‘Constant terror’ in key Darfur city as fighting closes in

Among the war’s many horrors, Darfur has already seen some of the worst. (AFP/File)
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Updated 09 May 2024
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‘Constant terror’ in key Darfur city as fighting closes in

  • Experts have warned Sudan is at risk of breaking apart

PORT SUDAN: Sudanese shop owner Ishaq Mohammed has been trapped in his home for a month, sheltering from violence in El-Fasher, the last major city in the country’s vast Darfur region not under paramilitary control.
For more than a year, Sudan has suffered a war between the army, headed by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Experts have warned the northeast African country is at risk of breaking apart.
According to the United Nations, Sudan “is experiencing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions,” with famine threatening and more than 8.7 million people uprooted — more than anywhere else in the world.
Among the war’s many horrors, Darfur has already seen some of the worst. Now, experts and residents are bracing for more.
“We’re living in constant terror,” Mohammed told AFP by telephone, as the UN, world leaders and aid groups voice fears of carnage in the North Darfur state capital of 1.5 million people.
“We can’t move for the bombardments,” Mohammed said.
The RSF has seized four out of five state capitals in Darfur, a region about the size of France and home to around one quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people.
“We’re under a total siege,” another resident, Ahmed Adam, told AFP in a text message that got through despite a near-total communications blackout in Darfur.
“There’s no way in or out of the city that’s not controlled by the RSF,” he said.
For months, El-Fasher was protected by a fragile peace.
But unrest has soared since last month when the city’s two most powerful armed groups — which had helped to keep the peace there — pledged to fight alongside the army.
Since then, El-Fasher and the surrounding countryside have seen “systematic burning of entire villages in rural areas, escalating air bombardments... and a tightening siege,” according to Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.
At least 23 communities in North Darfur have been burned in apparent arson, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab found in a report last week.
The war’s overall death toll, however, remains unclear, a factor “that captures just how invisible and horrific this war is,” Tom Perriello, US special envoy for Sudan, told a congressional committee on May 1.
While figures of 15,000-30,000 have been mentioned, “some think it’s at 150,000,” Perriello said.
UN experts reported up to 15,000 people killed in the West Darfur capital El-Geneina alone.
Members of the non-Arab Massalit ethnic group in El-Geneina last year were targeted for killing and other abuses by the RSF and allied militias, forcing an exodus to neighboring Chad, which the UN says is hosting more than 745,000 people from Sudan.
The International Criminal Court, currently investigating ethnic-based killings primarily by the RSF in Darfur, says it has “grounds to believe” both sides are committing atrocities in the war.
As El-Fasher is home to both Arab and African communities, an all-out battle for control of the city causing massive civilian bloodshed “would lead to revenge attacks across the five Darfur states and beyond Darfur’s borders,” said Harward.
In late April, United States ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that El-Fasher “is on the precipice of a large-scale massacre.”
Eyewitnesses report fighting “is now inside” the nearby Abu Shouk camp, established 20 years ago for people displaced by ethnic violence committed by the Janjaweed militia, which led to ICC war crimes charges.
The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF.
“Everyone who hasn’t managed to leave is trapped at home,” camp resident Issa Abdelrahman told AFP.
“People are running out of food, and no one can get to them.”
According to UN experts, the RSF has repeatedly besieged and set fire to villages and displacement camps in Darfur.
Their siege of El-Fasher has halted aid convoys and commercial trade, Harward said.
Shortages have also hit the El-Fasher Southern Hospital — the city’s only remaining medical facility, where personnel are “completely exhausted,” a medical source told AFP.
Requesting anonymity for fear of both sides’ well-documented targeting of medics, the source said “some doctors haven’t left the hospital in over a month,” tirelessly treating gunshot wounds, bombardment injuries and child malnutrition.
The Darfur region was already facing widespread hunger, but now “people are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells,” according to Michael Dunford, the World Food Programme’s regional director for Eastern Africa.
Yet it is difficult for them to flee.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said encirclement of El-Fasher by armed groups and restrictions on movement along key roads “are limiting families from leaving.”
Early this year the RSF declared victories across Sudan, but the army has since mounted defenses in key locations.
The RSF has for months threatened an attack on El-Fasher but has held off, in large part due to the locally brokered truce.
They also seem to have been deterred by “heightened international demands and warnings,” according to Amjad Farid, a Sudanese political analyst and former aide to ex-civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok.
But these warnings are “falling on deaf ears,” Harward says.
With the US having announced an imminent resumption of peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Farid said the RSF has focused anew on El-Fasher.
“These are negotiations the militia cannot enter from a position of weakness,” Farid told AFP.


Sweden charges woman with genocide, crimes against humanity in Syria

Updated 7 sec ago
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Sweden charges woman with genocide, crimes against humanity in Syria

  • Daesh ‘tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,’ prosecutor Reena Devgun says

DENMARK: Swedish authorities have charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Daesh group with genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.

Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016 in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Daesh caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

The crimes “took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that Daesh attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.

“Women, children, and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty, and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said.

When announcing the charges, Devgun said that they were able to identify the woman through information from UNITAD, the UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq.

