Sudan’s army said Wednesday it had recaptured Khartoum’s international airport, and the military chief flew back to the capital for the first time in nearly two years of war, bringing the military closer to regaining full control of the city from the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group.
Footage put out by the military showed army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan landing at Khartoum International Airport, kissing the ground and raising his fist in the air to troops as he emerged from the helicopter onto the tarmac.
“Khartoum is now free. It’s over. Khartoum is free,” Burhan is heard telling cheering troops, according to video footage aired by Al Jazeera television. He later went to the Presidential Palace, the pre-war seat of the government which troops wrested from RSF control on Friday.
The RSF is still believed to hold scattered positions in Khartoum, and the government had not yet declared full victory in the city. But Burhan’s return capped a series of gains by his forces in the capital and marked a major symbolic landmark in the war. Burhan and his military-led government had to flee Khartoum, moving to the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan, soon after the war erupted in April 2023.
The war broke out when the military and the RSF turned against each other in a struggle for power. Their battles around Khartoum left the RSF in control of the airport, Presidential Palace and other neighborhoods, as the fighting spread around the country.
Seizing the capital doesn’t end the conflict, as the RSF still controls parts of the western Darfur region and other areas.
Earlier in the day, the military announced it had recaptured the RSF’s last major stronghold in Khartoum, the Teiba al-Hasnab camp. There was no immediate RSF comment.
“This is a pivotal and decisive moment in the history of Sudan,” Information Minister Khalid Aleiser, spokesman of the military-controlled government, declared on social media. “Khartoum is free, as it should be.”
Military control of the airport, along with calm in Khartoum, could allow aid groups to fly more supplies into the country where the fighting has driven some 14 million people from their homes and pushed some areas into famine.
At least 28,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher.