Sudanese army announces control of two strategic bridges in Khartoum

Sources confirmed that the Sudanese army took control of the Freedom Bridge, which connects central Khartoum to its south. A Sudanese army commander also confirmed that the Sudanese Armed Forces took control of the Soba Bridge.

Al Jazeera correspondent Osama Sayed Ahmed said that the army's control of the Freedom Bridge, which connects central and southern Khartoum, represented the most prominent development in the recent battles, noting that this coincided with the deployment of army forces in the Arab Market area in the center of the capital, as part of its ongoing operations to reach the presidential palace, which is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces.

A field source had previously told Al Jazeera that the army had taken control of the eastern side of the Soba Bridge, located in the Soba suburb east of Khartoum, after battles with the Rapid Support Forces that lasted for several days.

According to the source, the army, backed by the air force, was able to reach the Soba Bridge linking Khartoum and the East Nile region and retake it from the Rapid Support Forces.

Video clip showing the armed forces taking control of the Soba Bridge from the eastern side, a strategic location linking the East Nile locality to the capital Khartoum #Wakeup_Society pic.twitter.com/Pbrwty3ZXg

— Wakeep (@WakeepAr) February 24, 2025

Before that, the commander of the Sudan Shield Forces, Abu Aqla Kikil, whose forces are fighting alongside the Sudanese army, stated that his forces had taken control of the Soba Police Station, which is close to the bridge linking the capital, Khartoum, and the East Nile region.

Kikil appeared in a video clip from inside the Soba Police Station, which is about one kilometer away from the strategic bridge, where battles took place between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces at dawn today for the second time around the Soba Bridge.

The Soba Bridge is located on the Blue Nile, south of the capital Khartoum, and connects the Soba areas (east and west), and Khartoum and the east of the Nile. The length of the concrete body of the bridge is 571 meters, while its width is 27 meters with 3 lanes in each direction.

Construction of the bridge began in December 2012, and it was put into operation in July 2017, at a cost of $40 million.

On September 26, the army launched a large-scale military operation in the three cities of Khartoum State via the White Nile, Al-Fatehab and Al-Halfaya bridges towards the Rapid Support Forces’ targets, and took control of important sites in central Khartoum, in a significant shift.

There are 10 major bridges connecting the three Sudanese capital cities - Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri - on the Blue and White Niles and the Nile River.

Khartoum is connected to the East Nile by the Soba and Manshiya bridges, which were controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, and is also connected to Khartoum Bahri by the Blue Nile and Armed Forces bridges, "Kober" and "Mak Nimr".

#Khartoum | East of the Nile

The armed forces impose their control over Eastern Soba, including the eastern entrance from the Soba Bridge, while the Rapid Support Militia withdrew to concentrate on the western entrance and Marabi’ Al-Sharif.
- There is a bridge near Marabi' Al Sharif that may pose an obstacle to the advance of the armed forces towards the Umm Dom area and Al Huda neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/g1jECw40eL

— VISTA (@VistaMaps) February 24, 2025

Khartoum is separated from Omdurman by the White Nile, Al-Fateh, and Jebel Awliya bridges, while Khartoum Bahri is connected to Omdurman by the Halfaya and Shambat bridges.

The new advance of the Sudanese army comes in the context of its ongoing offensive pace for some time, through which it has achieved field gains and seized vast areas in the center and south at the expense of the Rapid Support Forces.

Factors and influences

Commenting on these developments, Major General Osama Mohamed Ahmed Abdel Salam, former director of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ Strategic Research and Studies Centre, told Al Jazeera Net that the logical explanation for the successive victories of the Sudanese army is the issue of the simultaneous movements of the army, which were also accompanied by what he described as “a major moral and military collapse of this militia,” referring to the Rapid Support Forces.

He added that there is another factor that helped in these victories, which is that the army worked to dry up the supplies of the Rapid Support Forces by dismembering them, as these forces are now stationed in areas isolated from each other, and some of them cannot supply each other. There is a force in Jebel al-Awliya, a force in the eastern Nile, a force in the Republican Palace, and another in the Tuti Islands, and all of these scattered forces are "under the army's pincers", which is a "pincer" from which no one will escape, according to him, because there is no escape from it except through the Jebel al-Awliya Bridge, and the army forces are now only a few kilometers away from controlling this mountain, and if this step is completed, it will have consequences in accelerating the pace of completing the liberation of Khartoum, according to him.

Al-Abyad city and Al-Kurqul town

Yesterday, Sunday, the Sudanese army announced that it had succeeded in lifting the siege on the city of Al-Abyad, the capital of North Kordofan State, and recapturing the city of Al-Qatana.

The army's military spokesman, Nabil Abdullah, said that the army forces in the Sayyad axis were able to open the road to Al-Abyad in Jabal Kordofan.

A source told Al Jazeera that the army regained control of the Kordofan mountain range through its mobile forces from the city of Rahad to the city of Al-Obeid, which has been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces for more than a year.

Al-Obeid is one of the largest cities in Sudan, and it is the headquarters of the Fifth Infantry Division of the army. It is located deep in the Kordofan region, and has an extension to the center and south of the country.

The army's entry into El Obeid city effectively means lifting the siege on the city and its airport, which may play a major role in being used by the Sudanese Air Force as a launching point towards South Kordofan State and the Rapid Support Forces in Darfur states.

A source in the Sudanese army also told Al Jazeera that the army had retaken the town of Al-Kurgol in South Kordofan State, in the west of the country, which had been under the control of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement led by Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu.

For days, the areas of control of the Rapid Support Forces have begun to decrease at an accelerated pace in favor of the army in the central states (Khartoum and Al-Jazeera) and the southern states (White Nile and North Kordofan) bordering the Darfur region to the west (5 states), and the Rapid Support Forces control 4 states there, while the war has not extended to the north and east of the country.

In Khartoum State, which consists of three cities, the army now controls 90% of the city of Bahri (north), most parts of the city of Omdurman (west), and 60% of the depth of the city of Khartoum, which is in the middle of the state and contains the presidential palace and the international airport, and which are almost surrounded by army forces, while the Rapid Support Forces are still in the eastern and southern neighborhoods of the city.

Source: Al Jazeera + Anadolu