The Sudanese
army shelled parts of Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman from early morning on
Thursday, residents said, after declaring victory over their Rapid Support
Forces rivals in a two-year
battle for the capital.
The
army ousted
the RSF from its last footholds in Khartoum on Wednesday but the
paramilitary RSF holds some areas in Omdurman, directly across the Nile River,
and has consolidated in west Sudan, splitting the nation into rival zones.
Khartoum
residents expressed delight fighting was over for the first time since it
erupted in April 2023.
"During
the last two years the RSF made our life hell killing and stealing. They didn't
respect anybody including women and old men," teacher Ahmed Hassan, 49,
said by phone.
The war has
ruined much of Khartoum, uprooted more than 12 million Sudanese from their
homes, and left about half of the 50 million population suffering acute hunger
in what the U.N. calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
Overall
deaths are hard to estimate but a study published last year said the
toll may have reached 61,000 in Khartoum state alone in the first 14
months of the conflict.
The conflict
has added to instability around northeast Africa, with Sudan's neighbors Libya,
Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan each weathering internal bouts
of conflict over recent years.
In a video
posted on Thursday from the recaptured presidential palace, army chief Abdul
Fattah al-Burhan declared: "Khartoum is free".
The RSF said
in a statement that it had never lost a battle, but that its forces had
"strategically repositioned and expanded across the battlefronts to secure
their military objectives", without naming Khartoum or other locations.
While the
seizure of Khartoum marks a significant turning
point, the war looks far from over.
Residents in
the western state of Darfur said the RSF was shelling army positions in
al-Fashir, the main city there, on Thursday.
Retreating
RSF
RSF fighters
pulling out of Khartoum on Wednesday via a Nile dam 40 km south redeployed,
some heading into Omdurman to help stave off army attacks and others heading
west towards Darfur, witnesses said.
The army
controls most of Omdurman, home to two big military bases, and looks focused on
driving out the last RSF troops to secure control over Khartoum's entire urban
area. Thursday's shelling was directed at southern Omdurman.
The RSF still
holds a last patch of territory around the dam at Jebel Aulia south of
Khartoum, two residents of the area said, to secure a line of retreat for
stragglers.
Residents of
a village in North Kordofan state said they had seen an RSF military convoy
with dozens of vehicles passing through on its way west.
The army and
RSF had been in a fragile partnership, jointly staging a coup in 2021 that
derailed the transition from the Islamist rule of Omar al-Bashir, a longtime
autocrat ousted in 2019.
The RSF,
under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, developed from Darfur's
janjaweed militias and Bashir developed the group as a counterweight to the
army, led by career officer Burhan.
Under an
internationally backed transition plan the RSF was meant to integrate into the
army, but there were disputes over how and when that should happen and fighting
broke out.
In Khartoum
the RSF quickly spread through residential districts, taking most of the city
and besieging the better-equipped army in big military bases that had to be
resupplied by air.
The army's
capture of Khartoum could open the way for it to announce the formation
of a government. The RSF has said it would support the formation of a rival
civilian administration.