‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

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Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali holds his wedding picture as he searches through documents at his home in Khartoum North’s Bahri neighborhood on Mar. 17, 2025, as he returns to visit for the first time since being displaced nearly two years ago. (AFP)
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AFP journalist Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali walks around his home in Khartoum North’s Bahri neighborhood on Mar. 17, 2025, as he returns to visit for the first time since being displaced nearly two years ago. (AFP)
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Updated 18 April 2025
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‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

  • Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape
  • Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves

KHARTOUM: It had been nearly two years since AFP journalist Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali set foot in his home in war-torn Khartoum, after the sound of children playing in the street gave way to the fearsome fire of machine guns.
Sudan’s once-peaceful capital awoke to the sound of bombs and gunfire on April 15, 2023 as war broke out between its two most powerful generals — army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape — among them Abdelmoneim, his wife, his son and three daughters.
Since then they have been displaced five times — fleeing each time the front line closed in.
Eventually the 59-year-old journalist sent his family to safety in another African country while he settled down to work alone from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Then last month he was able to briefly return to his home in Khartoum North during a reporting trip escorted by the army after it recaptured the city.
He found his beloved neighborhood, known as Bahri, abandoned.
“The whole place is cloaked in silence, no grocery store chit-chats, no boisterous games of football on the corner, nothing,” he said.
“The last time I was here, the neighbors were all in the street saying goodbye, praying for each other’s safety, promising we would meet again soon.”
Now their doors hung ajar, beds dragged out onto the street, apparently by RSF fighters who used them to sleep in the open air.
Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves.
When he got to his landing, Abdelmoneim braced himself for what he would find inside.
“It was like an earthquake had hit. The furniture was upside-down and thrown around, pieces shattered on the ground,” he said.
He clambered slowly from room to room, taking in the damage.
The couch was pocked with burn marks where the fighters had put out cigarette after cigarette.
His daughters’ closets were ripped open and emptied of every last dress.
And on the floor of his office, lying among the tattered remains of his library, was a photo of his wedding to his wife Nahla, with her image torn out.
“I don’t get what they have against my books and my wedding photos,” he said.
“I knew they had stolen furniture. I couldn’t imagine they would destroy everything else.”
In March, the army recaptured Khartoum, to the joy of millions of displaced Sudanese anxious to return to their homes.
“But my girls say they never want to come back,” Abdelmoneim said.
“How can they ever forget sleeping huddled together in the living room, terrified by the sound of every air strike?“
Abdelmoneim shudders at the thought of the horrors they have seen since.
“When we were leaving Khartoum, there were bodies lying in the street and an old man standing over them, trying to keep a plastic sheet in place.
“When I stopped to ask him if he was okay, he said, ‘I’m trying to keep the dogs away.’ I wish my kids had never heard that.”
For seven months, Abdelmoneim tried to wait out the fighting in Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, hoping against hope they could go home.
“The moment I realized this wouldn’t end for years was when the war came to Wad Madani,” he said.
Again they took everything they could carry, and again they joined a wave of hundreds of thousands of people running away, this time on foot, heading east.
The veteran journalist and his wife made the painful choice to separate the family — she and the children would go to another country; and he would go to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, home to the United Nations, the army-aligned government and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Abdelmoneim, like countless Sudanese caught in the war’s crossfire, has lost family members, his life savings and any hope for the future.
“This war has taken everything from us,” he said.
“And everything they haven’t taken, they’ve destroyed.”
For years he had been building up a tiny homestead on the outskirts of Khartoum, lined with fruit trees and a few simple crops he could tend when he retired. The RSF destroyed it in their rampage.
His family’s home and land, in the agricultural state of Al-Jazira, were looted and cut off from power and water — his relatives left starving and powerless to defend themselves against the RSF’s predations.
Now both Al-Jazira and Khartoum are under army control but the war, and the suffering it has wrought, is far from over.
Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 12 million uprooted, including almost four million who fled to other countries.
Hundreds of thousands are returning to areas recaptured by the army, choosing destitution at home over displacement, but most of these areas still lack clean water, electricity and health care.
Famine still stalks Sudan, with around 638,000 people already in famine and eight million on the brink of mass starvation.
The country remains divided, and the RSF — in control of nearly all of the western region of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south — has not given up the fight.
In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have killed hundreds of people in famine-stricken displacement camps, while RSF chief Dagalo has announced a rival administration to rule over the ashes.
For many like Abdelmoneim, even their modest dreams now seem impossible.
“If this war ends tomorrow, all I want is to be somewhere quiet and safe with my family, farming in peace.”


