Escalating Sudan conflict likely to worsen humanitarian crisis

Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
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Updated 04 October 2024
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Escalating Sudan conflict likely to worsen humanitarian crisis

Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
  • Army has advanced across bridges in capital
  • RSF expected to benefit from the dry season

DUBAI: After almost 18 months of war, fighting in Sudan is escalating as seasonal rains end with the army using intensified airstrikes and allied fighters to shore up its position ahead of a likely surge by the rival Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

An uptick in fighting will aggravate an already dire humanitarian crisis in which famine has been confirmed and over 10 million people — one-fifth of the population — are displaced, more than anywhere else in the world.

UN agencies have often been unable to deliver aid.

“There won’t be a decisive breakthrough,” said a senior Western diplomat in the region.

“What we expect to come into the fall more and more is much more fragmentation, to see more armed groups getting involved ... And this will make the situation in general much more difficult.”

BACKGROUND

The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.

The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army, after shunning US-led talks in Switzerland, launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.

In Darfur, former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps have rallied to defend the densely populated city of Al-Fasher, the army’s last holdout in the western region, against waves of RSF attacks.

Two army sources said the army had worked for months to replenish weaponry, including drones and warplanes, and train new volunteers to strengthen its position on the ground before any negotiations.

Three residents in the capital, which is made up of Khartoum and its adjoining cities of Omdurman and Bahri, said that in recent days, the army had been carrying out more air bombardments with more drones and fighter jets than before.

While the army has used its superior air power at the end of the rainy season to pound RSF-held territory in the capital, Darfur and El Gezira state, the RSF’s more effective ground troops are expected to regain an edge as the dry season starts and roads become more passable.

On Monday, the RSF released a video with its fighters promising a “hot winter” for its rivals in Sennar, where the rains had slowed its progress earlier.

Witnesses there and in the capital reported heavy fighting on Thursday.

Both sides have reinforced militarily as the conflict in Africa’s third largest country by land area has deepened, drawing on material support from foreign backers, diplomats and analysts say.

The war began in April 2023 as the army and the RSF jostled to protect their power and wealth ahead of a planned political transition toward civilian rule and free elections.

The RSF, which has its roots in the so-called Janjaweed militias that helped the government crush a rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s, quickly occupied much of the capital before consolidating its grip on Darfur and seizing El Gezira state, south of Khartoum.

Earlier this year, the army gained ground in Omdurman after acquiring Iranian drones.

But it showed little sign of building on the advance before the surprise offensive it began last week on the day that its commander, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, told the UN that the RSF had to withdraw and lay down its arms for there to be peace.

The army now has control of the capital’s Halfaya bridge, allowing it to build a foothold in Bahri from its bases in Omdurman.

It has also weathered heavy clashes and sniper fire to advance across another Nile bridge that leads to the heart of the capital, military sources and witnesses said.

For months, the RSF has besieged Al-Fasher, which is crammed with some 1.8 million residents and displaced people. Activists and diplomats have warned of ethnically charged bloodletting if the city falls after similar violence that was blamed on the RSF and its allies elsewhere in Darfur.

Two witnesses in Al-Fasher said that the RSF had been shelling large areas of the city as the army responded with air strikes.

The battle has dragged on as non-Arab former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps who are better equipped for ground combat than the army fight to protect themselves and their families, the witnesses said.

A local group representing displaced people in Darfur said this week that the fighting had exacerbated the humanitarian situation in two dozen camps across the Darfur region, “all of which suffer from a lack of the most basic daily necessities,” and that disease and starvation were spreading.

Aid workers and human rights activists say there has been little increase in humanitarian relief despite pledges by both sides to improve access to aid.

Sudan, often overlooked amid armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, received some diplomatic attention at the UN General Assembly last week.

But USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman said there had been little progress getting outside players to stop fueling the war.

“Both of the actors in this conflict, both sides of this, have outside support which they believe is going to tip the scales to their advantage,” she said.

