WAD MADANI, Sudan: Desperate to check on her elderly mother amid the chaos of Sudan’s war, Amal Hassan left her family home in the capital Khartoum on May 30.
She has yet to return.
Her husband and three children in Omdurman — part of greater Khartoum — are among the hundreds of Sudanese families desperate for news of loved ones who have disappeared.
At least 3,900 people have been killed since war broke out in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Hundreds more have simply vanished, leaving their families anxiously guessing whether they have died in the fighting or been abducted by combatants.
Many anxious families have turned to social media, desperate for news of missing relatives, in many cases girls and women, in the war that has seen repeated reports of sexual violence.
The online support project Mafqoud (Missing) lists the names of the disappeared together with their photos and a family member’s phone number.
Just one of the many listed is Saba Baloula Mokhtar, a 17-year-old girl who was last seen in Omdurman on May 18.
Human rights groups and Sudan-based activists say many have been taken by the RSF.
One woman who made it back to her family in north Khartoum, Heba Ebeid, said paramilitaries held her for three months, forcing her and other women and girls to cook for them.
Some of the missing are feared to have died in gunbattles, artillery and air strikes in the war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Others have been kidnapped, sometimes for ransom of up to 30 million Sudanese pounds (around $54,545), according to a report by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA).
A relatively lucky few have been freed, sometimes left by the side of the road after days, weeks or months of captivity.
The Sudanese Association for Victims of Forced Disappearance said it had filed “reports of 430 disappearances during the war.”
It has given the names of missing men, women and children to police stations in Wad Madani, a town 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Khartoum where many of the displaced have fled.
“According to survivors, these abductions are the work of the RSF,” Othman Al-Basri, a lawyer with the association, told AFP.
SIHA has also collected testimonies from women who say they were kidnapped by paramilitaries and forced to cook for them or wash their clothes.
“We have so far counted 31 missing women and girls,” the group told AFP in a written statement.
“But we think the real number is much, much higher. Families avoid reporting cases of missing women, for fear of stigma.”
In the back of everyone’s mind is the same fear: that the disappeared have been subjected to the sexual violence that has been rampant in both the current and past Sudanese conflicts.
Since April 15, the governmental Combatting Violence against Women and Children Unit has recorded 108 sexual assaults in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur.
The unit stresses that the true number, like overall casualty figures, may be far higher, as their count includes only those who have received treatment and chosen to report the assaults.
Many more are thought to be suffering at home in silence.
Most Sudanese hospitals are out of service, and police have mostly disappeared from the streets as their stations have been attacked and looted by the RSF.
Families have turned to resistance committees, the neighborhood groups that used to organize pro-democracy demonstrations and which now provide assistance.
Sometimes they help dig out survivors from the rubble of bombed buildings, at other times activists have stood up to RSF fighters wo have been accused of terrorizing neighborhoods and looting property.
On July 3, civilians successfully stopped two young women from being abducted by RSF fighters, the Al-Halfaya committee in Khartoum said.
In other cases, relatives and neighbors secured the release of four girls abducted in three separate incidents, the committee said.
Far from the capital, women and girls have also been reported missing in Darfur and the states of Sennar and White Nile.
“My daughter Najwa Mohammed Adam is 16 years old — we haven’t heard from her in 45 days,” said Halima Haroun, speaking to AFP from Chad after fleeing the West Darfur capital of El Geneina.
“We don’t know anything about her, if she’s dead or alive.”
A paramilitary source, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied accusations of abductions, saying “the RSF is not holding anyone.”
The source added that the RSF “is only holding one person, and that is because he is accused of a crime.”
