Sudan’s army retakes Khartoum airport from paramilitary RSF | Conflict News

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Last week, the armed forces recaptured the presidential palace in a key victory.

Sudan’s army has recaptured Khartoum airport from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), “fully securing it”, according to military sources.

Soldiers also encircled areas surrounding the airport in the Sudanese capital on Wednesday, a key development in a two-year-old conflict between the armed forces and rival RSF.

Troops “surrounded the strategic Jebel Awliya area” south of central Khartoum, the last large RSF stronghold in the area, a military source told the AFP news agency, requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to brief the media.

The army also secured both sides of Manshiya bridge which crosses the Blue Nile in Khartoum, leaving the Jebel Awliya bridge just south of the capital as the only crossing out of the area still under RSF control.

The military, at war with the RSF since April 2023, launched this week a campaign to push the paramilitary forces out of central Khartoum, after recapturing the presidential palace in a key victory on Friday.

RSF fighters had been stationed inside the airport, just east of central Khartoum’s government and business district, since the war began.

Across the city, eyewitnesses and activists reported this week that RSF fighters were retreating southwards from neighbourhoods they previously controlled, ostensibly towards Jebel Awliya.

“These are quite significant gains by the Sudanese armed forces just in the past few hours,” said Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum on Wednesday.

“The airport was one of the first places that the RSF took control of during the first days of the conflict, and it was split into two,” with part of it under government control and part under RSF control, she said.

“With the army’s progress in the past few hours, the army was able to retake full control of the airport, including the civilian side … They were also able to gain control of several residential districts around the airport.”

The RSF did not seem to be “putting up much of a fight”, Morgan added.

In nearly two years, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

This is a developing story. More to come…