- Fighting started early Saturday at military bases in southern Khartoum then quickly spread across the city to the presidential palace, the headquarters of the state broadcaster and the international airport.
- Videos circulating on social media show soldiers firing in the streets, armored vehicles speeding through residential areas and travelers taking shelter on the floor of the airport amid reports of battles inside the terminal and near the runway.
- It is believed the military has taken over the government.
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Gunshots and explosions rang out on Saturday morning in several parts of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as months of rising tensions between rival groups of the armed forces appeared to turn into an all-out battle for control of one of the country which is biggest in Africa.
Fighting that started early Saturday at military bases in southern Khartoum quickly spread across the city to the presidential palace, the headquarters of the state broadcaster and the international airport.
Videos circulating on social media showed soldiers firing in the streets, armored vehicles speeding through residential areas and travelers taking shelter on the floor of the airport amid reports of battles inside the terminal and near the runway.
A screenshot of a video shared on twitter shows a military jet blasting off a bomb at a residential place in Khartoum.
The clashes came after weeks of mounting tensions between the Sudanese Army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan.
By lunchtime Saturday, the Rapid Support Forces claimed in a statement to have seized the presidential palace, a guesthouse inside the military headquarters, and the country’s main international airport as well as airfields in the cities of al-Obeid and Meroe. The claims could not be independently verified.
United Nations officials and foreign diplomats have struggled in recent days to prevent the tensions from turning violent. But as worried residents hunkered in their homes early Saturday, those efforts were spectacularly collapsing.
Each side accused the other of starting the fight. In a statement, the Rapid Support Forces said it first came under attack at a camp in Soba, in the south of Khartoum, by the regular army “with all kinds of heavy and light weapons.”
More videos revealing the sordid details of the ongoing takeover continue to flood social media channels in hastags that have become the most popular.
A military official, speaking to the Al Jazeera news network, accused the paramilitaries of shooting first, and said they were trying to seize control of the military headquarters in the city center.
Sudan has a long experience of military coups: Since independence in 1956, the country has had more successful military takeovers than any other African country. But it has rarely seen open clashes between rival military units like the ones unfolding on Saturday, stirring fear that Sudan was tumbling into a civil war.
The ouster of Sudan’s longtime dictator, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in a popular revolution in 2019 spurred hopes for an end to decades of internal strife and international isolation. Mr. al-Bashir, who ruled for three decades, oversaw a ruinous conflict in the south of the country that culminated in the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
The Sudanese Air force jet that was captured in a video firing the rocket.
Photo|Twitter
He also oversaw a campaign of state-sponsored violence in the western region of Darfur from 2013 that led to him being indicted on charges of war crimes and genocide at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Mr. al-Bashir was never brought to trial on those charges, but was convicted of corruption and other offenses after the 2019 revolution, and is currently incarcerated at the Kober prison in Khartoum.
But the popular euphoria, and hopes for democracy, that accompanied his ouster were crushed in October 2021 when the military seized power in a coup.
In December, amid a crushing economic crisis, the military agreed to hand over authority as of this month to a civilian-led government. But the process was dominated by an increasingly open rivalry between General al-Burhan and General Hamdan, who is widely known as Hemeti.
In recent months, the two generals have issued lightly veiled criticism of each other in speeches, and moved reinforcements and armored vehicles to rival military camps across the city.
In an interview last month, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, the deputy commander of the Rapid Support Forces, said that a large new wall that had been built around the military headquarters was intended to protect the military chief, General al-Burhan.
