CAIRO: Heavy shelling in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Thursday disrupted efforts to deliver badly needed aid to trapped civilians, after yet another fragile and frequently violated truce ran out, residents said.
Sudan has plunged into chaos since fighting erupted in mid-April between the country’s two rival top generals. There is increasing concern for those trapped and displaced by the fighting, and aid workers and civilians have said there’s a dire lack of basic services, medical care, food and water.
In central areas of Khartoum, sporadic explosions could be heard Thursday, a day after the United Nations warned that the Sudanese people are “facing a humanitarian catastrophe,” and after the latest in a series of cease-fires expired earlier in the day.
“The situation is very dire,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, who leads a key doctors union. “All forms of shelling can still be heard in Khartoum, whether air or artillery shelling.”
Black plumes of smoke rising from downtown neighborhoods dotted Khartoum’s skyline at midday. The fighting also raised questions about the viability of internationally backed initiatives seeking to bring an end to the violence that upended the African country’s transition to democracy.
The conflict started on April 15, preceded by months of escalating tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting turned urban areas into battlefields and foreign governments rushed to evacuate their diplomats and thousands of foreign nationals out of Sudan.
Both sides have traded accusations of truce violations over the past weeks. On Thursday, each side claimed its forces were the subject of attacks. The military said late Wednesday it clashed with RSF forces around key government institutions in Khartoum, including the Republican Palace in the capital’s center.
Cease-fire initiatives by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the East African bloc known as IGAD have all floated a path toward longer negotiations. But the warring sides have shown little commitment to even short-term promises to stop the fighting.
The doctors’ group has in recent days warned that at least 60 percent, of hospitals located near areas of active fighting are out of service, either because they have been shelled or due to the shortage of medical personnel and supplies.
Among those in a critical, life-threatening situation are some 12,000 patients with kidney failure with no access to dialysis facilities. “People suffering from chronic diseases are dying at home because functioning hospitals are only attending to the wounded,” said Atiya, of the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate.
The head of the UN children’s agency, Catherine Russell, said from Kenya on Thursday that “Sudan is teetering toward catastrophe” and warned that children are increasingly caught in the crossfire.
“While we are unable to confirm estimates due to the intensity of the violence, UNICEF has received reports that 190 children have been killed and another 1,700 injured in Sudan since conflict erupted almost three weeks ago,” she said.
“For the sake of Sudan’s children, the violence must stop,” Russell added.
Kuwait’s government announced Thursday that it will be dispatching flights carrying medical and humanitarian supplies to the city of Port Sudan, on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, the Gulf Arab country’s state-run news agency KUNA said. Sudan’s state news agency reported that the first Kuwaiti plane carrying medical supplies and food aid arrived on Thursday afternoon.
The flights are meant to deliver at least 75 tons of humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese heath authorities and the Sudanese Red Crescent.
However, the lawlessness brought on by the violence has also thwarted aid distribution across Sudan, with looting and attacks on aid and medical facilities posing major setbacks.
A coordinator for the UN’s refugee agency in the Darfur region, Toby Howard, said the organization’s facilities in the areas of Nyala, South Darfur, El Geneina and West Darfur had been looted.
Asked about who was doing the looting, Howard said it was common in the restive region even before the violence of the past two weeks.
“I would put it down to basically uncontrolled militias, bandits, criminals. Some of them are loosely affiliated with one of the two sides in the conflict,” he said during a virtual news conference Wednesday from Kenya, where he relocated after his evacuation from Darfur.
Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport, experienced relative calm amid chaos elsewhere in Sudan and became a hub for tens of thousands of people looking to flee the fighting — and has now become the entry point for an international effort to get aid supplies into the country.
The conflict has so far killed at least 550 people, including civilians, and wounded more than 4,900. The Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks only civilian casualties, said Thursday that 457 civilians have been killed in the violence, and more than 2,300 have been wounded.
At least 334,000 people have been displaced inside Sudan, and tens of thousands more to neighboring countries — Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia, according to UN agencies.
Thousands have funneled through crowded, desert crossing points between Egypt and Sudan in recent days, with many calling for aid groups to do more to provide the waiting crowds with basic assistance.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization said its workers were on the ground at the Egyptian-Sudanese border crossing of Arqin to help meet urgent medical needs for the first time since the influx of people started.
The UN refugee agency said that more than 50,000 people had crossed into Egypt alone, including 47,000 Sudanese and 3,500 third-country nationals, by Wednesday.
The US State Department said Thursday it has “successfully completed” the evacuation of more than 2,000 people from Sudan following the initial evacuation of US Embassy diplomats and staff.
