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Sudan: Battles Rage On As UN Warns Of ‘Catastrophe’

Published

2 years ago

May 2, 2023

Fierce fighting between rival generals raged on in Sudan Tuesday despite the latest truce, as warnings multiplied of the potential for a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Bloodshed has gripped Sudan since April 15 when tensions erupted into armed exchanges between regular army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy-turned-rival, Mohamed Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Hundreds have been killed and thousands wounded as air strikes and artillery exchanges have gripped swathes of greater Khartoum sparking the exodus of thousands of Sudanese to neighbouring countries.

Many more cannot afford the arduous journey to Sudan’s borders, and have been forced to hole up inside the city of five million people with dwindling supplies of food, water and electricity.

“We are hearing some sporadic gunfire, the roaring of a warplane and the anti-aircraft fire at it,” said one resident of south Khartoum.

In a Monday briefing, the top United Nations aid official in Sudan, Abdou Dieng, warned that the situation was turning into “a full-blown catastrophe”.

Kenyan President William Ruto said the conflict had reached “catastrophic levels” with the warring generals declining “to heed the calls by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union and the international community to cease fire.”

In a virtual meeting with senior UN officials, Ruto said it was imperative to find ways to provide humanitarian relief “with or without a ceasefire”.

Burhan and Daglo, who fell out after carrying out a 2021 military coup which derailed Sudan’s transition to elective civilian rule, have flouted multiple ceasefires, the latest a 72-hour extension agreed late on Sunday.

Foreign governments have scrambled to evacuate their citizens. Over the past 10 days, thousands of foreigners have been brought to safety by air or sea in operations that are now winding down.

Russia’s armed forces said on Tuesday they were evacuating more than 200 people from Sudan on four military transport planes.

Nearly 500 people arrived in the Saudi port of Jeddah on Monday aboard two vessels, one a US Navy ship, the other Saudi.

– Relief trickles in –

Top UN humanitarian official Martin Griffiths arrived in Nairobi on Monday on a mission to find ways to bring relief to the millions of civilians trapped inside Sudan.

“The situation unfolding there (in Sudan) since April 15 is catastrophic,” he said on Twitter.

UN warns Sudan at ‘breaking point’ as fresh clashes break out
Sudan’s turmoil has seen hospitals shelled, humanitarian facilities looted and foreign aid groups forced to suspend most of their operations.

At least 528 have been killed and some 4,600 wounded in the violence, according to the health ministry.

The United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR, said it was bracing for “the possibility that over 800,000 people may flee the fighting in Sudan for neighbouring countries”.

The World Health Organization warned that the fighting was pushing Sudan’s already ailing health sector toward “disaster” with only 16 percent of health facilities in Khartoum still functioning.

The WHO said that it had delivered six containers of medical equipment to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, including supplies for treating trauma injuries and severe acute malnutrition. It had also distributed scarce fuel to hospitals which rely on generators for power.

– Darfur chaos –

Beyond Khartoum, lawlessness has engulfed the West Darfur state capital, El Geneina, where at least 96 people have been reported killed since the start of the fighting, according to UN figures.

More than 330,000 people have been displaced, over 70 percent of them in West and South Darfur states, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“The health system has completely collapsed in Geneina,” the doctors’ union said, adding that looting of clinics and camps for the displaced had forced several agencies to carry out “emergency evacuations” for their teams.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders said the fighting had forced it to halt “almost all activities in West Darfur”.

The Darfur region is still scarred by a war that erupted in 2003 when then hardline president Omar al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia, mainly recruited from Arab pastoralist tribes, against ethnic-minority rebels.

The scorched-earth campaign left at least 300,000 people dead and close to 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures.

The Janjaweed — which rights groups have accused of atrocities in Darfur — later evolved into the RSF, which was formally created in 2013.

AFP

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Headline

Militia Attack On DRC IDP Camp, Kills 10, Mostly Women, Children

Published

3 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

An armed group at the centre of a long-running ethnic conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s northeast attacked a camp for displaced people on Friday, killing 10, local sources told AFP.

