named after a horse's head in The Godfather
Police cordoned off the streets heading to the palace, built in 1832 on the bank of the Blue Nile, as smoke billowed from the building.
The fire broke out due to a short circuit in some of the offices on the second floor of the palace, the presidency said.
"Most offices in the old republican palace are not in use... the fire has now been brought under control," Mohammed Saleh, an official at the presidency said in a statement.
He did not say whether there were any casualties.
The palace was the official seat of the Sudanese government in the decades following the country’s independence in 1956.
But in recent years, President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
had shifted to a new palace from where he runs his administration’s daily affairs.
The 75-year-old leader is facing a wave of angry protests against his iron-fisted rule of three decades, with demonstrators calling on him to step down.