Grave fears for missing women, girls in war-torn Sudan
https://arab.news/29b6j
Grave fears for missing women, girls in war-torn Sudan
- Many anxious families have turned to social media, desperate for news of missing relatives, in many cases girls and women
- The online support project Mafqoud (Missing) lists the names of the disappeared together with their photos and a family member’s phone number
Norway aims to quadruple aid to Palestinians as famine looms
Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year
OSLO: The Norwegian government Tuesday proposed 1 billion kroner ($92.5 million) in aid to Palestinians this year as humanitarian agencies warn of a looming famine in the Gaza Strip.
Figures in the revised budget presented on Tuesday, show a roughly quadrupling of the 258 million kroner provided in the initial finance bill adopted last year.
“The urgent need of aid in Gaza is enormous after seven months of war,” Norway’s Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said in a statement.
“The food situation in particular is critical and there is a risk of famine,” she added, criticizing “an entirely man-made crisis” and an equally “critical” situation in the West Bank.
According to the draft budget, Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year.
The figures are still subject to change because the center-left government, a minority in parliament, has to negotiate with other parties to get the texts adopted.
For his part, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide again warned Israel against a large-scale military operation in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the besieged Gaza Strip.
“It would be catastrophic for the population. Providing life-saving humanitarian support would become much more difficult and more dangerous,” Barth Eide said.
He added: “The more than 1 million who have sought refuge in Rafah have already fled multiple times from famine, death and horror. They are now being told to move again, but no place in Gaza is safe.”
As part of the response to the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is determined to launch an operation in Rafah, which he considers to be the last major stronghold of the militant organization.
Many in Rafah have been displaced multiple times during the war, and are now heading back north after Israeli forces called for the evacuation of the city’s eastern past.
On May 7, Israeli tanks and troops entered the city’s east sending desperate Palestinians to flee north.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “almost 450,000” people have been displaced from Rafah since May 6.
UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza
- The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing
- A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack
Geneva: The United Nations said Tuesday that it had informed the Israeli authorities of the movements of a vehicle carrying UN staff which was hit in southern Gaza, killing an Indian.
One UN security services member was killed and another wounded in the attack on Monday, the United Nations said, marking the first death of a UN international employee in the Palestinian territory since the war began more than seven months ago.
The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Col Waibhav Kale, working for the UN Department of Safety and Security in Gaza,” India’s mission to the UN in New York confirmed on X.
“Our deepest condolences are with the family during this difficult time.”
A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack, Gomez said, adding that the two had been traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah when their vehicle was hit.
“The UN informs Israeli authorities of the movement of all of our convoys. That has been the case in any theater of operation. This is a standard operating procedure,” said Gomez.
“This was the case yesterday (Monday) morning, so we have informed them. And it was a clearly marked UN vehicle.”
He added: “This is a sheer illustration that there’s really nowhere safe in Gaza at the moment.”
When asked about the attack, the Israeli military sent AFP a statement apparently drafted on Monday saying that the DSS had informed it of the hit.
“An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone,” the military said, maintaining that it had “not been made aware of the route of the vehicle.”
“The incident is under review,” it said, without attributing responsibility for the strike.
Gomez said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for a full investigation.
“Of course we want accountability. This is the ultimate aim of this investigation. International humanitarian workers are not targets, so such attacks must end,” he said.
While Monday’s attack marked the first time a UN international employee has been killed in the Gaza war, a large number of local staff have been killed.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, alone has lost 188 of its 13,000 Gaza staff, according to UN figures.
“No one is safe in Gaza, including aid workers,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly Twitter.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Turkiye says to apply to intervene in ICJ genocide case against Israel
- Ankara steps up measures against Israel over its assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000 people
ANKARA: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday that Turkiye decided to submit its declaration of official intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Earlier this month Fidan announced the decision to join the case launched by South Africa as Ankara steps up measures against Israel over its assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000 people and launched after militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage.
“We condemned civilians being killed on October 7,” he told a press conference with his Austrian counterpart.
“But Israel systematically killing thousands of innocent Palestinians and rendering a whole residential area uninhabitable is a crime against humanity, attempted genocide, and the manifestation of genocide,” he added.
