Battles continue around SAF General Command in Khartoum

Continuing clashes and persistent artillery shelling in the vicinity of the General Command of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in Khartoum entered their fifth day with escalating intensity, according to reports from the ground. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) claimed they downed a warplane that was attacking residential neighbourhoods with barrel bombs.

Activist Mohamed Kendasha told Radio Dabanga that the RSF continued shelling the SAF’s General Command, situated near Khartoum International Airport, at 03:00 on Wednesday. “The fighting persisted until noon, with the army targeting areas in Khartoum’s Jabra neighbourhood as well”.

Kendasha, a member of the Southern Belt* Emergency Room, noted that Wednesday brought a relative calm to the area, “following an incident on Tuesday evening in which a child was killed, and six others sustained injuries, due to the impact of three shells”.

Witnesses reported ongoing artillery barrages emanating from the Karari military base in Omdurman towards Sharg El Nil since the early hours of Wednesday, and persisting throughout the day.

Neighbourhoods including El Murabaat, El Fitihab, and El Bustan in Omdurman also witnessed clashes between SAF and RSF forces on Wednesday morning.

Notably, the Zain telecommunications network reestablished its service in Omdurman after interruptions since Tuesday, while the Sudani network remained interrupted.

‘Warplane shot down’

On Wednesday, the RSF claimed to have downed an SAF warplane in the capital. In a statement released via X (formerly known as Twitter), the RSF claimed that the downed warplane dropped barrel bombs on residential areas “which demonstrates [the SAF’s] blatant disregard for the lives of innocent civilians in Sudan”.

According to Sudan War Monitor, footage circulating on social media, claiming to show debris from the warplane, actually shows a Sukhoi-25 fighter jet that recently crashed in Mali. A separate video depicting an aircraft exploding in mid-air was however “deemed authentic based on dialect analysis”.

* Khartoum’s Southern Belt is part of the periphery of the capital inhabited by people earlier displaced by wars in Darfur, Kordofan, and Blue Nile region and South Sudanese refugees, and by impoverished farmers from various parts of the country who lost their lands to banks.