Sudan, 21 April 2023
Hello everybody!
Despite the second 24-hours-cease-fire, and then the third – 72-hours-long – armistice, the fighting in Sudan went on, the last two days. Indeed, one could say that what is meanwhile an obvious ‘civil war’ even has something like ‘frontlines’ – even if those in the Khartoum area are…. well, hard to describe them as anything else than a ‘mess’.
What is certain by now is that one of primary aims of the RSF on the morning of 15 April 2023, was the destruction of the Sudan Air Force (right after securing all the important installations in Khartoum and several other major cities and towns around the country, of course). This is both logical and making sense: Sudan is a country dominated by open semi-deserts. Whoever controls the airspace, controls nearly everything else, too. Moreover, the SuAF was the major difference between the RSF and the regular armed forces: the RSF did operate few transports and helicopters, but had nothing like the firepower of SuAFs fighter-bombers and attack helicopters.
By now, there’s no denial that the RSF managed to knock out much of the SuAF. As far as is known, by now the SuAF lost (whether due to RSF action, to its own air strikes, or other sort of combat action):
- 4 An-12s, 3 An-26/32, and 2 An-72/74 (No. 1 Squadron) at Khartoum IAP
- 7 Mi-24/35 (No. 3 Squadron) at Jebel Aulia AB or shot down over Khartoum
- 1 Mi-8/17 (No. 3 Squadron) at Khartoum IAP
- 3 Su-25 (No. 24 Squadron) at al-Ubayyid AB
- 2 FTC-2000 (Flight School) at Merowe AB
Gauging by satellite photos of Wadi Sayyidna, this is leaving the SuAF with very few Su-25s in operational condition. Only the MiG-29-fleet (No. 2 Squadron) and Su-24s (No. 4 Squadron) remain fully operational, but the latter is of limited use in a war of this kind (Su-24 is hard to maintain and fly, and not flexible enough to go ‘hunting’ single technicals around city streets). Of course, the Sudanese can – and are probably going to – arm their K-8S jet trainers of the Flight School (Port Sudan AB), and try to repair whatever FTC-2000s are still repairable (Merowe AB).
Now to the situation on the ground…
Northern & River Nile States
The RSF is definitely out of Merowe, even if stressing it still has the presence near that town. My assessment is that it withdrew all the way back to Omdurman, and that the Burhan regime has thus secured its grip over both the Northern and the River Nile States.
Red Sea State
The SDF is claiming to have destroyed whatever RSF assets were in the Port Sudan area. To make sure: I’m not buying any of Burhan’s claims for ‘destroyed’ at all, but the RSF units deployed there are too far away from their bases, and the SDF strong enough to force them out and away from any major urban areas, and from major roads.
Interesting detail: the local RSF commander (sorry, missed his name) complained about his forces coming under ‘air strikes by unidentified aircraft’. Around the same time (early on 20 April), the WSJ quoted a ‘Sudanese army official’ who claimed that Egyptian fighter jets ‘destroyed an ammunition depot controlled by the RSF. Egyptian fanboys in the social media picked this up and claimed – more or less – all these air strikes as flown by the EAF. Can’t blame them: Port Sudan is about 680km away from Wadi Sayyidna AB, ‘as the crow flies’. Pending more detailed information.
Now, the Sudan TV has released videos shown – between others – K-8S’ of the SuAF flying low over Port Sudan, but I’m not sure if these are archive images or taken recently. Point is, until the SuAF has already pressed K-8S of its Flight School into combat, I assess the likelihood of even Su-24Ms flying strikes on the RSF in the Red Sea State for ‘minimal’.
One way or the other: the Red Sea State remains safely in hands of the Burhan regime.
Khartoum
The battle for Khartoum and Omdurman is a big mess, best described as ‘focusing on approach roads and bridges’. Why that? The control over the bridges over the White and Blue Nile, and (further north) the Nile, is of crucial importance. The side controlling them can move forces and supplies from one bank to the other – or prevent the other side from doing that.
From north towards south, the situation in the Khartoum area is something like this:
- RSF controls the northern half of Omdurman, approximately from the al-Halfaya Bridge down to the Shambat Bridge.
- SDF controls the southern side, apparently including the Military Hosptial, the Morada- and the Victory Bridges.
- North Khartoum is the biggest mess, with SDF apparently ‘bottling up’ three or four RSF units in different districts there.
- Thanks to the control over the Victory Bridge, the SDF managed to push its forces from southern Omdurman into downtown Khartoum, along the Army Road. They’re advancing with support of heavy artillery and tanks. Additional reinforcements are entering the city from multiple other directions. That said, the Nimir Bridge over the Blue Nile seems to be under RSF’s control.
- Further east, the Blue Nile Bridge is under the SDF control, and Burhan’s forces seem to have strong positions on both its northern- and southern ends. From there, they’re attacking the General Headquarters Building and the northern side of Khartoum IAP.
