"Our forces are in their best condition," Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told army commanders at the reclaimed headquarters close to the city centre and airport.

The army's recapture of the General Command building is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city on the Nile's west bank, nearly a year ago.

In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters.

Since the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began, RSF had encircled both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command of the Armed Forces just south across the Blue Nile river.

On Friday the army said it had broken the siege on Signal Corps, later reporting it had also retaken its headquarters.

Since the early days of the war, when the RSF quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military had to supply its forces inside the headquarters via airdrops.

Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months, before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.

The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.

Two weeks ago, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.

- 'The best medicine is peace' -

The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.

Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.

Late last year, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said people had been forced to eat grass and peanut shells to survive in parts of the country.

Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing his group of committing genocide.

A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.

Across the country, up to 80 percent of healthcare facilities have been forced out of service, according to official figures.

A deadly attack late Friday on the main hospital in El-Fasher, a besieged town in western Sudan, killed 70 people and injured 19 others, the World Health Organisation said on Sunday.

"At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

In a rare statement addressing the targeting of healthcare in Sudan, Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack as a "violation of international law and international humanitarian law".

AFP could not independently verify which of Sudan's warring sides had launched the attack.

However, local activists reported that the hospital was hit by a drone after the RSF issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the city in advance of an expected offensive.

The WHO chief said that another facility in North Darfur's Al-Malha, just north of El-Fasher, had also been attacked in recent days.

"We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged," Ghebreyesus said.

"Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace," he added.