Sudan’s Military Drives Rival Fighters Out of Khartoum, a Major Shift in Civil War

Paramilitary fighters with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces withdrew in large numbers from the battered capital of Khartoum on Wednesday, fleeing a city they had occupied since a ruinous war broke out nearly two years ago.

“Khartoum is now free,” declared Sudan’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who arrived by helicopter for a brief visit to the battle-ravaged presidential palace, which his forces had seized days earlier.

Residents poured onto the street, cheering soldiers, in Burri, a neighborhood by the Nile “One army, one people,” they chanted. Soldiers combed through newly captured areas, hunting for paramilitary stragglers, some of whom were beaten.

The capture of the capital by Sudan’s military marked a momentous shift in Africa’s largest war, which has brought massacres, famine and sweeping destruction in its wake. But it is unlikely to end the war.

The Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., is likely to regroup in Darfur, its stronghold in Sudan’s far west, analysts said, where it has vowed to establish a parallel government and continue to prosecute the war.