The Sudanese army says its forces have entered Wad Madani in an effort to retake the town from the RSF | News

The military says it is working to ‘clear out remaining rebel pockets’ inside the state capital of Gezira.

The Sudanese army and allied armed groups entered Wad Madani and pushed the rival Rapid Support Force (RSF) paramilitary out of the strategic town in Gezira state, according to the military.

In a statement on Saturday, the armed forces “congratulated” the Sudanese people for “the entry of our forces into the town of Wad Madani this morning” after more than a year of RSF control.

“They are now working to clear the remaining rebel pockets in the city,” the statement said.

There was no immediate comment from RSF.

The office of Khalid al-Aiser, spokesman for the government of the allied army and Minister of Information and Culture, said the army had “liberated” the city.

The army has released a video showing soldiers inside a town that has been under RSF control since December 2023.

The Sudanese army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, causing what the UN calls the world’s worst displacement crisis and famine in parts of the northeast African country.

Wad Madani is strategic as it is the crossroads of key supply highways connecting several states and is the closest major town to the capital, Khartoum.

Army ‘in most parts of Wad Madani’

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said military forces had been advancing on the city in recent days.

“They occupied villages in the south and southeast [Gezira] state until this morning, when they took over the Hantoub bridge – the decisive bridge leading into the city,” she said.

“The army is now in most parts of Wad Madani,” she added.

“The army and allied fighters spread out around us through the streets of the city,” one witness told the AFP news agency from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing war crimes, including targeting civilians and indiscriminate shelling of residential areas.

Paramilitary forces have been accused of summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire cities.

United States on Tuesday he said The RSF “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Dagl, also known as Hemedti.

The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed Wad Madani’s advance as an end to RSF “tyranny”.

Witnesses in army-held towns across Sudan reported dozens of people taking to the streets to celebrate the news.

Twelve million displaced

The recapture of Gezira state as a whole could mark a turning point in a war that began over disputes over the integration of the two powers, creating one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 12 million people, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.

In the early months of the war, more than half a million people sought refuge in Gezira, before a lightning offensive by the RSF displaced more than 300,000 people in December 2023, according to UN figures.

Most have been repeatedly displaced since then, as the dreaded paramilitaries moved further south.

The RSF still holds the rest of the central agricultural state of Gezira, as well as almost all of Sudan’s western Darfur region and parts of the country’s south.

The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital Khartoum.