CAIRO/DUBAI: Attacks around the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir have shattered a truce that protected it from a year-old war, leading to warnings of a new wave of inter-communal violence and humanitarian risks for 1.6 million residents crammed into the North Darfur capital.
Al-Fashir is the last major city in the vast, western Darfur region not under control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF and its allies swept through four other Darfur state capitals last year, and were blamed for a campaign of ethnically driven killings against non-Arab groups and other abuses in West Darfur.
The fight for Al-Fashir, a historic center of power, could be more protracted, inflame ethnic tensions that surfaced in the early-2000s conflict in the region and reach across Sudan’s border with Chad, say residents, aid agencies and analysts.
Al-Fashir’s population includes an estimated half a million people displaced during that earlier conflict, when the army, assisted by Arab militias that evolved into the RSF, put down a rebellion by non-Arab rebel groups.
About half a million more people moved into the city during the war that broke out between the army and the RSF in the capital Khartoum in April 2023, as long-simmering tensions over integrating the two forces came to a head.
As the war spread to other parts of the country, local leaders brokered a truce in Al-Fashir, with the RSF confined to eastern areas of the city while the former rebel groups stayed neutral.
But the arrangement fell apart after the RSF took the town of Melit this month, effectively blockading Al-Fashir.
Witnesses say the army has reinforced supplies and troops, including through an air drop to its base in the city, unlike in other state capitals where soldiers quickly fled.
Two prominent former rebel groups, Minni Minawi’s Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Jibril Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement, said they would also defend against the RSF.
Many non-Arabs in Al-Fashir are gripped with fear.
“We don’t know what to do,” 39-year-old resident Mohamed Gasim told Reuters by phone. “Al-Fashir is dangerous, but leaving is more dangerous.”
VILLAGES RAZED
Even before the truce collapsed, occasional skirmishes killed more than 220 people in Al-Fashir in the last year, according to Ismail Khareef, an activist in Abu Shouk, one of the displacement camps that dot the city.
Clashes on April 16 left at least 18 dead, Khareef said. Gunfire and projectiles, including from army warplanes, have fallen on homes, he and other residents say.
Since the start of the month, at least 11 villages on Al-Fashir’s outskirts have been razed, according to satellite imagery obtained by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. At least 36,000 have been displaced, the United Nations estimates.
Local activists and an SLA spokesperson blamed the RSF and allied militias, who have been known to use arson in past attacks, including in West Darfur. The activists said that survivors of the attacks reported around 10 people killed and that the attackers used ethnic insults.
The RSF denied attacking Al-Fashir and said it was careful to keep clashes away from civilians in the city, accusing the army and allied groups of attacking it on the outskirts. The RSF has previously denied responsibility for ethnic violence in Darfur.
The army did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Al-Fashir itself has not had functioning running water or power lines for a year, said Awadalla Hamid, Darfur director for Practical Action, speaking to Reuters from the city, where few international humanitarians remain. Only one public hospital is functioning, while displaced people are crammed into schools and public buildings, he said.
Jerome Tubiana, an expert on Darfur and adviser to medical charity MSF, said all-out fighting “risks already complicating further humanitarian access, at a time where available data shows Al-Fashir is suffering of an extremely serious food crisis.”
SPILLOVER RISK
Since the war began, only small quantities of aid have entered Al-Fashir, the only army-approved conduit for shipments to other parts of Darfur. Residents say that though markets are functioning, the RSF’s control of the main road has caused prices for fuel, water and other goods to soar.
Recent tensions and violence around Al-Fashir have also raised concerns about a wider spillover.
The former rebel groups fighting alongside the army hail from the Zaghawa tribe, which reaches across the border into Chad, counting Chadian leader Mahamat Idriss Deby as a member.
Arab and non-Arab tribes like the Zaghawa have long clashed over land and valuable resources in Darfur, analysts say.
Complicating matters is the entrance of the forces belonging to Musa Hilal, a leading Arab commander from the early 2000s and rival of RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, despite hailing from the same tribe. A spokesperson confirmed a video of Hilal addressing forces in North Darfur on Monday, but said that it was too soon to say if the forces would join the fight in Al-Fashir or elsewhere.
