The Sudanese military recaptured a key city in Sudan’s breadbasket region on Saturday, chasing out a paramilitary group that the United States accused last week of genocide.
Sudan’s information minister said the army had “liberated” the city, Wad Madani, while the military said that its troops were working to “clear the remnants of the rebels” from the area.
If the army can hold on to the city, it would be its most significant victory since the war started nearly two years ago. Experts said it would most likely shift the focus of the war northward to Khartoum, the capital.
Videos circulating online showed the army entering Wad Madani, which lies about 100 miles south of the capital. Local media reported that fighters with the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., were fleeing the city.
The group’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, admitted defeat but vowed to soon recapture the city. “Today we lost a round; we did not lose the battle,” he said in an audio address to his fighters and the Sudanese people.
The victory brought joyous scenes in army-held parts of the country among Sudanese who hoped it might signal a turning point in a ruinous civil war that has led to massacres, ethnic cleansing and a spreading famine in one of Africa’s largest countries.
People massed on the battle-scarred streets of Khartoum, while church bells pealed in Port Sudan, the wartime de facto capital where many Sudanese have fled the fighting. Celebrations also erupted among exiled Sudanese in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The R.S.F. defeat came just over a year after the group seized Wad Madani in a victory that forced tens of thousands of people to flee and sent shock waves across Sudan. The group’s fighters went on to capture swaths of the country, far from their stronghold in Darfur in western Sudan.
But much of the most brutal fighting was in Darfur, where R.S.F. fighters massacred members of rival ethnic groups, according to human rights groups and the United Nations. Last week the United States formally determined that those killings constituted genocide, and it imposed sanctions on the R.S.F.’s leader, General Hamdan, who is widely known as Hemeti.
The United States also imposed sanctions on seven companies in the United Arab Emirates that it accused of trading gold and buying weapons on behalf of the R.S.F.
In recent months, the tide of the fight appeared to turn as the R.S.F. ceded territory in Khartoum and in parts of the east of the country. The military launched a counteroffensive in the area around Wad Madani, culminating in the recapture of the city on Saturday.
Still, it was too early to say if the victory would fundamentally change the course of the conflict. Since the first shots were fired in April 2023, the momentum of the fighting has swung back and forth, sometimes wildly.
The army and the R.S.F. were once allies, and their leaders joined to mount a military coup in 2021. But in the war between them, they have enjoyed the backing of different foreign powers.
The R.S.F. is supported by the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf sponsor that has supplied it with weapons and powerful drones, mostly smuggled into Sudan from neighboring countries.
The Sudanese military has obtained or bought weapons from Iran, Russia and Turkey. Both sides mine the country’s vast reserves of gold to finance the fight.
For ordinary Sudanese, the war has brought only misery, death and destruction, killing tens of thousands of people, scattering 11 million from their homes and setting off one of the world’s worst famines in decades.
The global authority on hunger, known as the I.P.C., reported last month that famine had spread to five areas in Sudan and was expected to reach another five in the coming months. In all, 25 million Sudanese suffer from acute or chronic hunger.
Both sides have committed atrocities and war crimes, according to the United Nations and American officials, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing.