Sudan army breaks paramilitary siege on Khartoum HQ, reclaims oil refinery
by AFP Staff Writers
Port Sudan, Sudan (AFP) Jan 24, 2025

The Sudanese army said Friday it broke a siege of its headquarters in Khartoum by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which had encircled it since war broke out in April 2023.

In a statement, the army said troops in Bahri (Khartoum North) and Omdurman across the Nile River had "merged with our forces stationed at the General Command of the Armed Forces".

A military source confirmed that "the arrival of the forces from Bahri completely lifted the siege on the command".

The army added that it had "expelled" the RSF from the Jaili oil refinery north of the capital, the country's largest, which the paramilitary had claimed control of since the start of the war.

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

The RSF could not immediately be reached for comment, but had earlier denied the army had taken control of the Signal Corps -- a key base across the river from the military headquarters.

Since the outbreak of the war with Sudan's army in April 2023, the RSF had encircled both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command of the Armed Forces, its headquarters just south across the Blue Nile river.

A military source had previously told AFP the army was advancing closer to Khartoum North, following days of military operations aimed at dislodging the RSF from fortified positions in the city.

This comes around two weeks after the army reclaimed the Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.

Regaining access to its headquarters would be the army's biggest victory since it regained the capital's twin city of Omdurman, on the Nile's west bank, nearly a year ago.

"It allows the entry of forces and equipment into Khartoum and gives the armed forces the advantage of an open supply line," the military source told AFP, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The army and the RSF had appeared to be in a stalemate since the capture of Omdurman, with paramilitaries still in control of Khartoum North on the east bank.

They have regularly exchanged artillery fire across the river, with civilians reporting bombs and shrapnel often hitting homes.

The military source said Friday's advance will disable the RSF's capability for "counterattacks from Bahri," heralding the "complete collapse of the militia in Khartoum State."

- Torn apart -

Since the early days of the war, when the RSF quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military has had to supply its forces inside the headquarters via airdrops.

Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months, before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.

In what is now the de facto capital on the Red Sea, dozens took to the streets of Port Sudan cheering the army's advance, chanting "one army, one people", AFP correspondents reported.

Eyewitnesses in Omdurman reported similar celebrations, with cars honking and waving Sudanese flags through the streets.

Khartoum and its surrounding state have been torn apart by the war, with 26,000 people killed between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Entire neighbourhoods have been emptied out and taken over by fighters as at least 3.6 million people fled the capital, according to United Nations figures.

Across the northeast African country, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and uprooted more than 12 million people in what the United Nations calls the world's largest internal displacement crisis.

Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.

Before leaving office on Monday, the administration of US president Joe Biden sanctioned Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals and using food deprivation as a weapon of war.

That designation came about one week after Washington sanctioned RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo for his role in "gross violations of human rights" in Sudan's vast western region of Darfur, where the RSF dominates.

The United States said Daglo's forces had "committed genocide".

US lawmakers say UAE still sending arms to Sudan fighters
Washington (AFP) Jan 24, 2025 - Two US lawmakers said Friday that the United Arab Emirates has violated its promises and kept arming Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, which Washington has accused of genocide.

The two Democrats last month agreed to lift objections to a $1.2 billion arms sale to the UAE by the then administration of fellow Democrat Joe Biden after the White House said the Gulf power assured it was "not now transferring any weapons" to the paramilitary group.

But the lawmakers, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs, said briefings with Biden administration officials before they left office last weekend indicated that the UAE had broken its promises.

"Based on my conversations with the Biden administration, it's clear that the UAE is continuing to provide weapons to the murderous RSF, violating the assurances provided to the former administration," Van Hollen said in a statement.

"It is imperative that the United States not provide weapons to countries that are in turn providing military support to the RSF and complicit in its genocidal actions," he said.

Both vowed to attempt to block any arms sales under President Donald Trump, who in his last term negotiated a major package for the UAE.

"I will try to block any future offensive arms sale to the UAE in a push for peace, aid, justice and accountability for the people of Sudan," Jacobs said.

In the final days of the Biden administration, then secretary of state Antony Blinken said the RSF had committed genocide in Darfur, the scene of a scorched-earth campaign by the paramilitary unit's predecessor two decades ago.

The State Department accused the RSF, which is predominantly Arab, of systematic abuses targeting Darfur's non-Arab population including the killing of men and boys and sexual assault of women and girls.

The UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF despite international criticism and a finding by United Nations experts that the allegations were credible.

The paramilitary fighters forged a relationship with the UAE fighting Yemen's Iranian-backed Huthi insurgents.

Other powers including Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Russia have also been accused of supporting sides in the war between dueling generals, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Blinken on leaving office said neither general was fit to lead Sudan as he imposed sanctions on both.

But US officials say both sides feel they can still triumph on the battlefield, with Sudan's army saying Friday it had broken a siege on its headquarters in place since the war began in April 2023.

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