“Even if there was a ceasefire between SAF and RSF this is way beyond them. There are scores being settled and tensions being renewed,” said Jonas Horner, an independent Sudan analyst.
Truce crumbles in Sudanese army’s last Darfur holdout
https://arab.news/ca9zj
Truce crumbles in Sudanese army’s last Darfur holdout
- Al-Fashir is the last major city in the vast, western Darfur region not under control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)
- Witnesses say the army has reinforced supplies and troops, including through an air drop to its base in the city
Israel army announces new ground offensive east of Gaza City
- Israel military: ‘Troops have begun conducting ground activity in the area of Shejaiya in northern Gaza, in order to expand the security zone’
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and ‘seizing territory’ to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army announced it had launched a new ground offensive east of Gaza City on Friday to expand the security zone it has established inside the Palestinian territory.
“Over the past few hours... troops have begun conducting ground activity in the area of Shejaiya in northern Gaza, in order to expand the security zone,” the military said in a statement.
“The troops eliminated numerous terrorists and dismantled Hamas terrorist infrastructure, including a command and control center that served Hamas terrorists to plan and execute terror attacks,” the statement added.
“During and prior to the activity... troops are allowing the evacuation of civilians from the combat zone via organized routes for their safety.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”
The operation would “seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones,” he said, without specifying how much territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and “seizing territory” to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages seized in the militant group’s October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war.
Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris
- Using satellite image, UN cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including 13th-century Pasha’s Palace
- The damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land ‘depends on the bomb tonnage,’ the curator says
PARIS: A new exhibition opening in Paris on Friday showcases archaeological artifacts from Gaza, once a major commercial crossroads between Asia and Africa, whose heritage has been ravaged by Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
Around a hundred artifacts, including a 4,000-year-old bowl, a sixth-century mosaic from a Byzantine church and a Greek-inspired statue of Aphrodite, are on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe.
The rich and mixed collection speaks to Gaza’s past as a cultural melting pot, but the show’s creators also wanted to highlight the contemporary destruction caused by the war, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
“The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” said Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, which is titled “Saved Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History.”
“But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand,” she told AFP.
One section of the exhibition documents the extent of recent destruction.
Using satellite image, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including the 13th-century Pasha’s Palace.
Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground.”
“For now, it’s impossible to assess.”
The attacks by Hamas militants on Israel in 2023 left 1,218 dead. In retaliation, Israeli operations have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the densely populated territory.
The story behind “Gaza’s Treasures” is inseparable from the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
At the end of 2024, the Institut du Monde Arabe was finalizing an exhibition on artifacts from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but Israeli bombings on Beirut made the project impossible.
“It came to a sudden halt, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to be discouraged,” said Bouffard.
The idea of an exhibition on Gaza’s heritage emerged.
“We had just four and a half months to put it together. That had never been done before,” she explained.
Given the impossibility of transporting artifacts out of Gaza, the Institut turned to 529 pieces stored in crates in a specialized Geneva art warehouse since 2006. The works belong to the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank.
The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, helped secure some of Gaza’s treasures.
In 1995, Gaza’s Department of Antiquities was established, which oversaw the first archaeological digs in collaboration with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF).
Over the years, excavations uncovered the remains of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion, the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, and a Roman necropolis — traces of civilizations spanning from the Bronze Age to Ottoman influences in the late 19th century.
“Between Egypt, Mesopotamian powers, and the Hasmoneans, Gaza has been a constant target of conquest and destruction throughout history,” Bouffard noted.
In the 4th century BC, Greek leader Alexander the Great besieged the city for two months, leaving behind massacres and devastation.
Excavations in Gaza came to a standstill when Hamas took power in 2007 and Israel imposed a blockade.
Land pressure and rampant building in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has also complicated archaeological work.
And after a year and a half of war, resuming excavations seems like an ever-more distant prospect.
The exhibition runs until November 2, 2025.
Israel kills Hamas 'commander' in Lebanon strike
- The Lebanese health ministry reported four dead in that strike, including a woman
Sidon: Israel said it killed a commander of Palestinian militant group Hamas on Friday in a strike in the Lebanese port city of Sidon that also killed his adult son and daughter.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a “flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty” and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire with Israel.
