RESIDENTS of Sudan’s capital Khartoum say the army has recaptured large parts of the city from RSF paramilitaries, marking its biggest victory in a year.
“Shrapnel and stray ammunition are falling on my neighbourhood,” a doctor we are calling Mustafa tells the BBC. “The clashes these days are heavy”.
Key sites recaptured by the army this week include the mint – where money is printed.
At the time of writing, the RSF still controls most of Khartoum proper. Whereas the army now holds the majority of territory across the wider tripartite capital – meaning Omdurman, Bahri and Khartoum.
But, after winning back near total control of the crucial state of Gezira, the army believes it now has the momentum to take the capital too, and break the RSF’s almost two-year siege.
“Very soon there will be no rebels in Khartoum,” announced army leader and de facto ruler Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Tuesday.
An end to this conflict cannot come fast enough.
Aid workers say people are starving across the country as a result of the war – in Khartoum alone more than 100,000 people are suffering from famine, according to UN-backed researchers.
Since war broke out almost two years ago between Gen Burhan and his deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo who leads the RSF, 12 million people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands of civilians have been butchered.
Sudan is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, agree international aid agencies.
They say both the army and the RSF are guilty of committing some of the gravest atrocities imaginable against innocent civilians, including that the RSF has carried out a genocide in Darfur.
Both forces deny the accusations.
