Sudanese military forces pushed toward the presidential palace in the battle-scarred capital, Khartoum, on Thursday, signaling a potential turning point in Sudan’s devastating civil war, now approaching its third year.
Video footage showed Sudanese troops about 500 yards east of the palace compound, which is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., the army’s powerful paramilitary rival.
Capturing the palace would be a major symbolic victory for Sudan’s army, which lost most of Khartoum to the R.S.F. in the early days of the war in April 2023. It would also significantly boost the military’s six-month-old drive to push the paramilitaries out of the city entirely.
Early on Thursday, the army launched a blistering ambush on an R.S.F. convoy south of the palace, video footage showed. For the rest of the day, gunfire and explosions could be heard across the capital.
The R.S.F. leader, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, has vowed to stand his ground. “Do not think that we will retreat from the palace,” he said last week in a video address from an undisclosed location.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, a senior R.S.F. adviser said any suggestion that the group was fleeing the palace was “just lies.”
The military lost most of Khartoum in the early days of the war two years ago, but launched a major counteroffensive last September. Since then, the military has captured strategic bridges on the Nile and, in recent months, seized the north and east of the city.
As the R.S.F. has withdrawn from those areas, the war’s grim toll has become starkly apparent. Entire districts have become a charred wasteland, as New York Times reporters saw during the past week in the city.
Bullet-pocked vehicles lay scattered across deserted streets. Apartment blocks stood torched or looted, and banks were blown open. White smoke billowed from a giant wheat silo.
For those still in the city, there was a palpable sense of relief the R.S.F. was gone. “In the days before they left, they demanded money,” said Kamal Juma, 42, as he tapped water from a broken pipe in the street. “If you couldn’t pay, they shot you.”
Even if the military manages to drive the R.S.F. from Khartoum, there is little prospect of the war ending soon, analysts say. What started as a power feud between two men — General Hamdan and the country’s military chief, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan — has exploded into a much wider conflict fueled by a bewildering array of foreign powers.
The United Arab Emirates is backing the R.S.F. with guns, drones and mercenaries, The Times has reported. That support has continued in recent months, even since the United States accused the R.S.F. of genocide in January, according to two Western officials and some American lawmakers.
The Emirates denies backing the paramilitaries.
On the other side, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have sold, supplied or paid for weapons to Sudan’s military, the two Western officials said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
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