ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday condemned escalating human rights violations targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority during a phone call with Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Turkish presidential sources said.
Erdogan told the Myanmarese leader that violence against Rohingyas was of deep concern to the Muslim world, and will send his foreign minister to neighboring Bangladesh to discuss the fighting.
Erdogan, who has said that the violence against Rohingya Muslims constitutes genocide, told Suu Kyi that it was a violation of human rights, the sources said.
In the phone call with Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner of Myanmar’s junta, Erdogan also discussed potential solutions to the fighting and means to deliver humanitarian aid to the region.
The latest violence, which began last October when a small Rohingya militant group ambushed border posts, is the worst Rakhine has witnessed in years, with Erdogan last week accusing Myanmar of “genocide” against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Erdogan has stepped up diplomacy and spoke on the phone with Muslim leaders during the Eid Al-Adha festival, seeking ways to solve the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. He also spoke with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will visit Bangladesh on Wednesday, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Suu Kyi has come under fire over her perceived unwillingness to speak out against the treatment of the Rohingya or chastise the military.
Erdogan said Turkey “condemns terror and operations against innocent civilians,” adding that the developments in Myanmar had turned into a “serious humanitarian crisis which caused worry and resentment.”
The Turkish leader had previously said he would bring up the issue at the next UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
Guterres on Friday said he was “deeply concerned” by the situation in Myanmar and called for “restraint and calm to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will travel to Bangladesh on Wednesday evening and hold meetings on Thursday, the Turkish sources said.
In call to Suu Kyi, Erdogan slams rising human rights violations repression
In call to Suu Kyi, Erdogan slams rising human rights violations repression
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Drone strike kills 10, including 7 children, in Sudan’s El-Obeid: medical source
- An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone strike on the Sudanese city of El-Obeid killed 10 people including seven children on Monday, a medical source told AFP.
An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan, which the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to encircle for months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the RSF, with some of the worst violence currently unfolding in Sudan’s strategic southern Kordofan region.
El-Obeid, the region’s main city, lies on a key crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum with the vast western Darfur region — where the army lost its last major position in October.
Following its victory in Darfur, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan, seeking to recapture Sudan’s central corridor and tightening its siege with its local allies around several army-held cities.
Hundreds of thousands face mass starvation across the region.
Last year, the army broke a paramilitary siege on El-Obeid, which the RSF has sought to encircle since.
Drone strikes on Sunday caused a power outage in the city but left no reports of casualties.
Last week, a coalition of armed groups allied with the army said they had retaken several towns south of El-Obeid, which according to a military source could “open up the road between El-Obeid and Dilling” — one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to flee internally and across borders.
It has also created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, and been described as a “war of atrocities” by the United Nations.
