Sudan army gains ground in Khartoum Bahri
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) seized new territory in the Samrab neighborhood of Khartoum Bahri, and built up forces in the area, as part of a larger offensive aimed at retaking the capital region from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Bolstered by the recent arrival of Russian and Iranian weapons, the Sudanese military spurned ceasefire talks in August and launched a new offensive in late September, making meaningful military gains for the first time since the war began in April 2023.
The offensive has pressured the RSF across multiple axes, including Khartoum, Gedaref-Sinja, Sennar-Kosti, Managil, Fau-Wad Madani, Kulbus, and El Fasher.
However, the army’s progress in recent weeks had slowed, particularly in the capital Khartoum. The seizure of new territory in Khartoum Bahri, the sister city of the capital, is therefore significant because it sustains the pressure on the RSF in the capital region, squeezing them increasingly into the southern part of the city.
Sudanese army soldiers on Friday broadcast videos from the Samrab neighborhood, and SAF-affiliated influencers bragged about taking over a number of landmarks in the neighborhood, while admitting that the RSF still control southern parts of Samrab.
Sudanese media outlets reported that both SAF and the allied Islamist Al-Baraa bin Malik Brigade lost men during the fighting in Samrab, saying the fighting was intense.
A key objective for the Sudanese military is to link up with a besieged force in the Kober prison area (“Signal Corps”), which is connected via a rail bridge to the Khartoum University area and the Armed Forces headquarters. Relieving the siege of the headquarters would be a major victory for the Sudanese military, boosting morale and raising hopes for further success in recapturing the capital from the RSF.
To achieve this, however, the army would have to fight its way through the Khartoum Light Industrial area and/or the populous Shambat and Kafouri districts on either side of it. The dense complex of warehouses, factories, workshops, power plants, rail yards and corporate buildings is about 12 square kilometers. This terrain is ideally suited for urban warfare defense, much like the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, which hindered Russia’s offensive in Ukraine in 2022.
For this reason, the Sudanese military may instead try to advance south through residential neighborhoods, including Shambat, Khatmiya, and Kafouri. This would be a nightmare for civilians trapped in these areas. Although many Bahri residents have left the city, escape has become increasingly difficult for those remaining.
As they have advanced in Bahri, the Sudanese military have arrested civilians whom they accused of collaborating with the RSF, and allegedly also killed some civilians. One video purporting to come from Samrab, which circulated widely yesterday, showed soldiers escorting a number of civilians, including blindfolded men.
Comments from SAF supporters on social media reflected the widespread attitude among soldiers and supporters of the Sudanese military regime that civilians who stayed behind in RSF-controlled areas must be “collaborators” or foreigners.
“Their nationality is Syrian, three people, and they were based in the Samrab Allastuk Station. What are they doing in the war [zone] if they do not belong to the RSF, and with them girls and hookah? The arrest of collaborators and thieves,” wrote one army influencer on social media on Friday. “Scenes of a number of mercenaries and collaborators, including three Syrians, who were arrested by the Armed Forces in the Samrab area,” wrote another army supporter who shared the video.
Before the war, Khartoum was home to a large number of refugees from South Sudan, Ethiopia, and other countries, as well as people displaced by past conflicts in Sudan.
Sudan’s Air Force has carried out airstrikes against civilian targets in many RSF-controlled parts of Khartoum, particularly markets, killing tea ladies, vegetable sellers, and other poor residents trying to scrape out a living in the war-ravaged capital. Supporters of the military have justified these attacks, suggesting that all commercial activity in the RSF-controlled areas is illegitimate. The most recent attacks utilized barrel bombs and killed dozens of people and wounded at least 200.
Background: Battle for Khartoum Bahri
A key event in the battle for control of Bahri took place in July 2023, in the third month of the war, when the RSF obliterated a SAF convoy carrying reinforcements and supplies on Ingaz Street, which was attempting to break through to the Armed Forces headquarters. At about the same time, the renegade paramilitary also overran army outpost along Ma’una Street and repulsed attacks from neighboring Omdurman.
This marked the start of a year-long period of RSF dominance in most of Bahri. The remaining SAF troops in Bahri were cut off from neighboring Omdurman and confined to two enclaves, one in the Kadroo suburb in the north, and another around Kober Prison in the south. A stalemate prevailed in Bahri from late 2023 until mid-2024, with neither side prioritizing operations in the area.
In recent months, however, SAF has turned the tide. Using drones and artillery, operated from neighboring Omdurman, SAF weakened the RSF’s defense of the Halfaya Bridge, and harried RSF movements along a critical road corridor. SAF troops based in the two enclaves held out against repeat attacks, and even managed to extend their control. Finally, in September, SAF captured the Halfaya Bridge, and broke the siege of Kadroo, marking a key turning point.
Background: Stalemate in Khartoum
The army’s offensive in Bahri coincided with another operation in neighboring Khartoum, which likewise succeeded in seizing a key bridgehead in the Mogran District, located at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile.
After early success, the SAF offensive in Mogran quickly stalled, and the frontline in the area has been stable for most of the past few weeks. The RSF control a north-south line of high-rise buildings, centered at the Bank of Sudan headquarters, inhibiting SAF’s further progress to the east.
The RSF aim to drive SAF back to the two Omdurman bridges; they counterattacked in this area on Friday, without success.
Farther to the south, the army also control the Al-Shajara residential area, located south of the Armored Corps headquarters. The army troops in this area likewise have gone on the offensive recently. There are indications that they been resupplied and reinforced by river from neighboring Omdurman.
