NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: This news just in but I can't verify it. It's behind a paywall at The Times online so I subscribed in order to read the report. After doing so, I still can't access the full report. Maybe it's propaganda that somehow found its way into the website. Here's what I saw.
Report from The Times
By Fred Harter, Port Sudan
Dated Tuesday 09 May 2023
Sudan presidential palace blown up in military strike
The presidential palace at the centre of fierce fighting between Sudan's warring military leaders has been destroyed in an airstrike, according to the country's paramilitary unit. The Rapid...
Read more here:
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UPDATE 30 mins later: Here below is the full report including 2 photos currently on website of The Times. Note, there are no photos of the allegedly destroyed palace. One of the car photos appeared online earlier this week.
Also, a Reuters report just in says "an army source denied the claim"- see the report by Reuters here:
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Sudan presidential palace blown up in military strike
Fred Harter, Port Sudan | Jane Flanagan
Tuesday May 09 2023, 9.30pm, The Times
The presidential palace at the centre of fierce fighting between Sudan’s warring military leaders has been destroyed in an airstrike, according to the country’s paramilitary unit.
The Rapid Support Forces have held the compound since April 15, when tensions between the country’s two most powerful figures exploded into warfare and turned the capital into a battleground.
In a statement last night the RSF said the colonial-era building — where the famed British Army officer Gordon of Khartoum was killed during the colonial era — had been devastated by missiles launched by air force fighter jets. They pledged “an appropriate response”.
Residents living near the sprawling complex, featured on stamps and bank notes, have been caught up in the clashes between forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de-facto leader since a coup in 2019, and the RSF’s warlord leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The palace attack is expected to stall talks between their envoys, who are meeting in neighbouring Saudi Arabia to discuss a truce to allow humanitarian organisations to reach those in need.
Exact figures have been impossible to determine, but hundreds of people are believed to have been killed and thousands wounded since fighting broke out, with aid supplies disrupted and 115,000 refugees fleeing into neighbouring states.
Elradi Hamdan, 44, an architectural engineer from Edinburgh, told The Times that Foreign Office officials informed him he could only board an RAF plane in Port Sudan if he left behind his pregnant wife and five children, all of whom are Sudanese. “They said, ‘If you want to come alone there is no problem, but you cannot take anybody else, not even your children’,” Hamdan said. “They just took people with the British passport.”
British government flights out of the country for UK passport holders ended last week. Saudi Arabia and other countries, including the United States, are still evacuating people from Port Sudan’s dockside.
Hamdan’s wife is recovering from breast cancer and his children are traumatised after being caught up in the fighting in Khartoum. As Hamdan spoke to The Times, his 10-year-old son could be heard crying out in the background. “He’s talking about the war in his sleep,” Hamdan said. “He heard a lot of gunshots and saw a lot of things a kid his age shouldn’t see.”
The family are camping in a half-built call centre owned by a friend. Before arriving in Port Sudan, they travelled twice to the Wadi Seidna airstrip, another site where the RAF had been staging evacuation flights.
On the second trip, Hamdam said he watched “five or six flights come and go” as officials refused to take his family. He returned to his home to find it had been looted.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “As a British citizen, I can go anywhere if there is a ticket. But I cannot leave my wife and children behind.”
The presidential palace in Khartoum has been at the centre of the fight
RAPID SUPPORT FORCES/ESN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
A destroyed car near the presidential palace. People living near the compound have been caught up in fierce clashes between the warring factions
GETTY IMAGES
View original: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sudan-presidential-palace-blown-up-in-military-strike-f3c23mgjq
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