The Sudanese army said Saturday it had retaken a key state capital south of Khartoum from rival paramilitaries who had held it for the past five months.
The Sennar state capital of Sinja is a strategic prize in the 19-month-old war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, as it lies on a key road linking army-controlled areas of eastern and central Sudan.
The army said that Sinja had been “liberated… from the terrorist militia.”
It posted footage on social media that it said had been filmed inside the main base in the city.
“Sinja has returned to the embrace of the nation,” the information minister of the army-backed government, Khaled al-Aiser, said in a statement.
Aiser’s office said armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had travelled to the city of Sennar, 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the north, on Saturday to “inspect the operation and celebrate the liberation of Sinja.”
The RSF had taken the two cities in a lightning offensive in June that saw nearly 726,000 civilians flee, according to UN figures.
Human rights groups have said that those who were unwilling or unable to leave have faced months of arbitrary violence by RSF fighters.
Sinja teacher Abdullah al-Hassan spoke of his “indescribable joy” at seeing the army enter the city after “months of terror.”
“At any moment, you were waiting for militia fighters to barge in and beat you or loot you,” the 53-year-old told AFP by telephone.
Both sides in the Sudanese conflict have been accused of war crimes, including indiscriminately shelling homes, markets, and hospitals.
The RSF has also been accused of summary executions, systematic sexual violence, and rampant looting.
The paramilitaries control nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur as well as large swathes of Kordofan in the south. They also hold much of the capital Khartoum and the key farming state of Al-Jazira to its south.
Since April 2023, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 11 million — creating what the UN says is the world’s largest displacement crisis.
From the eastern state of Gedaref — where more than 1.1 million displaced people have sought refuge — Asia Khedr, 46, said she hoped her family’s ordeal might soon be at an end.
“We’ll finally go home and say goodbye to this life of displacement and suffering,” she told AFP.