Sweden to charge jihadist over Jordanian pilot burnt to death in Syria: prosecutor

Updated 5 sec ago
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Sweden to charge jihadist over Jordanian pilot burnt to death in Syria: prosecutor

Prosecutors plan to charge the Swedish citizen with “serious war crimes and terrorist crimes in Syria“

STOCKHOLM: Prosecutors said Thursday they plan to indict a convicted Swedish jihadist for his suspected involvement in the 2014 capture of a Jordanian pilot in Syria and burning him to death in a cage.

Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said in a statement it planned to charge a 32-year-old Swedish citizen on May 27 with “serious war crimes and terrorist crimes in Syria.”

The man, Osama Krayem, has already been sentenced for his involvement in the 2015 attacks in Paris and the attacks in Brussels a year later.

Summer comes early for Iraq with 49 degrees Celsius in Basra

Updated 26 min 58 sec ago
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Summer comes early for Iraq with 49 degrees Celsius in Basra

  • In Iraq, summer temperatures often exceed 50 degrees Celsius, especially in July and August

BAGHDAD: Summer has come early for Iraq this year with temperatures hitting 49 degrees Celsius (topping 120 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southern city of Basra on Thursday, the national weather center said.

“It is the highest temperature recorded in Iraq this year,” weather center spokesperson Amer Al-Jabiri told AFP.

He said the early heat was in contrast to last year, when the temperature was “relatively good” in May and “it only began to rise in June.”

In Iraq, summer temperatures often exceed 50 degrees Celsius, especially in July and August, and sometimes reach these levels earlier.

On Sunday, two cadets died and others were admitted to hospital with heat stroke at a military academy in the southern province of Dhi Qar, authorities said.

The defense ministry said nine cadets “showed signs of fatigue and exhaustion due to sun exposure” while waiting to be assigned to battalions.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the deaths of the two cadets.

Iraq is one of the five countries most impacted by some effects of climate change, according to the United Nations. It has also seen a prolonged drought and frequent dust storms.


Israel army issues evacuation warning for 14 areas of north Gaza

Updated 22 May 2025
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Israel army issues evacuation warning for 14 areas of north Gaza

  • The army told residents that it was operating with intense force

JERUSALEM: The Israeli army issued an evacuation warning on Thursday for 14 neighborhoods in the northern Gaza Strip, including parts of Beit Lahia and Jabalia.

The army told residents in an Arabic-language statement that it was “operating with intense force in your areas, as terrorist organizations continue their activities and operations” there.

A similar warning for parts of northern Gaza was issued on Wednesday evening in what the army said was a response to rocket fire.

It said that one “projectile that was identified crossing into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip was intercepted” by the air force.

It later announced three more launches from northern Gaza, but said the projectiles had fallen inside the Palestinian territory.

Israel has ramped up its Gaza operations in recent days in what it says is a renewed push to destroy Hamas.

The territory’s civil defense agency said Israeli attacks had killed at least 19 people on Thursday.


Turkiye’s Erdogan says Damascus must keep focused on Kurdish SDF deal

Updated 22 May 2025
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Turkiye’s Erdogan says Damascus must keep focused on Kurdish SDF deal

  • Ankara views the SDF and its factions as a terrorist group

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Syria’s government must keep focused on its deal with the Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) under which it is to integrate into the Syrian armed forces, pressing Damascus for its implementation.

Speaking to reporters on a flight from Budapest, he said Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and the United States had a committee to discuss the fate of Daesh militants in prison camps in northeast Syria, which have been run by the SDF for years.

Ankara views the SDF and its factions as a terrorist group.

“We are especially following the YPG issue very, very closely. It is important for the Damascus administration not to take its attention away from this issue,” his office on Thursday cited him as saying. The YPG militia spearheads the SDF.

He added that Iraq should focus on the issue of the camps, as most women and children at the Al-Hol camp there were from Iraq and Syria, and that Iraq should repatriate its nationals.


Israel intercepts two missiles launched from Yemen, military says

Updated 22 May 2025
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Israel intercepts two missiles launched from Yemen, military says

  • Houthi Military Spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group launched a ballistic missile toward Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and two drones toward the Tel Aviv area

Israel’s military said it intercepted two missiles launched from Yemen and that sirens had sounded twice across the country including in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank on Thursday, as the Houthis stepped up attacks.
Houthi Military Spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group launched a ballistic missile toward Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and two drones toward the Tel Aviv area.
Undeterred by Israeli strikes on Yemen, the Houthis said they would continue to fire at Israel even though they have agreed to a ceasefire with the United States to halt attacks on US ships in the Red Sea.
Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes including one on May 6 that damaged Yemen’s main airport in Sanaa, and another last week targeting the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis have launched dozens of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, most of which have been intercepted or have fallen short.
The group says it is acting in support of Gaza’s Palestinians.