CAIRO: The war in Sudan appears to be reaching a critical juncture after nearly two years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands, driven millions from their homes and seen bloody atrocities.
For the first time, the military has been making steady advances against its rival, the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and it could soon wrest back control of the capital, Khartoum.
The RSF responded by announcing at a gathering in Kenya that it and its allies will establish a parallel government.
Few think the war will end any time soon, but here is a look at what the developments could mean.
What’s happening on the ground?
The war erupted in April 2023 between the military and the RSF with battles in Khartoum and around the country. The leaders of the two forces had been allies who were meant to have overseen the democratic transition after a popular uprising in 2019, but instead worked together to thwart a return to civilian rule.
However, tensions exploded into a bloody fight for power.
Since then, at least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
In recent weeks, the military has pushed deeper into the Greater Khartoum area, which includes the capital and its two sister cities, Omdurman and Khartoum North. Its forces are aiming to retake districts still held by the RSF, including the presidential palace and key ministries.
The military has also taken back much of White Nile and Gezira provinces, bordering the capital. In nearby North Kordofan province, troops broke a long RSF siege of the provincial capital, el-Obeid.
The advances are “the first time that SAF has reversed RSF momentum for any major period of time since the start of the war,” said Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group, a research consultancy, using an acronym of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
Will the war end if the military retakes Khartoum?
A military victory in Khartoum would likely just move the war into a new chapter, creating a de facto partition of Sudan into military- and RSF-run zones.
That partition would not be “stable or durable,” Boswell said, meaning more fighting would ensue.
Military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan has shown no sign of engaging in serious peace talks. The RSF, headed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has seemed to be determined to keep fighting.
The RSF still holds much of western Sudan, particularly most of the Darfur region. On Monday, the RSF announced a new assault on El- Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, held by the military. Heavy fighting in North Darfur this week forced the international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders to halt aid to the Zamzam camp, where some 500,000 displaced people are living and where authorities have declared a famine is taking place.
Boswell said a victory in Khartoum could also cause strains to break open in the military’s coalition. The military has been backed by a collection of armed factions – including former Darfur rebels and Islamist brigades — that are historic rivals united only by the goal of fighting the RSF.
What is the significance of the RSF’s ‘parallel government’?
The RSF and its allies signed a charter over the weekend in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, establishing a parallel government.
“They are trying to achieve a victory politically that they cannot achieve militarily,” Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AP.
Burhan has also spoken of setting up a transitional government, raising the potential for two rival administrations jockeying for support as their forces battle — entrenching Sudan’s effective partition.
“Once again, Sudan is heading toward fragmentation and disintegration, a stage more dangerous than mere division leading to two stable states,” Khalid Omar, a pro-democracy activist and former minister, said in a Facebook post Sunday.
The RSF’s 16-page government charter, seen by the AP, calls for “a secular, democratic and decentralized state,” maintaining what it called Sudan’s “voluntary integrity of its territory and peoples” — a nod to Sudan’s many communities demanding autonomy from Khartoum.
The RSF grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias, mobilized two decades ago by then-president Omar Al-Bashir against populations that identify as Central or East African in Darfur. The Janjaweed were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities. Before the latest war erupted, the RSF joined with the military to overthrow civilian leaders, and RSF fighters attacked pro-democracy protests, killing and raping activists.
In the current war, the RSF has been accused of numerous atrocities. The Biden administration slapped Dagalo with sanctions, saying the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide. The military has also been accused of atrocities, though on a smaller scale.
Sen. Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, slammed Kenya for hosting the RSF conference, saying in a posting on X that it was “helping the RSF legitimize their genocidal rule in Sudan under the guise of peacemaking.”
But some in Sudan’s political factions support the RSF, mistrusting the military for its ties to Islamists who backed Al-Bashir’s autocratic rule.
The civilian pro-democracy movement has split between pro- and anti-Dagalo factions. A leader from the Umma Party, traditionally the main political party, signed the charter at the Nairobi meeting. The party responded by throwing him out.
The most notable participant in Nairobi was the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), led by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu. The group, which fought the military in the past, is a breakaway faction of the SPLM, South Sudan’s ruling party.
The growing ties with the RSF could broaden the war into the SPLM-N’s stronghold, the Nuba Mountains, spared fighting since a 2016 ceasefire deal with the military.
Are things changing for Sudanese?
The military’s capture of new areas has opened the way for some displaced Sudanese to return. Those who fled to Egypt have been returning home at a rate of around 500 a day, the Sudanese crossings authority said last month.
Khalid Abdelsalam, a Sudanese doctor in Khartoum, told the AP some people have returned to homes in Omdurman, Khartoum North and parts of Gezira state, as well as back to villages that “had been completely abandoned.”
An aid worker in North Darfur, an area contested between the military and RSF, said some people had felt safe to return to army-held areas. But the RSF continues to attack gatherings of civilians, said the worker, who spoke on the condition that he and his organization not be named for security reasons.