 


Children most affected by worsening malnutrition in Gaza Strip

Children most affected by worsening malnutrition in Gaza Strip
Updated 12 sec ago
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Children most affected by worsening malnutrition in Gaza Strip

Children most affected by worsening malnutrition in Gaza Strip
  • The UN’s World Food Programme warned in early July that the price of flour for bread was 3,000 times more expensive than before the war began more than 21 months ago

NUSEIRAT: As malnutrition surges in war-torn Gaza, tens of thousands of children and women require urgent treatment, according to the UN, while aid enters the blockaded Palestinian territory at a trickle.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said it has noted a rising number of infant deaths caused by “severe hunger and malnutrition,” reporting at least three such deaths in the past week.

“These heartbreaking cases were not caused by direct bombing but by starvation, the lack of baby formula and the absence of basic health care,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

FASTFACT

MSF said that patients at its Gaza clinics do not heal properly from their wounds due to protein deficiency.

Ziad Musleh, a 45-year-old father displaced from Gaza’s north to the central city of Nuseirat, said: “We are dying, our children are dying and we can’t do anything to stop it.”

“Our children cry and scream for food. They go to sleep in pain, in hunger, with empty stomachs. There is absolutely no food.

“And if by chance a small amount appears in the market, the prices are outrageous — no one can afford it.”

At a food distribution site in a UN-school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat on Sunday, children entertained themselves by banging on their plates as they waited for their turn.

Several of them had faces stretched thin by hunger, a journalist reported.

Umm Sameh Abu Zeina, whose cheekbones protruded from her thin face as she waited for food in Nuseirat, said she had lost 35 kg.

“We do not eat enough. I don’t eat, I leave the food I receive for my daughter,” she said, adding that she had a range of health conditions, including high blood pressure and diabetes.

Gazans as well as the UN and aid organizations frequently complain that depleted stocks have sent prices skyrocketing for what little food is available in the markets.

The UN’s World Food Programme warned in early July that the price of flour for bread was 3,000 times more expensive than before the war began more than 21 months ago.

WFP director Carl Skau, who visited Gaza City in early July, described the situation as “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

“A father I met had lost 25 kg in the past two months. People are starving, while we have food just across the border,” he said. “Our kitchens are empty; they are now serving hot water with a bit of pasta floating in it,” said Skau.

The effects of malnutrition on children and pregnant women can be particularly dire.

 


European powers plan fresh nuclear talks with Iran

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, flanked by Germany’s Foreign Minister.
European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, flanked by Germany’s Foreign Minister.
Updated 12 min 3 sec ago
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European powers plan fresh nuclear talks with Iran

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, flanked by Germany’s Foreign Minister.
  • Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing unnamed source

BERLIN: European powers plan fresh talks with Iran on its nuclear program in the coming days, the first since the US attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago, a German diplomatic source told AFP on Sunday.

Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, “are in contact with Iran to schedule further talks for the coming week,” the source said.

The trio had recently warned that international sanctions against Iran could be reactivated if Tehran does not return to the negotiating table.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing an unnamed source.

Consultations are ongoing regarding a date and location for the talks, the report said.

“Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon,” the German source said.

“That is why Germany, France and the United Kingdom are continuing to work intensively in the E3 format to find a sustainable and verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program,” the source added.

Israel and Western nations have long accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.

On June 13, Israel launched a wave of surprise strikes on its regional nemesis, targeting key military and nuclear facilities.

The United States launched its own set of strikes against Iran’s nuclear program on June 22, hitting the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, in Qom province south of Tehran, as well as nuclear sites in Isfahan and Natanz.

Iran and the United States had held several rounds of nuclear negotiations through Omani mediators before Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran.

However, US President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities effectively ended the talks.

The E3 countries last met with Iranian representatives in Geneva on June 21 — just one day before the US strikes.

Also Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues.

Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear program,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting.

Putin had expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilize the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear program,” he added.

Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the United States joined Israel’s bombing campaign.

