Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has declared Khartoum free after military forces recaptured the city’s airport and strengthened their hold on the capital in one of the most important shifts in the country’s two-year war.
Burhan arrived by plane in Khartoum on Wednesday, according to the Transitional Sovereign Council he heads, after the army said it had taken back the airport from the Rapid Support Forces. State television aired his declaration that “Khartoum is free” as he toured the reclaimed presidential palace.
The army said it had also seized Tiba al-Hassanab camp south of the capital, which it described as the RSF’s last base in central Sudan and its last stronghold in Khartoum state. Military sources said the airport was being encircled and that RSF troops were retreating through southern parts of the city toward bridges crossing the Nile.
The developments matter because the airport and palace are not only strategic positions but also symbols of state power. Their capture gives the army a stronger claim to central Khartoum after a conflict that has split the country into rival zones of control.
The RSF did not immediately comment on the latest military claims. Reuters, which reported the army’s drone footage of people crossing a dam, said it could not independently confirm that the footage showed RSF forces withdrawing. That uncertainty matters in a war where battlefield announcements often outpace verification.
Even so, the army’s advance is substantial. It has already retaken districts of the capital and other territory, while the RSF has consolidated its hold in western Sudan. The line between the two sides appears to be hardening as the army pushes to re-establish itself in the centre of the country.
The conflict began in April 2023 after a fragile partnership between Burhan’s army and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, collapsed. The two men had jointly seized power in a 2021 coup that derailed Sudan’s civilian transition, but they split over how and when the RSF would be folded into the regular armed forces and who would control the transition.
The war has become one of the world’s gravest humanitarian disasters. The United Nations says it has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with famine in several areas and disease outbreaks spreading as millions flee. France 24 said the fighting has driven 12.5 million people from their homes.
For Burhan, the military gains in Khartoum are as much political as tactical. Reclaiming the capital helps the army present itself as the custodian of the state, even as large parts of Sudan remain contested or under RSF control.
What happens next is less clear. The army may have won a symbolic centre, but the war is far from over, and the country still faces the prospect of a prolonged division between an army-dominated east and north and an RSF-held west and southwest.
