In Sudan, the army retakes an important provincial capital from the paramilitaries

The Sudanese army recaptured on Saturday January 11, with allied groups, Wad Madani, an important provincial capital in the center of the country which had been in the hands of the paramilitaries for more than a year. This development comes as UN agencies and NGOs regularly express alarm at the humanitarian situation in Sudan, where the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has raged since April 2023.

The office of Sudanese Information Minister Khalid al-Aiser said in the afternoon that the army and allied armed groups had ” released “ the city, capital of Al-Jazeera State, located about 200 kilometers south of Khartoum. The army has on its side “felicity” the Sudanese people for “the entry of our forces into the town of Wad Madani this morning”.

In the evening, the FSR admitted having ” lost “ the city. In an audio message addressed to his fighters and the Sudanese people, the leader of the paramilitaries, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, however promised “reconquer”. “Today we lost a round, we did not lose the battle”he said.

The RSF still controls the rest of Al-Jazeera, as well as almost all of the vast Darfur region in western Sudan and parts of the south of the country. The army has control over the north and east of the country, as well as parts of the capital Khartoum.

“Great Victory”

A video shared on social media by the army earlier showed fighters claiming to be inside the city. Agence France-Presse (AFP) was unable to independently verify the situation on the ground due to a months-long communications blackout.

“The army and allied fighters deployed in the streets of the city”a witness told AFP from his home in central Wad Madani, who requested anonymity for his safety. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed a “great victory”claiming that the army had reconquered Wad Madani. The army, however, stressed on Saturday that its forces were working to “clean up the remains of the rebel presence in the city”.

The Local Resistance Committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups created across the country to coordinate aid on the ground, saw Saturday’s advance as the end of “tyranny” FSRs.

In several towns across the country controlled by the army, witnesses reported that dozens of people took to the streets to celebrate the army’s recapture of Wad Madani. In an area controlled by the army in Omdurman, a town adjacent to Khartoum, residents chanted “one army, one people”according to a witness who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Nearly 12 million displaced by the war

During the first months of the war between the army and the RSF, more than half a million people took refuge in the state of Al-Jazeera, an important agricultural region, once considered the breadbasket of Sudan. But the paramilitaries launched a lightning offensive there in December 2023, taking Wad Madani and again displacing more than 300,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians and indiscriminately bombing residential areas. Washington formally accused the FSR on Tuesday of having committed “genocide” in Sudan.

The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced 12 million people and pushed the country to the brink of famine. The UN has described the situation in Sudan as the world’s largest population displacement crisis and one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced this week that 3.2 million children under the age of five risk suffering from acute malnutrition in 2025.