UNITED NATIONS: The transfer of crude oil from a decaying tanker off Yemen will begin early next week, the United Nations said Monday of an operation aimed at preventing a damaging Red Sea spill.
The 47-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the Houthi-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since the Arabian Peninsula country plunged into civil war more than eight years ago.
A team of experts in May started inspecting conditions aboard the vessel and kickstarted preparations for the operation.
It will see private company SMIT Salvage pump the oil from the Safer to the Nautica, a super-tanker the United Nations purchased for the operation to recover the equivalent of more than one million barrels of oil, then tow away the empty tanker.
“SMIT has certified to UNDP (the United Nations Development Programme) that the oil transfer can proceed, with the level of risk within an acceptable range,” David Gressly, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told a Security Council meeting.
“The Safer is fully stabilized for the ship-to-ship transfer of the oil,” he said, stressing however that the operation “still presents residual risk” and that plans were in place to address potential incidents.
Noting that authorities in Sanaa had just given the green light for the transfer, Gressly said the Nautica was “preparing to sail” from Djibouti.
“It will moor alongside the Safer and should begin taking on the oil by early next week,” he said.
Completion of the transfer should take roughly two weeks, at which point “the whole world can heave a sigh of relief,” he added.
The unprecedented UN operation to transfer oil from the Safer — which is carrying four times as much oil as that which spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska — and tow the ship to a scrap yard is budgeted at some $143 million.
In the event of a spill, the UN estimates clean-up costs could top $20 billion, with potentially catastrophic environmental, humanitarian and economic consequences.
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Transfer of crude from tanker off Yemen to start next week: UN
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Transfer of crude from tanker off Yemen to start next week: UN
- A team of experts in May started inspecting conditions aboard the vessel and kickstarted preparations for the operation
- It will see private company SMIT Salvage pump the oil from the Safer to the Nautica, a super-tanker the UN purchased for the operation
Sudan paramilitary used mass graves to conceal war crimes: ICC deputy prosecutor
UNITED NATIONS: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces carried out mass killings in Darfur and attempted to conceal them with mass graves, the International Criminal Court’s deputy prosecutor said on Monday.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Nazhat Shameem Khan said it was the “assessment of the office of the prosecutor that war crimes and crimes against humanity” had been committed in the RSF’s takeover of the city of El-Fasher in October.
“Our work has been indicative of mass killing events and attempts to conceal crimes through the establishment of mass graves,” Khan said in a video address, citing audio and video evidence as well as satellite imagery.
Since April 2023, a civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
Reports of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions and looting emerged in the wake of the RSF’s sweep of El-Fasher, which was the army’s last holdout position in the Darfur region.
Both warring sides have been accused of atrocities throughout the war.
Footage reviewed by the ICC, Khan said, showed RSF fighters detaining, abusing and executing civilians in El-Fasher, then celebrating the killings and “desecrating corpses.”
According to Khan, the material matched testimony gathered from affected communities, while submissions from civil society groups and other partners had further corroborated the evidence.
The atrocities in El-Fasher, she added, mirror those documented in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina in 2023, where UN experts determined the RSF killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people, mostly from the Massalit tribe.
She said a picture was emerging of “appalling organized, widespread mass criminality.”
“It will continue until this conflict and the sense of impunity that fuels it are stopped,” she added.
Khan also issued a renewed call for Sudanese authorities to “work with us seriously” to ensure the surrender of all individuals subject to outstanding warrants, including former longtime president Omar Al-Bashir, former ruling party chairman Ahmed Haroun and ex-defense minister Abdul Raheem Mohammed Hussein.
She said Haroun’s arrest in particular should be “given priority.”
Haroun faces 20 counts of crimes against humanity and 22 war-crimes charges for his role in recruiting the Janjaweed militia, which carried out ethnic massacres in Darfur in the 2000s and later became the RSF.
He escaped prison in 2023 and has since reappeared rallying support for the Sudanese army.
Khan spoke to the UN Security Council via video link after being denied a visa to attend in New York due to sanctions in place against her by the United States.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Nazhat Shameem Khan said it was the “assessment of the office of the prosecutor that war crimes and crimes against humanity” had been committed in the RSF’s takeover of the city of El-Fasher in October.
“Our work has been indicative of mass killing events and attempts to conceal crimes through the establishment of mass graves,” Khan said in a video address, citing audio and video evidence as well as satellite imagery.
Since April 2023, a civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
Reports of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions and looting emerged in the wake of the RSF’s sweep of El-Fasher, which was the army’s last holdout position in the Darfur region.
Both warring sides have been accused of atrocities throughout the war.
Footage reviewed by the ICC, Khan said, showed RSF fighters detaining, abusing and executing civilians in El-Fasher, then celebrating the killings and “desecrating corpses.”
According to Khan, the material matched testimony gathered from affected communities, while submissions from civil society groups and other partners had further corroborated the evidence.
The atrocities in El-Fasher, she added, mirror those documented in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina in 2023, where UN experts determined the RSF killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people, mostly from the Massalit tribe.
She said a picture was emerging of “appalling organized, widespread mass criminality.”
“It will continue until this conflict and the sense of impunity that fuels it are stopped,” she added.
Khan also issued a renewed call for Sudanese authorities to “work with us seriously” to ensure the surrender of all individuals subject to outstanding warrants, including former longtime president Omar Al-Bashir, former ruling party chairman Ahmed Haroun and ex-defense minister Abdul Raheem Mohammed Hussein.
She said Haroun’s arrest in particular should be “given priority.”
Haroun faces 20 counts of crimes against humanity and 22 war-crimes charges for his role in recruiting the Janjaweed militia, which carried out ethnic massacres in Darfur in the 2000s and later became the RSF.
He escaped prison in 2023 and has since reappeared rallying support for the Sudanese army.
Khan spoke to the UN Security Council via video link after being denied a visa to attend in New York due to sanctions in place against her by the United States.
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