For their part, despite recent setbacks, the RSF have vowed to fight on until they topple Sudan’s military government, which is now based in Port Sudan. The RSF are a coalition of mostly Arab militias originating in Darfur, which the Sudanese government armed and supported during a previous civil war in 2003-2020. The government institutionalized these militias with a law in 2017, establishing the RSF as a formal paramilitary under the direct command of the country’s president.
Tensions mounted between the RSF and the military in late 2022 and early 2023, culminating with an outbreak of violence in the capital in April 2023.
Accounts differ as to the precise trigger for the violence. Both sides mobilized forces into the capital in the days before the war began. According to some observers, the trigger for the war was an attempted coup d'état by the RSF, while other observers have blamed the army for instigating the violence by attacking the RSF.
In Khartoum, the RSF quickly gained the upper hand, but failed to eliminate the leader of Sudan’s military junta, Lt-Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who escaped an attack on his home in the opening hours of the war. Al-Burhan fled to the Armed Forces headquarters, where he was holed up for the first five months of the war, until he was evacuated by unknown means, possibly by helicopter or by a submarine vessel.
By now, most of the Armed Foreces headquarters is gutted by fire, the surrounding embassies, government buildings, and corporate headquarters are pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel, and all civilian activity has ceased in this northern part of the capital city. Dozens of burned or abandoned aircraft litter the neighboring Khartoum Airport, and the the runway and apron of the airport are a vast no-man’s land.
Nevertheless, the army managed to keep control of its headquarters, as well as the neighboring embassy district and the University of Khartoum.
The wide public avenue in front of the Armed Forces headquarters holds great symbolic and political significance for the Sudanese people, due to a months-long round-the-clock protest in 2019 that prompted Sudan’s generals to topple the longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir.
The protesters were demanding a transition to democracy and dismantling of the militaristic Islamist regime that had ruled the country since 2019. Initially, Al-Bashir’s generals handed over some power to a transitional civilian government, but they ousted the civilian leaders in a coup in 2021. The resulting military regime was unstable, fractious, unpopular, and faced a deepening economic crisis. Divisions within the regime led to the current civil war that began in April 2023.
Tensions between JEM and SAF and Darfur
Darfur 24 reports “the outbreak of disputes” between Joint Force troops, led by JEM commander Ahmed Jurn, and the “mobilized forces” [mustanfireen] of SAF in Kulbus Locality, West Darfur, an area that witnessed several clashes with the RSF in October.
Although the RSF dominate most of this state, Kulubus Locality was never controlled by the RSF until last month. The paramilitary seized the capital of the locality, Kulbus, and fighting extended to the Jebel Oum area along the Chadian border.
The news outlet said that thetensiosn began after RSF’s attack on Kulbus Locality last month: “The sources indicated that the leaders of the mobilized forces rejected the way Ahmed Jurn was managing the battles, which led to the Rapid Support Forces taking control of all the areas under their control in West Darfur.”
“They stated that the mobilized forces withdrew from the Joint Force before the Rapid Support Forces attacked the city of Kulbus last October, which weakened the Joint Force and led to the fall of Kulbus without any significant battles. The sources revealed that efforts are being made to overcome the differences between the joint force and mustanfireen, and to prepare to attack Kulbus, which is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces.”
Similar reports of tensions between Joint Force troops and SAF have emerged from El Fasher but so far the coalition there has remained intact.
Historically, the rebel group JEM operated in Kulbus Locality during the 2003-2020 civil war. After signing a peace deal with the Sudanese military, JEM is now allied with it against the RSF. It is one of several ex-rebel groups that established a unified command, called the Joint Force.
News in Brief
Troops loyal to Musa Hilal, leader of the Revolutionary Awakening Council and a leader in the same tribe as the RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have assembled in Daba in Northern State. The same area is used by other Darfur armed groups as a base of operations for movements through the desert into Darfur. After losing control of most of Darfur last year, the Sudanese military has sponsored other armed groups to try to weaken the RSF in Darfur.
Airstrikes in Nyala on Saturday killed a number of civilians, including women and children. The bombing hit the junction of Airport Street and the Maternity Hospital, and several other areas. Distressing videos from the scene showed that several children were horribly mutilated by the airstrike and died.
Sporadic clashes have continued in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur.
The UN Refugee Agency said that the number of people who have fled from Sudan to other countries has topped three million. “A staggering 71 per cent of refugees arriving in Chad report surviving human rights violations in Sudan while fleeing. The levels of trauma are devastating, with families in shock after fleeing the horrors, still living in fear despite being in relative safety.”
A man died in hospital in the border town of Al Radom, South Darfur after being severely beaten by the RSF, according to a relative who spoke to Darfur 24. The victim and two educators were arrested for helping transfer salaries through banking apps on behalf of families of Sudanese army soldiers. One of the detainees runs a Starlink satellite internet shop and also works distributing financial aid to refugees fro South Sudan.
USAID said that its partner World Food Programme recently offloaded 18,000 MT of donated red sorghum in Port Sudan to alleviate famine conditions and support food-insecure communities.
WFP said that a convoy carrying food and nutrition supplies has left Adré at the Chad-Sudan border en route to famine-struck Zamzam Camp.
The Central Bank of Sudan announced the issuance of a new design for the 1,000 note, with a green and gold design, in contrast to the current blue design, to combat “the spread of large quantities of currency of unknown origin and not conforming to technical specifications in the denominations of 1,000 pounds and 500 pounds.. which had a negative impact on the stability of prices” Sudan’s annual inflation rate since the war began last year is about 200%.
Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, leader of a coalition of political parties opposed to the war, held a series of meeting with European institutions in Brussels, according to Africa Intelligence. He kept a low profile and made no public appearances, after being heckled by protesters in London last week.
