‘Barely anyone left’: Sudan’s El-Fasher devastated by fighting

 People cheer members of Sudan's armed forces taking part in a military parade held on Army Day in Gadaref on August 14, 2024. (AFP)
People cheer members of Sudan's armed forces taking part in a military parade held on Army Day in Gadaref on August 14, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 23 September 2024
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‘Barely anyone left’: Sudan’s El-Fasher devastated by fighting

 People cheer members of Sudan's armed forces taking part in a military parade held on Army Day in Gadaref on August 14, 2024.
  • El-Fasher has long been surrounded by multiple displacement camps — including Zamzam and Abu Shouk — which have swelled by hundreds of thousands since the war began

PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Civilians combed through the wreckage of their homes Sunday in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, besieged for months by paramilitaries who have now launched a “full-scale assault,” according to the United Nations.
As the world body’s high-level General Assembly meeting prepares this week to spotlight Sudan’s 17-month war — which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused the world’s largest displacement crisis — global leaders have warned against cataclysmic violence in the city of two million.
US President Joe Biden has called on Sudan’s rival generals to “pull back their forces, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and re-engage in negotiations to end this war.”
But on the ground, shells have once again torn through civilian homes, in the latest flare-up of the war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the regular army which has raged since April 2023.
“Most of our homes in the city’s south have been completely destroyed,” local resident Al-Tijani Othman told AFP by phone from his bombed-out neighborhood.
“There’s barely anyone left here,” he said, after months of bombardment and starvation.
On Saturday alone, health authorities managed to confirm 14 civilian deaths and 40 injuries, a medical source told AFP.
“But that’s nowhere near the real number of victims,” the source warned, requesting anonymity for his protection.
“People often have to bury their loved ones right then and there rather than brave the fighting on the road to the hospital,” he continued.

UN chief Antonio Guterres’ spokesperson said Saturday the Secretary-General was “gravely alarmed by reports of a full-scale assault” by the RSF and called on its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “to act responsibly and immediately order a halt to the RSF attack.”
Since May, the RSF has laid siege to the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher — the only major city in Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur not under their control.
Even before their long-threatened multi-directional attack on the city, the violence had killed hundreds, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders.
It had also displaced hundreds of thousands and forced the nearby Zamzam displacement camp into all-out famine, the UN said.
El-Fasher has long been surrounded by multiple displacement camps — including Zamzam and Abu Shouk — which have swelled by hundreds of thousands since the war began.
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which tracks the violence in Sudan using satellite imagery, reported on Friday civilians had been fleeing “en masse by foot on the road from El-Fasher to Zamzam,” where famine was declared last month.

On Sunday, those unwilling or unable to leave the city — such as resident Mohamed Safieldin — were compelled to take advantage of what they feared would be a brief respite in the fighting, venturing out to feed their families.
“But the food situation is difficult. We have to rely on community kitchens,” he told AFP while waiting for a meal from one of hundreds of volunteer initiatives that have popped up across Sudan — considered in places like El-Fasher the last defense against mass starvation.
The UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said the “RSF’s multi-pronged assault, launched from at least four directions,” had “unleashed a maelstrom of violence that threatens to consume everything in its path.”
Eyewitnesses have reported bombardment by both the RSF and the army, both of whom have consistently been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and the indiscriminate bombing of residential areas.
The RSF has specifically been accused of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Their assault on the West Darfur town of El-Geneina last year left up to 15,000 dead, mostly from the non-Arab Massalit community, UN experts determined.
Darfur, a region the size of France home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population, is deeply scarred by years of ethnic violence committed by the Janjaweed — the militia from which the RSF emerged.
World leaders have repeatedly warned of a repeat of Darfur’s past.
“We will not bear witness to another genocide,” the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Sunday, urging a return to negotiations — which experts warn have only ever been used by both sides to gain ground on the battlefield.
The World Health Organization said this month at least 20,000 people have been killed since the war began, but some estimates show up to 150,000 dead, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello.
The war has also displaced more than 10 million people — a fifth of Sudan’s population — both within the country and across borders.
In early September UN experts, after a fact-finding mission, called for deployment of an impartial force to protect Sudanese civilians — either a UN-mandated mission or an African Union-backed regional force.

