PORT SUDAN, Sudan, Jan 12, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The commander of the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said his troops "lost Wad Madani", the state capital of Al-Jazira, on Saturday as the army launched an offensive.

In an audio address to his fighters and the Sudanese people, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed to "regain all" of the central Sudanese city, which has been under RSF control since December 2023.

The army, battling the RSF since April of that year, said it had entered the city on Saturday and was "clearing the remnants of the rebels".

Government officials, loyal to the army, have hailed the recapture of the key city, a strategic crossroads of supply highways linking several states.

It is also the nearest major town to the war-torn capital Khartoum, 200 kilometres (124 miles) north.

"Today we lost a round, we did not lose the battle," Daglo said.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted 12 million, nearly nine million of whom remain inside the country in what the United Nations says is the world's largest displacement crisis.

In the early months of the war, nearly half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira, before a lightning RSF offensive displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the UN.