Two children among 14 killed in fight for Khartoum police headquarters

Sudan's paramilitary RSF captures elite force's base in capital

Girls at a camp for the internally displaced in Al Suwar, south of Sudan's capital. AFP

At least 14 people, including two children, were killed in Sudan's capital as warring sides battled over control of the Khartoum police headquarters, activists said on Monday.

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said on Sunday it had captured the base of a pro-army elite police force after a fierce two-day battle.

The Sudanese Health Ministry said 217 people were injured, 72 of them critically, in the battle. Other victims, not accounted for, died in an air strike.

A network of activists evacuating the wounded to the few hospitals that were still operating told AFP that two of the victims were children.

The army, which has fought the RSF since mid-April, said on Saturday it had repelled three attempts by the paramilitary force to storm the site in the south-west Khartoum district of Kalaklah, inflicting heavy losses on the attackers.

On Monday, the army acknowledged the capture by the RSF of the headquarters of the police's Central Reserves, a special force primarily tasked with dealing with riots and street protests. It said the capture of the facility was in violation of international law protecting civilian installations.

The RSF posted videos reportedly showing its fighters celebrating inside the site. In one clip, the ground was strewn with dead bodies and smoke was seen rising in the background as RSF fighters took firing positions as gunfire rang out.

Another clip showed rows of intact all-terrain vehicles that belonged to the police, with one RSF fighter shouting “our spoils.” And one showed a badly damaged building, with a blackened gaping hole in one side.

The capture of the special police force's headquarters has underlined the edge the RSF has enjoyed over the army in the battle for Khartoum. It has had thousands of lightly armed and mobile fighters in all-terrain vehicles embedded across much of the city, including in residential neighbourhoods, since the early days of the war.

The army, heavily reliant on artillery and air strikes, has faced difficulties in dislodging them.

News of the capture of the Central Reserves' headquarters broke as the Sudanese capital recorded a surge in fighting, with witnesses reporting clashes, artillery fire and air strikes as the army-RSF war entered its 11th week, displacing 2.5 million people and creating a major humanitarian crisis.

Of the displaced, 600,000 found refuge in neighbouring countries, primarily Egypt, Chad and South Sudan.

Residents in the three cities that make up the wider capital – Khartoum, Bahri and Omdurman – said the sharp increase in fighting started on Saturday evening and continued unabated until Sunday.

Fighting in the capital and elsewhere in the vast Afro-Arab nation has intensified since a series of ceasefires mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia failed to halt the violence. Talks on a permanent truce held in Jeddah were adjourned last week, with Washington and Riyadh reportedly looking to change the negotiating formula.

However, the warring sides led by army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his one-time ally and deputy RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo appear determined to gain the upper hand in Khartoum, where the continuing urban warfare is unlikely to produce a victor.

“Since the early morning in north Omdurman we've had air strikes and artillery bombardment and RSF anti-aircraft fire,” 47-year-old resident Mohamed Al Samani said. “Where are the Jeddah talks, why did the world leave us to die alone in Burhan and Hemedti's war?” he said, using Gen Dagalo's nickname.

Predictably, the fighting in Khartoum has spilt over into other parts of Sudan, mostly in the western region of Darfur where a genocidal war raged in the 2000s, killing 300,000 and displacing 2.5 million.

Witnesses reported a spike in violence in recent days in Nyala, Darfur's largest city. The UN, meanwhile, raised the alarm on Saturday over the killing of people from the ethnically African Masalit community in the town of Al Geneina in West Darfur State.

In Nyala, witnesses reported a marked deterioration in the security situation over the past few days, with violent clashes in residential neighbourhoods. There was also fighting between the army and the RSF last week around El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which the UN says is inaccessible to humanitarian workers.

In El Geneina, attacks by the RSF and allied Arab militias have sent tens of thousands fleeing to Chad.

On Saturday, UN Human Rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani called for safe passage for people fleeing El Geneina and access for aid workers following reports of summary executions between the city and the Chad border and “persistent hate speech,” including calls to kill the Masalit or expel them.

The RSF's forerunner is the Janjaweed militia, which fought on the government's side during the Darfur war. It was legitimised and made part of the armed forces by dictator Omar Al Bashir, who was removed from power in 2019 by his generals amid a popular uprising.

Al Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court more than a decade ago for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. The Janjaweed is widely blamed for large-scale atrocities against civilians in Darfur during that conflict.

Gen Dagalo said last week he regretted the violence in Al Geneina but never offered an apology for the crimes committed by his men.

Agencies contributed to this report