Bordering Uganda, Ituri province has for years been the scene of pitched battles between the Lendu, a group mainly made up of settled farmers, and the Hema people, typically nomadic herders.

The fighting has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and the mass displacement of many more.

Friday’s assault on the Djangi displaced persons camp was carried out by the self-proclaimed Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco), a Lendu-aligned militia responsible for previous civilian massacres, the camp’s head told AFP.

“They were many and armed with firearms and machetes. They surprised us, they killed 10 displaced people, most of them women and children,” said Richard Likana.

An employee of the Red Cross, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the attack, which took place around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Bunia.

“They were cut up with machetes while others were shot,” the humanitarian worker added.

Congolese army Colonel Ruffin Mapela, the local administrator for Djugu territory where the camp is located, gave the same toll of 10 dead and put the number of injured at 15.

According to local and humanitarian sources, Codeco was responsible for an attack on February 10 which killed 51 people in Ituri province. Most of the victims were also displaced persons.

That raid was said to be a response to a strike by the rival Hema-led Zaire militia in the same area.

Violence between the Hema and Lendu killed thousands in gold-rich Ituri from 1999-2003, which only ended after European forces intervened.

The conflict erupted again in 2017, killing thousands more.

The violence has led to more than 1.5 million people leaving their homes, according to the UN.

AFP

Headline

Israel Wants Global Action Against Iran’s Nuclear Plans

Published

3 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Israel’s foreign minister said on Friday that the world was obliged to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb, days after Israel claimed it had “thwarted Iran’s nuclear project” in a 12-day war.

“Israel acted at the last possible moment against an imminent threat to itself, the region, and the international community,” Gideon Saar wrote on X.

“The international community must now prevent, by any effective means, the world’s most extreme regime from obtaining the most dangerous weapon.”

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in the war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The conflict erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign, stating it aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—an ambition Iran has consistently denied.

Following waves of Israeli attacks on nuclear and military sites, the United States bombed three key facilities, with President Donald Trump insisting it had set Iran’s nuclear programme back by “decades”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the nation after the ceasefire, announced that “we have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project”.

However, there is no consensus as to how effective the strikes were.
On Friday, Iran rejected a request by UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi to visit the bombed facilities, saying it suggested “malign intent”.

The comments from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi came after parliament approved a bill suspending cooperation with the UN watchdog.

In a post on X following the move, Saar said Iran “continues to mislead the international community and actively works to prevent effective oversight of its nuclear programme”.

Headline

We Would Have Killed Iran’s Supreme Leader If Given Opportunity – Israel

Published

6 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that Israel would have killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the war between the two countries if the opportunity had presented itself.

“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan Thursday evening, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.

“Khamenei understood this, went very deep underground, broke off contact with the commanders… so in the end it wasn’t realistic,” Katz told Kan.

He told Israeli television Channel 13 Thursday that Israel would cease its assassination attempts because “there is a difference between before the ceasefire and after the ceasefire”.

Katz had said during the war that Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist”, just days after reports that Washington vetoed Israeli plans to assassinate him.

But on Kan, Katz advised Khamenei to remain inside a bunker.

“He should learn from the late Nasrallah, who sat for a long time deep in the bunker”, he said, referring to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who Israel killed in a Beirut air strike in September 2024.

The movements of the supreme leader, who has not left Iran since he took power, are subject to the tightest security and secrecy.

Katz said Thursday that Israel maintained its aerial superiority over Iran and that it was ready to strike again.

“We won’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons and threaten (Israel) with long-range missiles”, he said.

In his Channel 12 interview, Katz admitted that Israel does not know the location of all of Iran’s enriched uranium, but that its air strikes had destroyed the Islamic republic’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

“The material itself was not something that was supposed to be neutralised,” he said of the enriched uranium.

The impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme has been a subject to debate.

A leaked US intelligence assessment estimated the programme to have set Iran back a few months, while Katz and other Israeli and US public figures said the damage would take years to rebuild.

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in a 12-day war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The war erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign that it said aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has consistently denied.