Sawt Falasteen - Sudan army retakes Khartoum airport from paramilitaries

The army, battling the RSF since April 2023, had "fully secured" the airport from the paramilitary fighters who had been stationed inside, its spokesman Nabil Abdallah told AFP.

The takeover comes a day after the army was accused of one of the war's deadliest air strikes, killing at least 270 people in a market in the western Darfur region, according to eyewitnesses.

Following their recapture of the presidential palace in a key victory on Friday, the army has surged through central Khartoum, seizing state institutions captured early in the war by the RSF.

"In the south of the capital, our forces have surrounded the strategic Jebel Awliya area from three directions: north, south and east," a military source told AFP, adding that "all axes are advancing steadily".

"The remnants of the RSF militia are fleeing" across the White Nile at the Jebel Awliya bridge, he said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to brief the media.

The bridge is the paramilitaries only crossing out of the area, linking it to its positions west of the city and then to its strongholds in Darfur.

Across Khartoum, eyewitnesses and activists reported this week RSF fighters retreating southwards, ostensibly towards Jebel Awliya.

The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

- Civilians celebrate -

Since April 2023, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also divided the country in two, with the army holding the east and north and the RSF controlling nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.

Following a year and a half of defeats, the army turned the tide late last year, pushing through central Sudan to Khartoum.

The RSF had so far maintained its position in Jebel Awliya, as well as the western and southern outskirts of Omdurman -- central Khartoum's twin city just across the Nile.

After replenishing its ranks and rebuilding its arsenal, the army appears close to securing the capital, from which its government was forced to flee to the Red Sea town of Port Sudan early in the war.

According to the United Nations, more than 3.5 million people were forced to flee the war-ravaged capital.

Millions more, unable or unwilling to leave, were left to face hunger, rights abuses and indiscriminate shelling of their homes by both sides.

Footage shared on social media appeared to show residents of central Khartoum celebrating the RSF's retreat.

"You have endured so much," one young fighter can be heard saying while embracing civilians, in a video which AFP was unable to immediately verify.

"The area has been completely empty of the RSF since last night," Osama Abdel Qader, a resident of central Khartoum's Sahafa neighbourhood, told AFP on Wednesday.

- Rights abuses -

Abdel Qader and other eyewitnesses said RSF fighters had abandoned the homes they previously occupied, in some areas taking furniture with them.

Since the war began, the RSF has been accused of looting and taking over civilian homes, with rights groups documenting systematic sexual violence and other abuses.

The United States has placed sanctions on both army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing the latter specifically of genocide in Darfur.

The United Nations on Tuesday expressed grave alarm at "the continued attacks on civilians" across the country, including Monday's air strike on the town of Tora in North Darfur and an RSF artillery attack on a Khartoum mosque on Sunday.

Analysts have warned of the RSF's pattern of revenge attacks on civilians, while the army has been accused of allowing its allied groups to persecute civilians thought to have collaborated with the RSF.

P.Tamimi--SF-PST