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

According to the Sudanese military, the Sudanese army and its allied armed forces have entered Wad Madani, a strategic city in Gezira State, and are in the process of driving out the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, their opponents who previously controlled the city. In a statement on Saturday, the military "congratulated" the Sudanese people and stated that "our forces entered the city of Wad Madani this morning," after the city had been under the control of the RSF for over a year.

The statement also said, "They are now clearing the remaining rebel strongholds within the city." As of now, the RSF has not issued any comment on this. The office of Khaled al-Aysar, a government spokesman and Minister of Information and Culture aligned with the army, stated that the army had "liberated" the city. The military released a video showing soldiers within the city, which had been controlled by the RSF since December 2023.

The war between the Sudanese army and the RSF began in April 2023, triggering what the United Nations has called the world's worst displacement crisis and leading to famine in parts of the northeast African country. Wad Madani is strategically significant because it sits at the intersection of major supply roads connecting several states and is the closest major town to the capital, Khartoum.

Al Jazeera's Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, stated that the army has been advancing on the city in recent days. "They have been taking over villages in the south and southeast of [Gezira] state, and until this morning, they took the decisive bridge leading to the city - the Hantoob Bridge," she said. "The army now controls most of Wad Madani." An eyewitness from the center of Wad Madani, who requested anonymity, told AFP: "The army and allied fighters are scattered in the city streets around us."

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing war crimes, including attacks on civilians and indiscriminate shelling of residential areas. The RSF has also been accused of summary executions, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence, and besieging entire towns. The United States stated on Tuesday that the RSF had "committed genocide" and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. Local resistance committees, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed the advance on Wad Madani as a sign of the end of the RSF’s “tyranny.”

Witnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported that dozens of people took to the streets to celebrate the news. Retaking the entire Gezira state could mark a turning point in the war sparked by a dispute over the integration of the two forces, a conflict that has already created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Since the start of the war, tens of thousands of people have died, and more than 12 million have been displaced, with over 3 million fleeing abroad. More than 500,000 people had sought refuge in Gezira early in the war, but more than 300,000 were displaced again in a lightning offensive by the RSF in December 2023. Since then, most have been displaced multiple times as people fear further advances by the paramilitary group to the south. The RSF still controls the remaining agricultural areas of central Gezira state, as well as much of the Darfur region in western Sudan and parts of the south of the country. The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital, Khartoum.