- Khartoum IAP and most military buildings west of it remain under the RSF control, but the SDF is squeezing them from the north, west and – especially – south, and SuAF attack helicopters are flying repeated air strikes. For example, SuAF Mi-24/35s were in action this morning again (to make sure: no, SuAF is not operating any kind of - US-made - ‘Apache’ attack helicopters. Correspondingly, any kind of RSF claims for shoot-downs of ‘Apaches’ are either related to SuAF Mi-24/35s or pipedreams).
- Most of the city south of Khartoum IAP appears to be under the SDF control. However, the RSF seems to still be in control over the Manshia Bridge, spanning the Blue Nile east of the airport. If yes, this is how it’s keeping its troops at the IAP resupplied and reinforced.
….and in between all of this are about 2.7 million civilians living in Khartoum, without electricity and dependable supply of fresh water and food for almost a week, and with some 60 out of about 80 medical facilities out of operation…
North Kordofan
The RSF seems to have secured not only al-Ubayyid AB/Airport, but to be in control of the highway from there to Rabak, and along the western side of the White Nile River all the way up to southern Omdurman. Thanks to its control of the Jebel Aulia Dam, it has a land connection to the eastern side, and thus can keep its forces in downtown Khartoum resupplied, too.
North Darfur, West Darfur, Central Darfur, South Darfur, East Darfur, West Kordofan
Essentially, all these states seem to be under the RSF control – together with airports in el-Fashir, al-Junaynah/Geneina, and Nyala. The Chadian government reported that about 300-400 SDF troops fled over the border to Chad, were disarmed and detained. Guess, this means something like ‘fighting for West Darfur is over’ (at least for the time being).
Further south east: sorry, not sure about the situation in East Darfur and West Kordofan: think to have caught (somewhere in the Arabic-speaking social media) somebody’s map shown at least the northern portion of the latter as ‘under RSF control’, but East Darfur as ‘under SDF control’ – but can’t find it any more.
Sissi’s Games
Perhaps the most ironic in all of these affairs are the efforts of the Egyptian regime to present the evacuation of its troops from Sudan as ‘another big victory’ – while, actually, the Egyptian intelligence services and armed forces were all caught ‘with their underwear down’, once again.
As mentioned earlier, on 15 April, a contingent of Egyptian Air Force (EAF) pilots and ground personnel, protected by Sayka (Egyptian commandos) at Merowe Air Base was overrun and disarmed by the RSF. The way things look like right now, as of that morning this contingent included about 200 military personnel, 5 or 6 MiG-29M2s, one CN.239 transport, and one Mi-17 helicopter (in addition to at least one civilian Sudanese An-26). Initially, the RSF ‘just’ overrun the base, disarmed and detained the Egyptians, but left all the aircraft and other heavy equipment intact.
On 16 April, the SDF counterattacked, forcing the RSF to withdraw. In the course of its withdrawal, the RSF shot up at least three MiGs: gauging by Maxar’s satellite photos, two were set on fire. The local fire-brigade might have extinguished the fire on one in time, but another MiG is certainly a write off (so much so, that this is clearly visible on satellite photographs). During the same withdrawal, the RSF also destroyed one of the Sudan Air Force FTC-2000s parked on another apron of this facility. Moreover, the RSF took away all the 177 Egyptians.
The RSF counterattacked and was in control of Merowe on the morning of 17 April again, but only for a few hours: the final SDF counterattack forced it to withdraw towards
Official Cairo then made bombastic announcements, creating impressions in style of, ‘Egypt’s going to bomb half of Sudan if RSF doesn’t return Egyptian troops’, before changing the story to something in direction of ‘air bridge for evacuation of Egyptians is in full swing’. Actually, Cairo negotiated with both RSF and SDF, and eventually the ‘rebels’ released 177 military personnel: on 19 April, they were flown out of Merowe AB on board of three C-130H Hercules transports of the EAF. Not sure what did Egyptians do with all the MiGs, the CN.295, the Mi-17 – and at least one Avenger air defence system known to have been around as of 20 April….
Meanwhile, on withdrawal from Merowe, the RSF took some 27 Egyptian military personnel with it. Reportedly, they were handed over to the Egyptian embassy in Khartoum on 20 April (which in turn would mean: the RSF found the way of withdrawing its units from the Merowe area all the way down to Khartoum, despite the strong SDF and SuAF presence in the Wadi Sayyidna area, in between).
To make sure: there is still no ‘airlift’ from Khartoum: it seems that several Western governments – foremost USA and France – are trying to negotiate the evacuation of their citizens out of the embattled city, which is why the US Air Force and the Armée de l’Air (French Air Force), are meanwhile transferring their transport aircraft to Djibouti.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/3962645-evidence-shows-russian-mercenary-group-wagner-is-arming-militia-leader-in-sudan-report/
So the "Cn-239" is a C-295, right?