Sudan’s army says it has seized control of the central bank headquarters in Khartoum, adding another major institution to a string of gains as fighting for the capital intensifies.
The claim came a day after the army said it had taken the presidential palace, one of the most symbolic sites in the city. On Saturday, army spokesman Nabil Abdallah told AFP that soldiers had eliminated “hundreds of militia members” trying to escape through central Khartoum, while the military said it had also captured al-Mogran, the area west of the palace that houses banks and business headquarters.
The army’s latest advance appears to strengthen its hold over the city centre. Al Jazeera reported that RSF fighters were retreating into buildings in al-Mogran, where snipers had been posted in tall buildings overlooking Omdurman across the Nile and the ministries in central Khartoum.
The central bank seizure is strategically important because it suggests the army is consolidating its position in the financial district as well as in the political core of the capital. That makes the battlefield shift more than a symbolic victory; it is part of a broader effort to reassert state control over central Sudan.
The RSF responded to Friday’s loss of the presidential palace with a drone attack that killed three journalists and several army personnel, highlighting how quickly the battle can change even when one side gains ground on the map.
Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera said the army had been making steady gains for months, taking territory in the north and east of the capital while the RSF still held areas in the west. The result, the network said, is a country effectively divided into two.
That division is the product of a war that began in April 2023 after the collapse of a fragile partnership between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti. The two had jointly seized power in a 2021 coup, but fell out over the future of the force structure and the transition to civilian rule.
The human cost remains extreme. Al Jazeera said the war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million. The United Nations has called it a deep humanitarian crisis.
If the army can hold the central bank and other state institutions, it will have a stronger claim not only to the capital but to the machinery of government. But the war is not close to an end. The RSF still controls large areas elsewhere, and the frontline in Khartoum remains fluid.
For now, the army’s message is that the capital is slipping back under state authority one institution at a time. Whether that translates into a durable political or military settlement is a much bigger question.
