Sudan army reportedly retakes Wad Madani in key victory against main rivals, RSF

Sudan – Civilians and soldiers celebrated in Wad Madani, the capital of Sudan’s El Gezira state, after it was recaptured by the Sudanese army from the paramilitary Rapid Support Services, marking a possible turning point in a devastating near two-year civil war.

“We are so happy, we can’t express ourselves,” said one woman on Sunday, as soldiers shot into the air and people cheered on the streets. “A whole year we have been squeezed, we haven’t been able to breathe.”

According to Reuters, the war began in the capital Khartoum in April 2023 over the integration of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Services (RSF).

It has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, pushing more than 12 million people out of their homes, and plunging half of the population into hunger.

The RSF’s occupation of El Gezira turned the fertile state into one at risk of famine. Its tight-knit villages were emptied out by violent raids as fields lay fallow or were set on fire, residents and eyewitnesses have said.

The RSF denies the accusations and says it is fighting rogue actors who are committing abuses.

The army’s ability to regain full control of the state would be pivotal in its attempts to choke the RSF’s supply lines to Khartoum and the army-controlled eastern half of the country.

The RSF still controls most of the capital.

“The SAF’s capture of Wad Madani boosts its own morale and puts large RSF contingents at risk of encirclement in the area,” said Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.

“It also frees the SAF to intensify pressure on Khartoum before potentially shifting its focus westward,” he said, while warning that the RSF could launch a counteroffensive on al-Fashir, the army’s last remaining holdout in the western Darfur region.

“This is a big victory that we thank God for, but we are not stopping, we are going swiftly, we are in a hurry, and God-willing soon every inch of Sudan will be cleansed,” General Shams el-Din Kabbashi, deputy leader of the armed forces, told troops and civilians in Madani.

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