Iran and world powers struck a deal in 2015 called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed significant restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

But the hard-won deal began to unravel in 2018, during Trump’s first presidency, when the United States walked away from it and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

European countries have in recent days threatened to trigger the deal’s “snapback” mechanism, which allows the reimposition of sanctions in the event of non-compliance by Iran.

After a call with his European counterparts on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Western allies had “absolutely no moral (or) legal grounds” for reactivating the snapback sanctions.

He elaborated in a post to social media Sunday.

“Through their actions and statements, including providing political and material support to the recent unprovoked and illegal military aggression of the Israeli regime and the US... the E3 have relinquished their role as ‘Participants’ in the JCPOA,” said Araghchi.

That made any attempt to reinstate the terminated UN Security Council resolutions “null and void,” he added.

“Iran has shown that it is capable of defeating any delusional ‘dirty work’ but has always been prepared to reciprocate meaningful diplomacy in good faith,” Araghchi wrote.

However, the German source said Sunday that “if no solution is reached over the summer, snapback remains an option for the E3.”

Ali Velayati, an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week there would be no new nuclear talks with the United States if they were conditioned on Tehran abandoning its uranium enrichment activities.


Turkiye’s Erdogan insists on Cyprus two-state solution

Birds fly behind a Turkish military guard post with a Turkish, left, and Turkish Cypriot breakaway flags next to UN buffer zone.
Birds fly behind a Turkish military guard post with a Turkish, left, and Turkish Cypriot breakaway flags next to UN buffer zone.
Updated 20 July 2025
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Turkiye’s Erdogan insists on Cyprus two-state solution

Birds fly behind a Turkish military guard post with a Turkish, left, and Turkish Cypriot breakaway flags next to UN buffer zone.
  • Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta
  • Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara

NORTH NICOSIA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday reaffirmed his country’s support for a two-state solution in Cyprus, urging the international community to accept the Mediterranean island’s existing division.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara.

“We fully support the vision based on a two-state solution,” Erdogan said during a visit to northern Cyprus marking 51 years since Turkish troops invaded the island.

“It is time for the international community to make peace with the realities on the ground,” Erdogan said.

The Turkish leader’s visit comes few days after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that meetings between Cyprus’s rival leaders at the organization’s New York headquarters were “constructive,” even as questions remained about crossing points on the island.

Erdogan on Sunday called for an end to the isolation of the TRNC.

“Diplomatic, political, and economic relations should be established with the TRNC, and the injustice endured by Turkish Cypriots for decades must finally come to an end,” he said.

The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.


Recognized, independent Palestinian state could unlock disputed gas wealth, expert says

Recognized, independent Palestinian state could unlock disputed gas wealth, expert says
Updated 20 July 2025
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Recognized, independent Palestinian state could unlock disputed gas wealth, expert says

Recognized, independent Palestinian state could unlock disputed gas wealth, expert says
  • Gas was discovered in 2000 in the Gaza Marine field
  • Michael Barron, author of “The Gaza Marine Story,” estimates field could generate $4 billion in revenue at current prices

LONDON: Official recognition of a Palestinian state would end legal ambiguities over the Gaza Marine gas field and secure the Palestinian Authority’s right to develop its most valuable natural resource, according to energy expert Michael Barron.

Barron, author of “The Gaza Marine Story,” estimates the field could generate $4 billion in revenue at current prices, with the PA reasonably earning $100 million annually for 15 years, The Guardian reported on Sunday.

“The revenues would not turn the Palestinians into the next Qataris or Singaporeans, but it would be their own revenue and not aid, on which the Palestinian economy remains dependent,” he said.

Gas was discovered in 2000 in the Gaza Marine field, a joint venture between BG Gas and the Palestinian Consolidated Contractors Co.

Despite initial hopes of ending energy shortages in the Gaza Strip, the project has been repeatedly stalled over ownership disputes, lack of sovereignty, and political instability.

“The Oslo Accords agreed in 1993 clearly give the Palestinian National Authority jurisdiction over territorial waters, the subsoil, power to legislate over oil and gas exploration and to award licenses to do so,” Barron said.