 

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Daesh “tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said.

In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”

According to the charge sheet, Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, in her Raqqa home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves. She also abused several of those she held captive.

The charge sheet said that Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is accused of having molested a baby, said to have been one month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to make him shut up.

She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.

In 2014, Daesh stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, an area that Daesh then controlled.

The woman claimed she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and the Daesh-run territory.

In 2017, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkiye, where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime, with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia.

She was extradited from Turkiye to Sweden.

Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.

The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months.

Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.


Israel violated global child rights treaty in Gaza, UN committee says

Updated 15 min 34 sec ago
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Israel violated global child rights treaty in Gaza, UN committee says

GENEVA: A UN committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had a catastrophic impact on them and are among the worst violations in recent history.

Palestinian health authorities say 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7. Of those killed in Gaza, at least 11,355 are children, Palestinian data shows, and thousands more are injured.

“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee.

“I don’t think we have seen a violation that is so massive before as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.

Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva between September 3-4.

They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas.

The committee praised Israel for attending but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”

The 18-member UN Committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child — a widely adopted treaty that protects them from violence and other abuses.

In its conclusions, it called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans, and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.

The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.

During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken hostage by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.


Spanish prime minister, Palestinian leader urge Mideast de-escalation

Updated 22 min 31 sec ago
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Spanish prime minister, Palestinian leader urge Mideast de-escalation

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.

“Today the risk of escalation is once more increasing in a dangerous way” in Lebanon, said Sanchez, at a news conference withvisitingPalestinianPresident Mahmoud Abbas.

“So we must again make a fresh appeal for restraint,for a de-escalation and for peaceful coexistence between countries, in the name of peace,” he added.

Sanchez was speaking to journalists after more than an hour’s talks with Abbas.

Since the Gaza war began, Sanchez has positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause within the EU.

His socialist government has increasingly taken highly critical positions toward Israel’s conduct of itscampaignagainstHamas,rivalto the Fatah party.

“The international community and Europe cannot remain impassive in the face of the suffering of thousands of innocents, largely women and children,” he added.

Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Health Ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

Urging a two-state solution, long a cornerstone of international attempts to end the decades-long conflict, Sanchez said that a Palestinian nation “living side by side with the state of Israel” was the only way to “bring stability to the region.”

He pointed out that this is Abbas’s first visit to Spain since Madrid decided to recognize the state of Palestine on May 28. Ireland and Norway took the same decision in May. “Why is this a good thing? Because Palestine exists and has the right to have its state,” the premier added.

While Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party chaired by Abbas controls the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.


More than 150 in Moroccan court over migration incitement

Updated 8 min 33 sec ago
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More than 150 in Moroccan court over migration incitement

  • They were among around 3,000 who people were involved in a recent mass attempt to reach Spanish territory
  • In August alone, authorities reportedly blocked more than 11,300 attempts to cross into Ceuta and about 3,300 into Melilla

RABAT: More than 150 people have appeared in a Moroccan court for alleged incitement of illegal migration, a government spokesman said on Thursday, after a failed mass attempt to reach Spanish territory.
On Sunday, Moroccan police, who fired tear gas, pushed back hundreds of people who headed toward the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, an AFP photographer said, after social media posts encouraged crossing attempts.
“In the framework of the struggle against calls for clandestine immigration, 152 people appeared before a judge,” government spokesman Mustapha Baitas told a press conference.
He said a total of around 3,000 people had tried to illegally enter Ceuta after calls on social media, but all the crossing attempts failed.
A police source previously told AFP that 60 people were arrested between Monday and Wednesday last week for “fabricating and disseminating false information on social media” that encouraged “the organization of collective illegal immigration operations.”
Ceuta and its sister territory of Melilla, wedged on the North African kingdom’s Mediterranean coast, have long been a magnet for irregular migrants, being the only European Union territories on the African continent.
Those heading on Sunday toward the village of Fnideq, which abuts Ceuta, included Moroccans and migrants from other parts of Africa, including some minors, the AFP photographer said.
According to official statistic, one in four Moroccan young people aged 15-24 is neither in the job market, nor in education or training.
The Moroccan interior ministry has said that in August alone, authorities blocked more than 11,300 attempts to cross into Ceuta and about 3,300 into Melilla.
In June, 2022, at least 23 people died when around 2,000 people, many of them Sudanese, stormed the frontier at Melilla attempting to cross.
The main route out of Morocco for irregular migrants hoping to reach Spain remains by sea.
More than 22,300 migrant arrivals were registered this year by August 15 in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, a 126 percent increase from 2023.
 


Six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank’s Qabatiya

Updated 19 September 2024
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Six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank’s Qabatiya

  • The governor, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, said four of the injured are in critical condition

RAMALLAH: Six Palestinians were killed and 18 others injured by Israeli forces during a military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Qabatiya, the governor of Jenin told Reuters on Thursday.
The governor, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, said four of the injured are in critical condition, and that Israeli forces withdrew from Qabatiya after destroying infrastructure in the area.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, with almost daily sweeps by Israeli forces that have involved thousands of arrests and regular gunbattles between security forces and Palestinian fighters.