He said the area he is in lacks water, food and medical services, adding that the situation is “catastrophic.”
Sudan’s military is making advances to retake the capital
https://arab.news/gbt7r
Sudan’s military is making advances to retake the capital
- For the first time, the military has been making steady advances against its rival
- The RSF responded by announcing at a gathering in Kenya that it and its allies will establish a parallel government
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Gaza civil defense says 20 killed in Israeli operations
- Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip
- War has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinians
Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where the war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinian territory’s population of more than two million.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said five of the dead were killed in a strike on a school in Gaza City.
A second strike near another school in the city where displaced civilians had found shelter killed three people and wounded around 10, including children, he said.
Many Gazans have sought shelter in schools and other public buildings since the war began with Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it could not comment on specific attacks without precise coordinates.
The latest strikes came hours after Hamas said it was ready to start talks “immediately” on a US-sponsored proposal for a Gaza ceasefire.
The proposal came ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s departure for talks on Monday in Washington, where US President Donald Trump has intensified calls for an end to the war.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 57,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.
Lebanon says 1 killed in Israeli strike on south
- An “Israeli enemy drone strike on a vehicle” in Bint Jbeil “killed one person and wounded two others”
BEIRUT: Lebanon said one person was killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike in the country’s south, the latest deadly raid despite a ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.
An “Israeli enemy drone strike on a vehicle” in Bint Jbeil “killed one person and wounded two others,” Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA), noting the toll was provisional.
Earlier Saturday, the ministry reported that a separate Israeli drone strike wounded one person in Shebaa, elsewhere in the south, with the NNA saying that raid targeted a house.
Israel has kept up its bombardment of Lebanon since a November 27 ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah including two months of all-out war that left the Iran-backed group severely weakened.
On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle at the southern entrance of Beirut killed one man and wounded three other people, Lebanon said, as the Israeli army said it hit a “terrorist” working for Iran.
Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.
Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country, but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic.
Israel has warned that it would keep striking Lebanon until Hezbollah has been disarmed.
3 mayors arrested in southern Turkey as part of crackdown on opposition
- Abdurrahman Tutdere, the mayor of Adiyaman, and Zeydan Karalar, who heads Adana municipality, were detained in early morning raids
ISTANBUL: The mayors of three major cities in southern Turkey were arrested Saturday, state-run media reported, joining a growing list of opposition figures detained since the mayor of Istanbul was imprisoned in March.
Abdurrahman Tutdere, the mayor of Adiyaman, and Zeydan Karalar, who heads Adana municipality, were detained in early morning raids, according to Anadolu Agency. Both are members of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP.
The CHP mayor of Antalya, Muhittin Bocek, was arrested with two other suspects in a separate bribery investigation by the Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, Anadolu reported.
Karalar was arrested in Istanbul and Tutdere was arrested in the capital, Ankara, where he has a home. Tutdere posted on X that he was being taken to Istanbul.
Ten people, including Karalar and Tutdere, were arrested as part of an investigation by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office into allegations involving organized crime, bribery and bid-rigging.
Details of the charges against them were not immediately released by prosecutors but the operation follows the arrests of scores of officials from municipalities controlled by the CHP in recent months.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, widely considered the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s 22-year rule, was jailed four months ago over corruption allegations.
The former CHP mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, and 137 municipal officials were detained earlier this week as part of an investigation into alleged tender-rigging and fraud. On Friday, ex-mayor Tunc Soyer and 59 others were jailed pending trial in what Soyer’s lawyer described as “a clearly unjust, unlawful and politically motivated decision.”
Also Friday, it was reported by state-run media that the CHP mayor of Manavgat, a Mediterranean resort city in Antalya province, and 34 others were detained over alleged corruption.
CHP officials have faced waves of arrests this year that many consider aimed at neutralizing Turkey’s main opposition party. The government insists prosecutors and the judiciary act independently but the arrest of Istanbul’s Imamoglu led to the largest street protests Turkey has seen in more than a decade.
Imamoglu was officially nominated as his party’s presidential candidate following his imprisonment. Turkey’s next election is due in 2028 but could come sooner.
The crackdown comes a year after the CHP made significant gains in local elections. Adiyaman, which was severely affected by the 2023 earthquake, was among several cities previously considered strongholds for Erdogan to fall to the opposition.
Trump says there could be a Gaza deal next week after Hamas gives ‘positive’ response
- But US leader says he had not been briefed on the current state of negotiations
- Israeli troops open fire on Palestinians heading to food distribution sites
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Friday it was good that Hamas said it had responded in “a positive spirit” to a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire proposal.
He told reporters aboard Air Force One there could be a deal on a Gaza ceasefire by next week but that he had not been briefed on the current state of negotiations.
Hamas said Friday it has given a “positive” response to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza but said further talks were needed on implementation.
It was not clear if Hamas’ statement meant it had accepted the proposal from Trump for a 60-day ceasefire. Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war, now nearly 21 months old. Trump has been pushing hard for a deal to be reached, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the White House next week to discuss a deal.