“Control over natural resources was an important element of (the) state-building agenda of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources was and remains a central part of the conflict,” he added.

Israel has historically blocked development over concerns that revenue could reach Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. An Israeli court once ruled the waters a “no-man’s water” due to the PA’s lack of sovereignty, and Israel has long claimed any license 20 miles off the Gaza coast should be seen as a gift, not a right.

Barron said that if Palestine were recognized as a state, particularly by countries where major oil firms are based, it would “effectively end the legal ambiguity” and allow the PA to develop the field and achieve energy independence from Israel.

A separate controversy has emerged over Israeli-issued gas licenses in a disputed area known as Zone G.

Lawyers acting for Palestinian human rights groups recently warned Italian energy firm Eni not to proceed with exploration, saying “Israel cannot have validly awarded you any exploration rights and you cannot validly have acquired any such rights.”

Eni has since told Italian campaigners that “licenses have not yet been issued and no exploratory activities are in progress.”

Activist group Global Witness also argues the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through waters claimed by Palestine, is unlawful and does not provide any revenue to the PA.

The 56-mile pipeline transports gas from Ashkelon in Israel to Arish in Egypt for export.

The issue has gained new attention following a UN report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

She warned corporations of their potential legal liability for supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, citing international court rulings.

Her report concluded companies have a “prima facie responsibility ‘to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings with Israel, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.’”

Israel has rejected the report in full.

Barron argues that, with Israel now self-sufficient in gas, “so long as a Palestinian state with unified governance is recognized, Israel will have no motive or legal right to block Palestine exploiting its single greatest natural resource.”


Gaza civil defense says Israeli fire kills 73 aid seekers

Palestinians who were injured while seeking food at a distribution point in Al-Tina area of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip.
Palestinians who were injured while seeking food at a distribution point in Al-Tina area of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip.
Updated 20 July 2025
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Gaza civil defense says Israeli fire kills 73 aid seekers

Palestinians who were injured while seeking food at a distribution point in Al-Tina area of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip.
  • At least 67 were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while six others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces opened fire on crowds of Palestinians trying to collect humanitarian aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory on Sunday, killing 73 people and wounding dozens more.

At least 67 were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while six others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south, where dozens of people lost their lives just 24 hours earlier.

The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid “encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire” near Gaza City, soon after it crossed from Israel and cleared checkpoints.

Israel’s military disputed the death toll and said soldiers had fired warning shots “to remove an immediate threat posed to them” as thousands gathered near Gaza City.

Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza, with the authorities blaming Israeli fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials flock in huge numbers to aid centers.

The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys.

In Gaza City, Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to try to get a bag of flour but instead found a desperate crowd of thousands and “deadly overcrowding and pushing.”

“The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest,” he added.

“Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone.”

Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll was 67 and expected to rise while the WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as “completely unacceptable.”

“Israeli forces’ gunfire” was responsible for the deaths in the south, he added.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.

The army has maintained that it works to avoid harm to civilians, saying this month that it issued new instructions to its troops on the ground “following lessons learned” from a spate of similar incidents.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 58,895 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday expressed his regret to Pope Leo XIV after what he described as a “stray” munition killed three people sheltering at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

At the end of the Angelus prayer on Sunday, the pope slammed the “barbarity” of the Gaza war and called for peace, days after the Israeli strike on the territory’s only Catholic church.

The strike was part of the “ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza,” he added.

“I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”

The Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, held mass at the Gaza church on Sunday after traveling to the devastated territory in a rare visit on Friday.

Most of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave.

On Sunday morning, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately.

Israel was “expanding its activities” against Hamas around Deir el-Balah, “where it has not operated before,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.

The announcement prompted concern from families of hostages held since October 7, 2023 that the Israeli offensive could harm their loved ones.

Delegations from Israel and militant group Hamas have spent the last two weeks in indirect talks on a proposed 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 10 living hostages.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.