Sudan army retakes Khartoum airport from paramilitaries

KHARTOUM: The Sudanese service connected Wednesday recaptured Khartoum airdrome from the Rapid Support Forces, an service root told AFP, portion troops surrounded the paramilitaries’ past large holdout presumption southbound of the city.

The army, battling the RSF since April 2023, “fully secured” the airdrome successful cardinal Khartoum from RSF fighters stationed inside, the root said, requesting anonymity due to the fact that helium is not authorised to little the media.

Following their recapture of the statesmanlike palace successful a cardinal triumph connected Friday, service troops person surged done cardinal Khartoum, seizing authorities institutions captured aboriginal successful the warfare by the RSF, earlier heading south.

“In the southbound of the capital, our forces person surrounded the strategical Jebel Awliya country from 3 directions: north, southbound and east,“ the root said, adding that “all axes are advancing steadily”.

The Jebel Awliya bridge, which crosses the White Nile southbound of the metropolis centre, is the lone crossing retired of the country inactive nether RSF control, linking the paramilitary radical to its strongholds successful the occidental Darfur region.

Across the city, eyewitnesses and activists reported this week that RSF fighters were retreating southwards from neighbourhoods they antecedently controlled, ostensibly towards Jebel Awliya.

The RSF did not instantly respond to AFP’s petition for comment.

RSF territory evacuated

Since April 2023, the warfare has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted much than 12 cardinal and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

The warfare has near overmuch of Khartoum a ammunition of its erstwhile self.

According to the United Nations, implicit 3.5 cardinal radical were forced to fly the capital, leaving full neighbourhoods mostly abandoned.

Millions more, incapable oregon unwilling to leave, were near to look hunger, rights abuses and indiscriminate shelling of their homes by some sides.

Two aesculapian sources told AFP that the RSF had evacuated Tamayoz Hospital, conscionable southbound of the airport, which they had utilized since the commencement of the warfare to dainty their fighters.

“The country has been wholly bare of the RSF since past night,“ Osama Abdel Qader, a nonmigratory of the adjacent Sahafa neighbourhood, told AFP connected Wednesday.

In the capital’s South Belt area, wherever activists person reported immoderate of the war’s worst rights abuses, Issa Hussein said “the RSF has been little progressive successful the streets since Sunday”.

“Yesterday, I saw 7 (RSF) vehicles carrying furnishings and families heading towards Jebel Awliya,“ helium told AFP.

Since the warfare began, the RSF has been accused looting and taking implicit people’s homes, with rights groups documenting systematic intersexual unit and different abuses.

Following months of defeat, the service appeared to crook the tide precocious past year, sweeping done cardinal Sudan earlier recovering astir the full capital.