 


Iraq drone attacks wound 5 Kurdish security personnel

Iraq drone attacks wound 5 Kurdish security personnel
Updated 29 April 2025
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Iraq drone attacks wound 5 Kurdish security personnel

Iraq drone attacks wound 5 Kurdish security personnel

IRBIL: Five Iraqi Kurdish security personnel were wounded in two drone attacks in northern Iraq in less than 48 hours, authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Tuesday.

Authorities blamed a “terrorist group” for the separate attacks in a region that has seen repeated clashes between Turkish forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. 

“A terrorist group launched two separate drone attacks yesterday (Monday) and this morning targeting peshmerga bases” in Dohuk province, the region’s security council said. The attacks wounded five peshmerga, it added.

Kamran Othman of the US-based Community Peacemakers Teams, who monitor Turkish operations in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirmed the attacks but was unable to identify the perpetrators.

He added that the peshmerga were establishing a new post in a “sensitive area” that has long been the site of tension between the PKK and Turkish forces. There was no immediate claim for the attacks, which came weeks after the PKK announced a ceasefire with Turkiye in response to their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s historic call to the group to dissolve and disarm.

Blacklisted as a “terrorist group” by the EU and the US, the PKK has fought the Turkish state for most of the past four decades.


US hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March

US hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March
Updated 29 April 2025
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US hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March

US hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March
  • Since March 15, “USCENTCOM strikes have hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders...,” Parnell said
  • CENTCOM on Sunday had put the figure at more than 800 targets

WASHINGTON: US forces have struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since Washington launched the latest round of its air campaign against the Houthi militants in mid-March, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The Houthis began targeting shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in late 2023 and the United States responded with strikes against them starting early the following year.
Since March 15, “USCENTCOM strikes have hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders... and degrading their capabilities,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, referring to the military command responsible for the Middle East.
CENTCOM on Sunday had put the figure at more than 800 targets hit since mid-March, saying hundreds of Houthi fighters had been killed as a result.
Hours after that announcement, Houthi-controlled media said US strikes had hit a migrant detention center in the city of Saada, killing at least 68 people, while a United Nations spokesperson later said preliminary information indicated that those killed were migrants.
A US defense official said the military is looking into reports of civilian casualties resulting from its strikes in Yemen.
Attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis have prevented ships from passing through the Suez Canal — a vital route that normally carries about 12 percent of the world’s shipping traffic.
The militants say they are targeting shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s military after a shock Hamas attack in October 2023.


Iran fire contained after blast at key port; 70 killed

Iran fire contained after blast at key port; 70 killed
Updated 29 April 2025
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Iran fire contained after blast at key port; 70 killed

Iran fire contained after blast at key port; 70 killed

TEHRAN: Firefighters have brought under control a blaze at Iran’s main port, following a deadly explosion blamed on negligence, authorities said.

The explosion, heard dozens of kilometers away, hit a dock at the southern port of Shahid Rajaee on Saturday.

At least 70 people were killed and more than 1,000 others suffered injuries in the blast and ensuing fire, which also caused extensive damage, state media reported.

Red Crescent official Mokhtar Salahshour told the channel that the fire had been “contained” and a clean-up was underway.

State television aired live footage on Tuesday showing thick smoke rising from stacked containers.

Iran’s ILNA news agency quoted Hossein Zafari, spokesman for the country’s crisis management organization, as saying the situation had improved significantly since Monday.

However, “the operation and complete extinguishing process may take around 15 to 20 days,” the agency reported.

Iran’s customs authority said port operations had returned to normal, according to the IRNA news agency.

The port of Shahid Rajaee lies near the major coastal city of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which one-fifth of global oil output passes.

Hormozgan provincial governor Mohammad Ashouri ruled out sabotage.

“The set of hypotheses and investigations carried out during the process indicated that the sabotage theory lacks basis or relevance,” he told state television.

The port’s customs office said the blast may have started in a depot storing hazardous and chemical materials.

Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni said there were “shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence.”


Gaza’s vital community kitchens may soon shut, halt free meals

Gaza’s vital community kitchens may soon shut, halt free meals
Updated 29 April 2025
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Gaza’s vital community kitchens may soon shut, halt free meals

Gaza’s vital community kitchens may soon shut, halt free meals
  • Malnutrition cases rising, hitting children, pregnant women as critical lifeline faces threat

CAIRO/GAZA/GENEVA: It took five hours of queuing at a community kitchen in Gaza’s Nuseirat district for displaced grandmother Um Mohammad Al-Talalqa to get one meal to feed her hungry children and grandchildren.

But finding food may be about to get even tougher: Gaza’s community kitchens — lifelines for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after 18 months of war — may soon have no more meals to provide.

Multiple aid groups said that dozens of local community kitchens risk closing down, potentially within days, unless aid is allowed into Gaza, removing the last consistent source of meals for most of the 2.3 million population.

“We are suffering from famine, real famine,” said Talalqa, whose house in the Gaza town of Mughraqa was destroyed by Israel. “I have not eaten anything since this morning.”

At the Al-Salam Oriental Food community kitchen in Gaza City, Salah Abu Haseera offers what he fears could be one of the last meals for the 20,000 people he and his colleagues serve daily.

“We face huge challenges in keeping going. We may go out of operation within a week, or maybe less,” Abu Haseera told Reuters by phone from Gaza.

Since March 2, Israel has completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, and food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. It is the longest such closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced.

“The community kitchens, which the population in Gaza are relying more on, because there are no other ways to get food, are at a very big risk to shut down,” Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said.

About 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children have been identified across Gaza, including 1,600 cases of severe acute malnutrition, since the start of 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 60,000 children were now showing symptoms of malnutrition.

“We are seeing pediatric cases with moderate or severe acute malnutrition, and we are seeing also pregnant, lactating women that have difficulties breastfeeding; they themselves are malnourished or have a very insufficient calorie intake,” Julie Faucon, Medical Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, said. 

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said famine is no longer a looming threat and is becoming a reality.

Fifty-two people have died due to hunger and malnutrition, including 50 children, it added.

Abu Haseera said food is being sold at “fictional prices.” Prices have risen 1,400 percent compared to during the ceasefire, the World Food Programme said, adding that its stocks were now depleted.

Israel has previously denied that Gaza is facing a hunger crisis and says there is still enough aid to sustain the enclave’s population, but it has not made clear when and how aid will be resumed. 


Arab League chief says Baghdad summit will bolster Arab solidarity, address Gaza crisis

Arab League chief says Baghdad summit will bolster Arab solidarity, address Gaza crisis
Updated 29 April 2025
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Arab League chief says Baghdad summit will bolster Arab solidarity, address Gaza crisis

Arab League chief says Baghdad summit will bolster Arab solidarity, address Gaza crisis
  • Ahmed Aboul-Gheit met with crown prince of Kuwait at Bayan Palace

LONDON: Kuwait’s Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah received Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, the secretary-general of the Arab League, at Bayan Palace.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah Al-Yahya, permanent representative of the Arab League, Talal Al-Mutairi, and other senior officials, attended the meeting.

Aboul-Gheit is visiting Kuwait, where he delivered a lecture at the Saud Al-Nasser Al-Sabah Kuwait Diplomatic Institute on Tuesday about the challenges of maintaining stability in the Arab region.

He stressed the significance of the upcoming Arab League summit in Baghdad next month to address challenges in the region, most importantly the Israeli war in Gaza, the KUNA agency reported.

He said that the Baghdad summit would be a platform to strengthen Arab solidarity and to address development in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. He said assistant secretary-general Hossam Zaki would visit Baghdad to assess the arrangements for the Arab League summit, KUNA reported.

Aboul-Gheit said the Arab League is pursuing diplomatic efforts to promote the two-state solution, an issue expected to be discussed at a conference at the UN in June as part of a Saudi-French initiative aimed at drumming up support for the establishment of a Palestinian state.