The Hamas statement came as Israeli airstrikes killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza early Friday, while a hospital said another 20 people died in shootings while seeking aid.
The UN human rights office said it has recorded 613 Palestinians killed within the span of a month in Gaza while trying to obtain aid. Most were killed while trying to reach food distribution points run by an Israeli-backed American organization, while others were massed waiting for aid trucks connected to the United Nations or other humanitarian organizations, it said.
Efforts ongoing to halt the war
Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, during which the US would “work with all parties to end the war.” He urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen.
In its statement late Friday, Hamas said it “has submitted its positive response” to Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
It said it is “fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework.” It did not elaborate on what needed to be worked out in implementation.
A Hamas official said the ceasefire could start as early as next week but he said talks were needed first to work out how many Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for each freed Israeli hostage and to specify the amount of aid that will enter Gaza during the truce. Hamas has said it wants aid to flow in greater quantities through the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the response with the press.
The official also said that negotiations would start from the first day of the truce on a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for the release of remaining hostages. He said that Trump has guaranteed that the truce will be extended beyond 60 days if needed for those negotiations to reach a deal. There has been no confirmation from the United States of such a guarantee.
Previous rounds of negotiations have run aground over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war’s end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the destruction of the militant group.
“We’ll see what happens. We’re going to know over the next 24 hours,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Thursday when asked if Hamas had agreed to the latest framework for a ceasefire.
20 killed Friday while seeking aid
Officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said at least three Palestinians were killed Friday while on the roads heading to food distribution sites run by the Israeli-backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in southern Gaza.
Since GHF began distributions in late May, witnesses have said almost daily that Israeli troops open fire toward crowds of Palestinians on the roads leading to the food centers. To reach the sites, people must walk several kilometers (miles) through an Israeli military zone where troops control the road.
The Israeli military has said previously it fires warning shots to control crowds or at Palestinians who approach its troops. The GHF has denied any serious injuries or deaths on its sites and says shootings outside their immediate vicinity are under the purview of Israel’s military.
On Friday, in reaction to the UN rights agency’s report, it said in a statement that it was investigating reports of people killed and wounded while seeking aid. It said it was working at “minimizing possible friction between the population” and Israeli forces, including by installing fences and placing signs on the routes.
Separately, witnesses have said Israeli troops open fire toward crowds of Palestinians who gather in military-controlled zones to wait for aid trucks entering Gaza for the UN or other aid organizations not associated with GHF.
On Friday, 17 people were killed waiting for trucks in eastern Khan Younis in the Tahliya area, officials at Nasser Hospital said.
Three survivors told the AP they had gone to wait for the trucks in a military “red zone” in Khan Younis and that troops opened fire from a tank and drones.
It was a “crowd of people, may God help them, who want to eat and live,” said Seddiq Abu Farhana, who was shot in the leg, forcing him to drop a bag of flour he had grabbed. “There was direct firing.”
Airstrikes also hit the Muwasi area on the southern end of Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes are sheltering in tent camps. Of the 15 people killed in the strikes, eight were women and one was a child, according to the hospital.
Israel’s military said it was looking into Friday’s reported airstrikes. It had no immediate comment on the reported shootings surrounding the aid trucks.
UN investigates shootings near aid sites
The spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said the agency was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings. But she said “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by GHF.
In a message to The Associated Press, Shamdasani said that of the total tallied, 509 killings were “GHF-related,” meaning at or near its distribution sites.
In a statement Friday, GHF cast doubt on the casualty figures, accusing the UN of taking its casualty figures “directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry” and of trying “to falsely smear our effort.”
Shamdasani, the UN rights office spokesperson, told the AP that the data “is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical, human rights and humanitarian organizations.”
Rik Peeperkorn, representative of the World Health Organization, said Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital operating in the south, receives dozens or hundreds of casualties every day, most coming from the vicinity of the food distribution sites.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also said in late June that its field hospital near one of the GHF sites has been overwhelmed more than 20 times in the previous months by mass casualties, most suffering gunshot injuries while on their way to the food distribution sites.
Also on Friday, Israel’s military said two soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza, one in the north and one in the south. Over 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war began, including more than 400 during the fighting in Gaza.
The Israeli military also issued new evacuation orders Friday in northeast Khan Younis in southern Gaza and urged Palestinians to move west ahead of planned military operations against Hamas in the area. The new evacuation zones pushed Palestinians into increasingly smaller spaces by the coast.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said the number of Palestinians killed in the territory has passed 57,000. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says more than half of the dead are women and children. The ministry is run by medical professionals employed by the Hamas government, and its numbers are widely cited by the UN and international organizations.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on
- Tehran has passed law to suspend cooperation with IAEA
- Iran’s stock of near-bomb-grade uranium unaccounted for
VIENNA: The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.
IAEA wants talks
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“(Grossi) reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tons of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that .... the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week.
