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 overlooks the river Nile, and 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 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As the R.S.F. has withdrawn from those areas, the war’s grim toll has become starkly apparent.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.
In the city center, army snipers trained their rifles through the windows of a deserted luxury apartment block overlooking the Nile. On the far bank, a riverboat slumped on its side. A surveillance drone buzzed overhead.
A lace curtain billowed around Sgt. Maj. Ismail Hassan as he peered through his binoculars at the bombed-out presidential palace, which sat amid a cluster of hollowed-out office blocks.
“They have many snipers deployed in the tall buildings,” said the army officer. “That’s what makes it so hard.”
The R.S.F.’s best snipers came from Ethiopia, he said, citing military intelligence reports. A document found by The Times at a deserted R.S.F. base in the city, listing recent Ethiopian recruits, supported that idea.
By some estimates, the capital’s prewar population of about eight million people has been reduced to two million. In recently recaptured areas, the army has moved residents to temporary camps on the edge of the city, where the army is screening for R.S.F. sympathizers, several residents said.
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.”
Mr. Juma mopped the sweat from his brow.
“We can’t take any more of this war,” he said.
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.
In parts of the city, wild bushes sprouted in empty streets, adding to the apocalyptic air. Faded billboards, erected before the war, advertised goods at one-tenth of their current prices — a reflection of war’s crushing economic cost.
But the picture is markedly different in Omdurman, west of the Nileand controlled by the army. Here, markets and restaurants are bustling, and even jewelry stores have reopened as residents stream back.
Even here, though, death is never far.
On Monday night, a volley of R.S.F. rockets landed in a quiet street where six neighbors had gathered under a palm tree to drink coffee after fasting for Ramadan.
After an explosion rocked his house, Moamer Atiyatallah stumbled through the cloud of dust, calling out to his friends under the palm tree, “What happened, guys?”
Nobody answered. All six men — a carpenter, an auto trader and a rickshaw driver, among others — had been killed, as well as two other men who were passing in the streets.
An hour after the strike, wailing women had spilled into the dark street, where stony-faced men picked up scraps of flesh from the ground and gathered them into plastic bags. A distraught young girl ran past.
“Father!” she screamed. “Father!”
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed reporting.
