Khartoum: Firefighters have contained a large blaze that erupted in a cargo area of the Sudanese Red Sea port of Suakin, the port’s director said Thursday.
The fire, which raged for hours, broke out in the cargo drop off area of the port on Wednesday sending plumes of acrid smoke into the sky.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.
“The fire has been brought under control following the intervention of civil defense forces and port workers,” port director Taha Ahmed Mokhtar said.
He said an investigation had been launched to determine the cause of the fire, and a commission set up to assess the scale of the losses.
A port official, who spoke on condition of annonymity, had earlier described the damage as “catastrophic.”
The blaze at the port came as Sudan is gripped by a chronic economic crisis which deepened after last year’s military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.
The military takeover triggered punitive measures, including aid cuts by Western governments, who demanded the restoration of the transitional administration installed after the 2019 ouster of longtime president Omar Al-Bashir.
The historic port town of Suakin is no longer Sudan’s main foreign trade hub, a role which has been taken by Port Sudan, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) away along the Red Sea coast.
But there have been moves to redevelop the port.
Bashir’s government signed a deal with Turkey in 2017 to restore the historic buildings of Suakin island and expand its docks, but the agreement has been suspended since his overthrow.
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Firefighters contain blaze at Sudan Red Sea port
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Firefighters contain blaze at Sudan Red Sea port
- The fire, which raged for hours, broke out in the cargo drop off area of the port
US immigration agents’ training ‘broken’: whistleblower
WASHINGTON: A former US immigration official said Monday that training for federal agents was “deficient, defective and broken,” adding to pressure on President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown.
Ryan Schwank resigned this month from his job teaching law at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) training academy in Glynco, Georgia, after he said he was instructed to teach new recruits to violate the US Constitution.
The fatal shooting of two American citizens in Minneapolis in January reignited accusations that agents enforcing Trump’s militarized immigration operation are inexperienced, undertrained and operating outside law enforcement norms.
The administration scaled back the deployment after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in broad daylight by officers sparked mass protests and widespread outrage.
Schwank told a forum hosted by congressional Democrats on Monday that he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.”
“Never in my career had I received such a blatantly unlawful order,” he said.
He said that ICE cut 240 hours from its 584-hour training program, curtailing subjects such as the US Constitution, lawful arrest, fire arms, the use of force and the limits of officers’ authority.
“The legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken,” he said.
As a consequence, poorly trained, inexperienced armed officers were being sent to places like Minneapolis “with minimal supervision,” he said.
The lawyer’s comments coincide with the release of dozens of pages of internal ICE documents by Senate Democrats that suggest the Trump administration cut corners on training, the New York Times reported.
Schwank said he resigned on February 13 after more than four years working for ICE, and that he felt duty-bound to report inadequacies with the new training program.
Ryan Schwank resigned this month from his job teaching law at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) training academy in Glynco, Georgia, after he said he was instructed to teach new recruits to violate the US Constitution.
The fatal shooting of two American citizens in Minneapolis in January reignited accusations that agents enforcing Trump’s militarized immigration operation are inexperienced, undertrained and operating outside law enforcement norms.
The administration scaled back the deployment after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in broad daylight by officers sparked mass protests and widespread outrage.
Schwank told a forum hosted by congressional Democrats on Monday that he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.”
“Never in my career had I received such a blatantly unlawful order,” he said.
He said that ICE cut 240 hours from its 584-hour training program, curtailing subjects such as the US Constitution, lawful arrest, fire arms, the use of force and the limits of officers’ authority.
“The legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken,” he said.
As a consequence, poorly trained, inexperienced armed officers were being sent to places like Minneapolis “with minimal supervision,” he said.
The lawyer’s comments coincide with the release of dozens of pages of internal ICE documents by Senate Democrats that suggest the Trump administration cut corners on training, the New York Times reported.
Schwank said he resigned on February 13 after more than four years working for ICE, and that he felt duty-bound to report inadequacies with the new training program.
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