Of all the evacuated, roughly 1,300 are American citizens, green card holders, Sudanese working for the embassy or nationals of US partners and allies, deputy department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
Shelling in Sudanese capital disrupts aid delivery efforts
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Shelling in Sudanese capital disrupts aid delivery efforts
- In central areas of Khartoum, sporadic explosions could be heard Thursday, a day after the United Nations warned that the Sudanese people are “facing a humanitarian catastrophe”
- “The situation is very dire,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, who leads a key doctors union
Israeli strikes kill 42 in Syria’s Aleppo province
- Strikes have increased since Israel’s war with Hamas began on October 7
- Israel targeted ‘a rockets depot belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah’ close to Aleppo airport
BEIRUT: A war monitor said Israeli air strikes Friday on Syria’s Aleppo province killed at least 42 including 36 Syrian soldiers, the deadliest toll for the army since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria since civil war there broke out in 2011, targeting army positions as well as Iran-backed forces including Hezbollah, an ally of Damascus and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The strikes have increased since Israel’s war with Hamas began on October 7, and Friday’s was the second such attack in 24 hours.
“Israeli strikes” targeted “a rockets depot belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah” close to Aleppo airport, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
It reported “42 killed, including six from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group” and “36 soldiers,” the highest Syrian army toll in Israeli strikes since the Israel-Hamas war began.
State news agency SANA, quoting a military source, reported that “at approximately 1:45 am, the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo,” adding that “civilians and military personnel” were killed and wounded.
Contacted by AFP from Jerusalem, the Israeli military said it would “not comment on reports in the foreign media.”
The Observatory also reported strikes targeting “defense factories” controlled by pro-Iran groups elsewhere in Aleppo province.
The attack came just hours after a reported Israeli strike in the Damascus countryside.
Syrian state media said “two civilians” were killed in an “Israeli air attack that targeted a residential building” on Thursday, also reporting material damage.
The Observatory said the Sayyida Zeinab area, a stronghold of pro-Iran armed groups including Hezbollah south of the capital, was targeted.
Israeli raids in Syria also seek to cut off Hezbollah supply routes to neighboring Lebanon.
The Israel-Hamas war began with the Gaza-based Palestinian militants’ unprecedented attacks that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,623 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.
Israel has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon since the Gaza war began, sparking fears of a major regional conflagration.
In Lebanon, cross-border fire since October has killed at least 346 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters, but also including at least 68 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and in northern Israel, where the military says 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed.
Hezbollah has fought alongside ally Damascus in Syria’s civil war since at least 2013, and continues to operate in the country.
The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered a conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and jihadists.
On Tuesday, strikes on eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province killed 19 people, mostly pro-Iran fighters including two advisers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Observatory said.
The World Health Organization reported one of its workers was killed in the strikes, which the Observatory blamed on Israel, after initially not saying who carried them out.
A US defense official said the United States “did not conduct any airstrikes” at the time.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
Israel has not received everything it has asked for, top US general says
- Some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity
WASHINGTON: The United States’ top general said on Thursday that Israel had not received every weapon it has asked for, in part because some of it could affect the US military’s readiness and there were capacity limitations.
Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.
“Although we’ve been supporting them with capability, they’ve not received everything they’ve asked for,” said General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Some of that is because they’ve asked for stuff that we either don’t have the capacity to provide or not willing to provide, not right now,” Brown added, while speaking at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.
A spokesperson for Brown later on Thursday said his comments were in reference to “a standard practice before providing military aid to any of our allies and partners.”
“We assess US stockpiles and any possible impact on our own readiness to determine our ability to provide the requested aid,” Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey said in a statement.
“There is no change in US policy. The United States continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as they defend themselves from Hamas,” Dorsey added.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s devastating offensive, according to health authorities in the territory.
Israel retaliated following an attack by militant group Hamas on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli offensive prompted opposition from within Biden’s Democratic Party, leading thousands to vote “uncommitted” for him in recent party presidential primaries.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington earlier this week and the Pentagon said security assistance to Israel was discussed.
“It is a constant dialogue,” Brown said.
Arab News Research and Studies Unit launches latest deep dive on Jerusalem
- Focus on Israel’s land appropriations with settler organizations, marginalization of Christians and Muslims
- Arab News provides details of aim to ‘Judaize’ Palestinian East Jerusalem
LONDON: For the past 20 years Israel’s government has collaborated with the country’s leading settler movement in a plot to appropriate land in East Jerusalem, with the aim of reestablishing the Biblical “City of David,” at the cost of Muslims and Christians alike, and sabotaging any hope of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The wealthy City of David Foundation, also known as Elad, has also been given virtual carte blanche by various government departments to develop biblically themed national parks surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City.