A foreign ministry official said Turkiye had not yet submitted the formal application to the ICJ.
The World Court will hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss new emergency measures sought by South Africa over Israel’s attacks on Rafah during the war in Gaza, the tribunal said Monday.
The hearings on May 16 and 17 will deal with South Africa’s request to the court to order more emergency measures against Israel over its attacks on Rafah, the tribunal added, part of an ongoing case which accuses Israel of acts of genocide against Palestinians.
Israel has previously said it is acting in accordance with international law in Gaza, and has called South Africa’s genocide case baseless and accused Pretoria of acting as “the legal arm of Hamas.”
Lebanon resumes ‘voluntary’ repatriations of Syrians
- Vans and small trucks gathered in the Arsal area near the border early in the morning to ferry home the returnee
- Human rights group Amnesty International said at the time that Lebanese authorities were putting Syrians at risk of “heinous abuse and persecution upon their return,”
Beirut: Beirut repatriated several hundred Syrians on Tuesday in coordination with Damascus, an AFP photographer reported, as pressure mounts in cash-strapped Lebanon for the hundreds of thousands refugees to go home.
Vans and small trucks gathered in the Arsal area near the border early in the morning to ferry home the returnees, the photographer said.
The vehicles were piled high with mattresses and other belongings and some were even accompanied by livestock.
“I’m going back alone for the moment, in order to prepare for my family’s return,” said a 57-year-old man originally from Syria’s Qalamun area, declining to be identified by name.
“I am happy to go back to my country after 10 years” as a refugee, he told AFP.
Around 330 people had registered to be part of the “voluntary return,” Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said.
Syrian state news agency SANA reported an unspecified number of people arrived from Lebanon as part of the initiative.
Lebanon, which has been mired in a crushing economic crisis since late 2019, says it hosts around two million Syrians, the world’s highest number of refugees per capita, with almost 785,000 registered with the United Nations.
Earlier this month, the European Union announced $1 billion in aid to Beirut to help stem irregular migration to the bloc, but in Lebanon the package has been criticized for failing to meet growing public demands for Syrians to leave.
Parliament is set to hold a session on Wednesday to discuss the EU assistance.
Lebanon began the “voluntary” return of small numbers of Syrians in 2017 based on lists sent to the government in Damascus, with the last such group crossing the border in 2022.
Human rights group Amnesty International said at the time that Lebanese authorities were putting Syrians at risk of “heinous abuse and persecution upon their return,” adding that the refugees were “not in a position to take a free and informed decision about their return.”
On Monday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged Lebanese authorities to open the seas for migrant boats to put pressure on the European Union, whose easternmost member, Cyprus, is less than 200 kilometers away.
Red Cross sets up Rafah emergency field hospital
- Staff at the new facility will be able to treat around 200 people a day and can provide emergency surgical care
GENEVA: The International Red Cross and partners are opening a field hospital in southern Gaza on Tuesday to try to meet what it described as “overwhelming” demand for health services since Israel’s military operation on Rafah began last week.
Some health clinics have suspended activities while patients and medics have fled from a major hospital as Israel has stepped up bombardments in the southern sliver of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of uprooted people are crowded together.
“People in Gaza are struggling to access the medical care they urgently need due, in part, to the overwhelming demands for health services and the reduced number of functioning health facilities,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said. “Doctors and nurses have been working around the clock, but their capacity has been stretched beyond its limit.”
Staff at the new facility will be able to treat around 200 people a day and can provide emergency surgical care and manage mass casualties as well as provide pediatric and other services, the ICRC said.
“Medical staff are faced with people arriving with severe injuries, increasing communicable diseases which could lead to potential outbreaks, and complication related to chronic diseases untreated that should have been treated days earlier.”
The ICRC will maintain medical supplies to the facility while the Red Cross societies from 11 countries including Canada, Germany, Norway and Japan are providing staff and equipment.
