GENEVA: The United Nations said Wednesday that $3.03 billion would be needed to provide urgent aid to people in conflict-ravaged Sudan and to over one million expected to flee into neighboring countries this year.
Needs have soared since a bloody conflict erupted in Sudan on April 15, the UN said, revising up its response plan for the country.
“Today, 25 million people — more than half the population of Sudan — needs humanitarian aid and protection,” Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the UN humanitarian agency’s Geneva bureau, told reporters.
Battles erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Around 1,000 people have been killed, mainly in and around Khartoum as well as the ravaged state of West Darfur, according to medics.
The fighting has deepened the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where one in three people already relied on humanitarian assistance before the war.
The UN said a full $2.56 billion is now expected to be needed to provide assistance inside Sudan — up from the $1.75 billion estimated at the end of last year.
Those funds will allow aid agencies to reach 18 million of the most vulnerable people inside the country, Rajasingham said.
At the same time, the UN refugee agency said $470.4 million would be needed to assist those fleeing the country, adding that it was now planning for up to 1.1 million people to cross out of Sudan this year alone.
Just two weeks ago, UNHCR had said it would need $445 million through October to address the needs of as many as 860,000 people who might flee the country.
“So far, the crisis, which has just started a month ago, resulted in massive outflows into neighboring countries of about 220,000 refugees and returnees who have been seeking safety in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Central African Republic and Ethiopia,” Raouf Mazou, assistant chief of operations at the UN refugee agency UNHCR told reporters.
In addition, more than 700,000 people have been displaced inside Sudan by the fighting.
“Countless people remain trapped and terrified inside Sudan, innocent victims of this indiscriminate fighting,” Mazou said.
At the same time, “those who have fled across the country’s many borders are shattered, often having left behind or lost loved ones and finding themselves in places where access is extremely hard and resources are minimal.”
More than $3bn needed for aid in Sudan, Sudanese refugees: UN
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More than $3bn needed for aid in Sudan, Sudanese refugees: UN
- Needs have soared since a bloody conflict erupted in Sudan on April 15
- Around 1,000 people have been killed, mainly in and around Khartoum
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
