BEIRUT: Fighting in and around a displaced persons camp in western Sudan killed at least 53 civilians and wounded more than 60 others over a three-day period this week, the UN human rights chief said, and the death toll is rising.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Thursday that drone and artillery strikes by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Abu Shouk and Daraja Oula neighborhoods of el-Fasher and the el-Fasher displaced persons camp killed 46 people.
Among the 46 killed, over a dozen died in shelling at one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher. The shelling also struck a nearby mosque where people were taking refuge, said the UN Human Rights office.
The statement also said at least seven other people were summarily executed after ground raids by the RSF in ethnically motivated killings. Both the RSF and the Sudanese military have been accused of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity and are under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
“Despite repeated calls, including my own, for specific care to be taken to protect civilians, they continue instead to kill, injure, and displace civilians, and to attack civilian objects, including IDP shelters, hospitals and mosques, with total disregard for international law, ” said Turk. “This must end.”
Türk called for UN Member States with direct influence to take urgent measures to “protect civilians and to prevent further atrocities” in el-Fasher and across the Darfur region.
Sudan has been in the throes of conflict since 2023, when tensions between the RSF and the Sudanese military erupted. Darfur has been at the epicenter of the fighting.
The war in Sudan has killed more than 40,000 people, forced more than 14 million to flee their homes and famine has been declared in parts of the country, including Darfur.
El-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, has been under siege for over a year. The UN and other aid groups warn that 260,000 civilians remain trapped in the city.
Hundreds of thousands have fled to Tawila, just outside el-Fasher.
“I consider Tawila as one of the epicenters of, frankly, what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe here,” said Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan last week from Tawila, the closest they could get to the besieged city of el-Fasher.
“There are about 600,000 internally displaced here, mostly fleeing from el-Fasher,” she said.
They are part of the 10 million people displaced in the country and Brown said the UN humanitarian plan is only 25 percent funded.
She said she met a woman who had just arrived from el-Fasher on a donkey after traveling for seven days through remote villages to stay off back roads with her children, including a severely malnourished baby.
“Local actors on the ground in el-Fasher are doing what they can to provide some very limited basic assistance,” Brown said. “It’s totally insufficient.”
She said the UN is working to negotiate access to el-Fasher.
UN says 53 civilians killed during 3 days of attacks in and near el-Fasher camp in western Sudan
https://arab.news/wf9cd
UN says 53 civilians killed during 3 days of attacks in and near el-Fasher camp in western Sudan
- Among the 46 killed, over a dozen died in shelling at one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher
- The shelling also struck a nearby mosque where people were taking refuge, said the UN Human Rights office
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
