Three civilians, including two children, were killed yesterday in an artillery attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Omdurman, part of Greater Khartoum, a medical source told AFP.Eyewitnesses in the area said the strikes were some of the heaviest in recent months, coming two days after the army recaptured the capital’s presidential palace in a major symbolic victory.Since April 2023, the RSF has been fighting Sudan’s regular army in a war that has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12mn and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.Analysts have warned that the army’s gains, while significant, are unlikely to end a war marked by mass atrocities against civilians, including bombs and artillery routinely hitting homes and markets.“Before, there used to be four or five rounds of shelling, and there was time between one strike and the next,” one resident told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation. “This morning there were seven, one right after the other.”The medical source, who is at Al Nao hospital, one of the city’s last functioning health facilities, said that “two children and a woman were killed and eight others injured in the shelling”.In recent days, the army and allied armed groups have regained most of Khartoum proper’s government district, just across the Nile from Omdurman.RSF fighters remain stationed in parts of the city centre including the airport, as well as the capital’s south and west.From their positions in western Omdurman, they have regularly launched strikes on civilian areas.In February, more than 50 were killed in a single RSF artillery attack on a busy Omdurman market.After a year and a half of humiliating army defeats, the tide seemed to turn late last year, when a military counteroffensive through central Sudan dislodged the RSF from key bases.Since January this year, the army has retaken much of the capital Khartoum, pushing the paramilitary into holdout pockets and the outskirts of the city.On Friday, the army and allied armed groups seized the country’s presidential palace, which the RSF had used since the start of the war to house elite forces and stockpile ammunition.The paramilitary force responded with what it called a “lightning operation” including a drone strike that killed three journalists and a number of army personnel.The military has since launched a clearing operation to push the RSF out of the city centre, retaking several strategic state institutions on Saturday, including the central bank, state intelligence headquarters and the national museum.An RSF source told AFP on Saturday that the paramilitary had “withdrawn from some locations” but that forces were waging “a fierce battle” near the airport.The army has also seized key infrastructure, pushing on Saturday through Tuti Bridge to reclaim Tuti Island, which sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles in the centre of Greater Khartoum and has been under paramilitary control for nearly two years.Despite the army’s advances in the capital, Africa’s third largest country remains effectively split in two, with the army holding the east and north while the RSF controls nearly all of the western region of Darfur and parts of the south.Yesterday the paramilitary claimed control of Lagawa, a town in Sudan’s southern West Kordofan state, some 600km (370 miles) southwest of the capital.Eyewitnesses in the town told AFP that RSF fighters had set up checkpoints on the streets.Control over Sudan’s southern Kordofan region is split between the army, the RSF and an armed group known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, which last month signed a charter with the RSF.More than 500km (320 miles) northwest, the paramilitary has also claimed control of the North Darfur town of Al Malha, killing at least 45 civilians, according to local activists.Al Malha is one of the northernmost towns in the vast desert region between Sudan and Libya, where the RSF’s critical resupply lines have come under increasing attack in recent months by army-allied armed groups.