is reported to be backed by the United Arab Emirates. Mashamoun said the army gains in Khartoum would “further unravel some of the political parties allied to the RSF who signed the charter to form the parallel government”. 

It would also undermine the legitimacy of the RSF in trying to “impose itself as partners in any transition period with the de-facto government”, he added.

There are fears the rival government could lead to the so-called “Libya situation”, where Sudan is split into two or more different entities. 

The two-year conflict has displaced more than 10 million people, and left over 12 million facing high levels of acute food insecurity. Thousands have been killed.