“Overnight, the (army and the domestic security agency Shin Bet) conducted a targeted strike in the Sidon area, eliminating the terrorist Hassan Farhat, commander of Hamas’s western arena in Lebanon,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
It alleged that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.
They included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added.
The strike on a flat in a residential area of Sidon killed the official and his adult son and daughter, a Palestinian official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
An AFP correspondent saw the fourth-floor flat still on fire after the strike, which caused heavy damage to the apartment block and neighboring buildings and sparked panic in the densely populated neighborhood.
Lebanese state media had reported the 3:45 am (0045 GMT) strike on Sidon, saying at least three people were killed.
“A hostile drone raided a residential apartment... causing two successive explosions that led to a fire and extensive damage,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
Emergency workers rushed to the scene where they recovered “the bodies of three martyrs,” NNA said.
The Lebanese prime minister called for “maximum pressure on Israel to force it to halt these continual attacks which target various districts, many of them residential areas.”
Israel struck south Beirut earlier this week, killing a Hezbollah Palestinian liaison officer in only the the second raid on the capital since a November ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group.
The Lebanese health ministry reported four dead in that strike, including a woman.
Lebanese leaders condemned the attack but Israel said it was in response to recent unclaimed rocket fire that Hezbollah insists it had no hand in.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah spiralled into all-out conflict last September, and the group remains a target of Israeli air strikes despite the November 27 ceasefire.
Under the truce, Hezbollah is supposed to redeploy its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but has missed two deadlines to do so and continues to hold five positions it deems “strategic.”
Oscar-winning Palestinian director speaks at UN on Israeli settlements
- Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank
- Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law
UNITED NATIONS, United States: Palestinian director Basel Adra, who won an Oscar this year for co-directing a documentary on Israeli violence in the West Bank, sounded the alarm at the UN on Thursday, saying the situation was worsening despite the film’s success.
Adra was invited to speak by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at a screening of his film, “No Other Land.”
The documentary chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
“I wanted the world to know that we live in this land, that we exist, and to see what we face on daily basis, this brutal occupation,” Adra told the UN.
The film depicts events like bulldozers demolishing houses and a school, as well as the provocations by Israeli settlers on Palestinian residents — including those which escalate to violence.
After a prolonged legal battle, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 in favor of the Israeli army, allowing the expulsion of residents from eight villages in the region.
“Even after winning the Oscar, we went back to the same reality,” Adra said, adding that the situation was “only changing from worse to worse.”
“Almost every day, there is settlers attacks on Masafer Yatta and all over communities across the West Bank,” Adra continued.
Last week, Adra’s co-director and fellow Palestinian Hamdan Ballal reported he was attacked by Israeli settlers for winning the Oscar, saying he was detained by Israeli police for “hurling rocks” at which point he suffered a beating and “brutality.”
Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
“No Other Land,” despite winning a prestigious Oscar, has struggled to find distribution in the United States, screening at only a handful of cinemas.
Macron, on Egypt visit, to go near Gaza to show support for ceasefire
- A draft accord on treating Palestinian wounded brought out of Gaza is to be signed during the visit
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron will go to an Egyptian port near the Gaza Strip next week to highlight concerns over the conflict in the Palestinian territory, his office said Thursday.
Macron will go to Arish, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Gaza, next Tuesday during a visit to Egypt, officials said.
Macron will meet humanitarian and security workers next Tuesday to stress his “constant mobilization in favor of a ceasefire,” his office said in a statement.
Arish is a transit point for international aid intended for Gaza.
But food and other supplies have not been able to use the nearby Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was suspended last month.
Macron is to go to Egypt on Sunday and on Monday will meet the country’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Egypt has been a mediator in the Israel-Hamas conflict since the Ocxtober 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and Macron will stress “the urgency” of securing a new ceasefire so that Gaza’s population is no longer has to bear a “humanitarian catastrophe,” Israeli strikes are ended and Israeli hostages in Gaza are freed, the French leader’s office said.
A draft accord on treating Palestinian wounded brought out of Gaza is to be signed during the visit.
