Sawt Falasteen - Sudan paramilitary leader says 'lost' Al-Jazira state capital

Government officials loyal to the army have hailed the recapture of the city, which RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed to regain.

"Today we lost a round, we did not lose the battle", Daglo said in an audio address Saturday evening, promising "victory" to his troops.

Sudan's army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, leading to what the UN calls the world's worst displacement crisis and declarations of famine in parts of the northeast African country.

The RSF seized Wad Madani in December of that year, displacing hundreds of thousands who had fled from the capital Khartoum, just north.

In a statement earlier on Saturday, the armed forces "congratulated" the Sudanese people on "our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning".

A video the army shared on social media showed fighters on the western side of Hantoub Bridge in the city's north, after an army source told AFP they had "stormed the city's eastern entrance".

The office of army-allied government spokesman and Information and Culture Minister Khalid al-Aiser said the army had "liberated" the city.

Sudan's foreign ministry hailed "the great victory achieved today", saying the army had regained Wad Madani.

The army has yet to announce its full seizure of the city.

It said its forces had freed prisoners detained by the RSF in the city, and were "currently working on clearing the remnants of the rebels inside the city".

With a months-long communications blackout in place, AFP was not able to independently verify the situation on the ground.

Wad Madani is a strategic crossroads of key supply highways linking several states, and is the nearest major town to the capital Khartoum.

A victory in Al-Jazira would be the army's biggest breakthrough since it seized control of the capital's twin city of Omdurman nearly a year ago.

"The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city's streets," one eyewitness told AFP from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

- Celebrations -

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

But the paramilitaries specifically have been notorious for summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

The United States on Tuesday said the RSF had "committed genocide" and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed the Wad Madani advance as an end to "the tyranny" of the RSF.

Eyewitnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens taking to the streets in celebration.

Chants of "one army, one people" broke out in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum 200 kilometres (124 miles) north of Wad Madani, an eyewitness told AFP, requesting anonymity for their safety.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 12 million people, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.

In the early months of the war, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira, before a lightning RSF offensive displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the UN.

Most have been repeatedly displaced since, as the feared paramilitaries moved further and further south.

"We're going back!" crowds in the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea shouted in the street on Saturday after the army's announcements.

The RSF still holds most of the rest of the central agricultural state, as well as nearly all of Sudan's western Darfur region and swathes of the country's south.

The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital.

I.Matar--SF-PST