Air strikes and shelling rocked Khartoum on Thursday as the army attacked paramilitary positions throughout the Sudanese capital, eyewitnesses and a military source told AFP.
The clashes began at dawn, several residents reported, in what appeared to be the army’s first major offensive in months to regain parts of the capital controlled by its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Sudanese army forces were “waging fierce fighting against the rebel militia inside Khartoum,” a source in the military told AFP, referring to the RSF.
The source, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said army forces had crossed three key bridges over the Nile River — which had separated parts of the capital held by the army from those under RSF control.
Since April 2023, when war broke out between the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the paramilitaries had pushed the army nearly all the way out of Khartoum.
Following its last major offensive in February, the army regained much of Omdurman, the capital’s twin city just across the river, and part of greater Khartoum.
Several residents of Omdurman reported “intense artillery shelling” which started early on Thursday, with bombs falling on residential buildings while military warplanes flew overhead.
Since the war began, much of its worst fighting has been in densely populated areas, with both sides accused of indiscriminately bombing residential areas.
The war has already killed tens of thousands of people, with estimates ranging from 20,000 to 150,000 and most of the dead unaccounted for, according to medics.
It has also displaced more than 10 million people — a fifth of Sudan’s population — and created one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory, according to the United Nations.