After nearly two years of fighting, Sudan’s military retook the presidential palace in Khartoum on Friday, the last heavily guarded bastion of rival paramilitary forces in the capital.

Commanders soon shared videos of soldiers cheering in the building, its glass windows shattered and walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Stepping on broken tiles, troops carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers chanted: “God is the greatest!”

Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had vowed to fight to the end. In the days that followed, scores of his fighters died for his defiant stance, first bombarded in a shrinking pocket around the palace, and then cut down in the street by drones in a desperate attempt to break out.

By early Friday, the army claimed to be in full control of the palace, marking its biggest symbolic victory in two years of horrific civil war, and a possible watershed in the conflict.

The victory is not an end to the war, or even an end to the battle for Khartoum, but it has underlined a remarkable change in fortune for the army after it was caught flat-footed and lost significant territory when the conflict began in April 2023.

Arms and money from Russia, Iran and other benefactors, as well as success raising vital new militia forces, are all credited with bringing a string of battlefield gains in recent months.