Sudan's military said it retook the Republican Palace in Khartoum, the last bastion in the capital of rival paramilitary forces, after nearly two years of fighting.
Social media videos showed its soldiers inside giving the date as the 21st day of Ramadan, which is Friday. A Sudanese military officer wearing a captain's rank made the announcement in the video, and its details confirmed the troops were inside the compound.
The palace appeared to be partly in ruins, with soldiers' steps crunching broken tiles underneath their boots. Soldiers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers chanted: "God is the greatest!"
The fall of the Republican Palace − a compound along the Nile River that was the seat of government before the war erupted and is immortalized on Sudanese banknotes and postage stamps − marks another battlefield gain for Sudan's military. It has made steady advances in recent months under army chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
It means the rival Rapid Support Forces, under General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have been expelled from the capital of Khartoum after Sudan's war began in April 2023.
The RSF did not immediately acknowledge the loss, which likely won't stop fighting in the war as the group and its allies still hold territory elsewhere in Sudan. The head of the UN children's agency has said the conflict created the world's largest and humanitarian crisis .
The war has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.
The Republican Palace was the seat of power during the British colonization of Sudan. It then saw some of the first independent Sudanese flags raised over the country in 1956. It was the main office of Sudan's president and other top officials.
Sudan, a nation in northeastern Africa, has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in 2019. A short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when Burhan and Dagalo led a military coup in 2021. The RSF and Sudan's military then began fighting each other in 2023.
Burhan's forces, including Sudan's military and allied militias, have advanced against the RSF since the start of this year. They retook a key refinery north of Khartoum . They've also pushed in on RSF positions around the capital itself. The fighting has led to an increase in civilian casualties.
Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in the western Darfur region with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the UN accuse the RSF and allied Arab militias of again attacking ethnic African groups in this war.
Since the war began, both the Sudanese military and the RSF have faced allegations of human rights abuses. Before US president Joe Biden left office, the State Department declared the RSF was committing genocide. The military and the RSF have denied committing abuses.