PORT SUDAN: Amnesty International called on the United Nations Thursday to extend the arms embargo on Darfur to cover all of Sudan, in a report on weapons flooding the war-torn country.
The 15-month war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces “is being fueled by an almost unimpeded supply of weapons into Sudan by states and corporate actors around the world,” the rights watchdog said.
The new report, titled “New Weapons Fuelling the Sudan Conflict,” found recently manufactured or transferred weapons from countries including Russia, Turkiye, Serbia, China and others were being imported and used on the battlefield.
Since it erupted in April last year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimating the toll to be as high as 150,000, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello.
It has also uprooted over 10 million people, creating what the UN calls the world’s worst displacement crisis.
“There are hundreds of thousands of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition going into Sudan,” fueling mass human rights violations, Brian Castner, Amnesty’s head of crisis research, told AFP.
The existing arms embargo, which since 2004 has applied only to Sudan’s western Darfur region, “is both too narrowly focused” and “too poorly implemented to have any meaningful impact on curbing these weapons flows,” the report found.
The UN Security Council must “urgently expand the arms embargo to the rest of Sudan, and also strengthen its monitoring and verification mechanisms,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty’s senior director for Regional Human Rights Impact.
Even if the Security Council — whose response to the Sudan war Amnesty has dubbed “woefully inadequate” — does not extend the embargo, “all states and corporate actors must immediately cease supplies of all arms and ammunition to Sudan,” or risk violating arms treaty obligations and international humanitarian law.
Both sides of the conflict have been repeatedly accused of war crimes including deliberately targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid, while millions of Sudanese suffer on the brink of starvation.
According to Castner, the sheer volume of small arms entering Sudan is cause for significant alarm.
“Most people are killed by small arms. Most violations, including sexual violence and displacement, are facilitated by small arms,” the veteran weapons investigator said.
“It’s individual soldiers with rifles that are removing people from their homes and burning them,” he continued.
On Monday, French medical charity Doctors Without Borders said that of thousands of war-wounded treated at one of its main hospitals in the Sudanese capital, 53 percent suffered gunshot wounds.
Amnesty calls for full Sudan arms embargo
https://arab.news/mjnnh
Amnesty calls for full Sudan arms embargo
- “There are hundreds of thousands of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition going into Sudan,” fueling mass human rights violations, said Brian Castner on Amnesty
- The UN Security Council must “urgently expand the arms embargo to the rest of Sudan, and also strengthen its monitoring and verification mechanisms,” said Deprose Muchena
Israel bars Al-Aqsa imam from entering mosque in Ramadan
- ‘This ban is a grave matter for us as our soul is tied to Al-Aqsa, Al-Aqsa is our life’
JERUSALEM: A senior imam of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem said on Tuesday that Israeli authorities had barred him from entering the compound, just days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
“I have been barred from the mosque for a week, and the order can be renewed,” Sheikh Muhammad Al-Abbasi said.
He said he was not informed of the reason for the ban, which came into effect from Monday.
FASTFACT
A Waqf source said 33 of its employees had been barred from entering the compound in the week leading up to Ramadan.
“I had only returned to Al-Aqsa a month ago after spending a year in the hospital following a serious car accident,” Abbasi said. “This ban is a grave matter for us, as our soul is tied to Al-Aqsa. Al-Aqsa is our life.”
On Monday, Israeli police said they had recommended issuing 10,000 permits for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, who require special permission to enter Jerusalem.
Arad Braverman, a senior Israeli police officer in occupied Jerusalem, said forces would be deployed “day and night” across the compound.
He said thousands of police would also be on duty for Friday prayers, which draw the largest crowds of Muslim worshippers.
The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate said it had been informed that permits would again be restricted to men over 55 and women over 50, mirroring last year’s criteria.
It added that Israeli authorities had prevented the Islamic Waqf — the Jordanian-run body that administers the site — from carrying out routine preparations, including installing shade structures and setting up temporary medical clinics.
A Waqf source said 33 of its employees had been barred from entering the compound in the week leading up to Ramadan.
Under long-standing arrangements, Jews may visit the Al-Aqsa compound — but they are not permitted to pray there.
Palestinians fear the status quo it is being eroded.
In a separate development, Israeli NGOs have raised the alarm over a settlement plan signed by the government which they say would mark the first expansion of Jerusalem’s borders into the occupied West Bank since 1967. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The proposal, published in early February but reported by Israeli media only on Monday, comes as international outrage mounts over creeping measures aimed at strengthening Israeli control over the West Bank.
Critics say these actions by the Israeli authorities are aimed at the de facto annexation of the Palestinian territory.
The planned development, announced by Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing, is formally a westward expansion of the Geva Binyamin, or Adam, settlement situated northeast of Jerusalem in the West Bank.
In a statement, the ministry said the development agreement included the construction of around 2,780 housing units for the settlement, with an investment of roughly $38.7 million.
But the area to be developed lies on the Jerusalem side of the separation barrier built by Israel in the early 2000s, while Geva Binyamin sits on the West Bank side of the barrier, and the two are separated by a road.
Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said there would be no “territorial or functional connection” between the area to be developed and the settlement.
“The new neighborhood will be integral to the city of Jerusalem,” Lior Amihai, Peace Now’s executive director, said.
“What is unique about that one is that it will be connected directly to Jerusalem, but it will be beyond the annexed municipal border. So it will be in complete West Bank territory, but just adjacent to Jerusalem,” he said.
