Sudan’s army has launched a major offensive in the capital, Khartoum, to regain ground held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), military sources have told Al Jazeera.

The army carried out air raids on Thursday against RSF positions in the capital and north of Khartoum in its biggest such assault in months.

Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said the army has taken control of three main bridges, including two that connect the city of Omdurman with the capital.

Its forces have “been advancing towards … the presidential palace where there has also been heavy fighting reported”, said Morgan.

The army attacked several military sites belonging to the RSF, the sources said, and the Sudanese Air Force was carrying out several flights over Khartoum.

At least four people were killed and 14 wounded during artillery shelling on Thursday morning by the RSF, which targeted residential neighbourhoods in the Karari Governorate, north of Omdurman, according to Khartoum State Health Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ibrahim.

Though the army retook some ground in Omdurman early this year, it depends mostly on artillery and air raids and has been unable to dislodge more effective RSF ground forces embedded in Khartoum.

Military sources said the assault was “in the works for months”, said Morgan, against the din of artillery and fighter jets overhead.

Sudan plunged into conflict in April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo broke out in a conflict that has so far displaced more than 10 million people – about 8.1 million people inside Sudan while about two million have been forced to flee the country, according to data from the United Nations.

“You can hear the heavy artillery now still ongoing, so it looks like the army is still fighting the RSF in several positions,” Morgan reported.

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