Sudan army says its forces enter Wad Madani in push to retake city from RSF

The military says it is working to ‘clean up the remaining rebel pockets’ inside the capital of Gezira state.

The Sudanese military and allied armed groups have entered Wad Madani and were pushing out the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary from the strategic city in Gezira state, according to the army.

In a statement on Saturday, the armed forces “congratulated” the Sudanese people on “our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning” after more than a year of RSF control.

“They are now working to clean up the remaining rebel pockets inside the city,” the statement said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

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

The army posted a video appearing to show soldiers inside the city that has been held by the RSF since December 2023.

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

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

Army ‘in most parts of Wad Madani’

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said the army forces had been advancing towards the city over recent days.

“They have been taking over villages in the south and southeast of [Gezira] state until this morning, when they took over Hantoub Bridge – a decisive bridge that leads into the city,” she said.

“The army is now in most parts of Wad Madani,” she added.

“The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city’s streets,” one witness told the AFP news agency from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

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

Sudanese citizens in Port Sudan celebrate following an announcement by the army that it entered the city of Wad Madani [Ibrahim Mohammed Ishak/Reuters]

The paramilitary forces have been accused of 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, also known as Hemedti.

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.

Witnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens of people taking to the streets to celebrate the news.

Twelve million displaced

The recapture of Gezira state as a whole could mark a turning point in the war that began over disputes on the integration of the two forces, which has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

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 Gezira, 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.

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

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

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Al Jazeera and news agencies