It has also embarked on a series of controversial archaeological projects designed to provide evidence that East Jerusalem is the site of the City of David, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
“What we are seeing is the establishment of a very specific, exclusionary, absolutist biblical narrative in and around the Old City, and the etching of that narrative physically into the landscape through archaeology, parks, and so on,” said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem. This is an Israeli NGO that works to track developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent-status options.
The aim was “the marginalization of Palestinian East Jerusalem, politically, geographically and economically, and the marginalization of the Christian presence in Jerusalem.”
Normally, the Christian presence in Jerusalem is never more apparent than during Holy Week, which began on Sunday — Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar — and culminates on Easter Sunday, March 31. Today is Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, which they believe took place at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City’s Christian quarter.
VIEW THE DEEP DIVE
Battleground: Jerusalem The biblical battle for the Holy City
But presiding over the celebrations at the church on Palm Sunday , Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, expressed his dismay that many parishioners and pilgrims had been unable to participate this year because of the war in Gaza, “which is so terrible and seems never-ending ... and everything going on around us this year.”
The details of what Terrestrial Jerusalem describes as “the strategic encirclement of Jerusalem’s Old City” are revealed today in a special Deep Dive by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit.
The plot has been a long time in the planning. Speaking in June 1998 after Jewish settlers seized four homes in Silwan, Elad spokesman Yigal Kaufman said: “Our aim is to Judaize East Jerusalem. The City of David is the most ancient core of Jerusalem, and we want it to become a Jewish neighborhood.”
Last week Israel dealt a fresh blow to hopes of Palestinian statehood when it announced it was seizing 800 hectares of occupied Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley, a move condemned as illegal by numerous states and institutions from the European Union to the Arab League’s parliament.
The announcement, by Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, was made last Friday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv for talks on Gaza with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jordanian, Irish foreign ministers discuss Gaza war in phone call
- The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
- Safadi thanked Martin for his country's position on ceasefire and need for aid
AMMAN: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi received a phone call from the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin on Thursday, Jordan News Agency reported.
The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the prompt delivery of sufficient, sustainable aid to the enclave.
They also stressed the significance of implementing Security Council Resolution No. 2728, adopted on Tuesday, which called for a ceasefire during Ramadan.
Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising new fears of a long-threatened ground assault.
Safadi highlighted the necessity of upholding international law and humanitarian principles.
Talks also touched upon ongoing efforts to halt Israel’s offensive and address the resulting humanitarian crisis.
Both ministers reiterated their commitment to continued collaboration and joint efforts to facilitate aid into Gaza.
Safadi emphasized the importance of Ireland and other European nations officially recognizing the Palestinian state. He thanked Martin for his country's position on a ceasefire and need for aid, as well as its backing of the two-state solution.
Israel has laid siege to Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, cutting off food, fuel, water, and power supplies.
Judges at the International Court of Justice on Thursday unanimously ordered Israel to take all necessary action to ensure basic food supplies arrived without delay to the Palestinian population.
On Wednesday, Martin announced the Irish government would intervene in the case brought by South Africa, arguing that the restriction of essential goods in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent.
Shoukry reiterates Egypt’s objection to Rafah ground offensive in phone call with British FM
- Shoukry emphasized to Cameron that Egypt rejects any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah
- He warned of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability
CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip in a phone call.
Shoukry received Cameron’s call within the framework of consultation and coordination about the situation in the Gaza Strip and the necessary action to end the humanitarian crisis there.
The two sides exchanged assessments on the dire humanitarian and security conditions in the Gaza Strip and the regional and international action needed to achieve a ceasefire, swap detainees and deliver humanitarian aid in full to the Strip.
They stressed the necessity of ensuring the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2728 and building on it to reach a full and sustainable ceasefire.
The discussion addressed means of coordination between international and regional parties to halt the war in the Gaza Strip.
Shoukry affirmed that Egypt was continuing its efforts at all levels to facilitate reaching an agreement to enforce the truce in Gaza, leading to a permanent ceasefire in the Strip for the preservation of the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry assured his British counterpart of Egypt’s rejection of any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah, warning of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability.
He also stressed the necessity of putting an end to Israeli policies and practices attempting to create an uninhabitable situation in the Gaza Strip, including indiscriminate targeting, starvation and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry reiterated the rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians outside their territories and any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Shoukry and Cameron agreed to continue consultations during the coming period on the path toward curbing the crisis in the Gaza Strip and containing its repercussions.