PORT SUDAN: New satellite imagery has detected activity “consistent with mass graves” in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, Yale researchers said in a report released Thursday, more than a week after mass killings were reported in the area.
On October 26, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with Sudan’s army for more than two years, seized control of the key Darfur city they had besieged for nearly 18 months.
Satellite imagery has since revealed evidence of door-to-door killings, mass graves, blood-stained areas, and bodies visible along an earthen berm — findings that match eyewitness accounts and videos posted online by the paramilitaries.
In its Thursday report, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) said it found evidence consistent with “body disposal activities.”
The report identified “at least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves at a mosque and the former Children’s Hospital.”
It also noted the appearance of meters-long trenches, as well as the disappearance of clusters of objects consistent with bodies near the hospital, the mosque and other parts of the city — indicating that bodies deposited around those areas were later moved.
“Body disposal or removal was also observed at Al-Saudi Hospital in satellite imagery,” the report said.
The World Health Organization had reported the “tragic killing of more than 460 patients and medical staff” at that hospital during the city’s takeover.
“It is not possible based on the dimensions of a potential mass grave to indicate the number of bodies that may be interred; this is because those conducting body disposal often layer bodies on top of each other,” the report added.
Fresh imagery from around the former children’s hospital — which the RSF has since turned into a detention site — indicates the likelihood of “ongoing mass killing” in the area, the report said.
Before El-Fasher’s fall, the HRL had observed only individual burials, consistent with traditional practices, in zones controlled by either the RSF, the Sudanese army, or their allies.
The lab says it has identified “at least 34 object groups consistent with bodies visible in satellite imagery” since the city’s capture.
“This is widely believed to be an underestimate of the overall scale of killing,” the report said.
The conflict in Sudan, raging since April 2023, has pitted the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against those of his former deputy, RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
Violence has wracked the entire Darfur region, especially since the fall of El-Fasher, the army’s last stronghold in the area. Fighting has since spread to the Kordofan region, which remains under army control.
With access blocked and communications severely disrupted, satellite imagery remains one of the the only means of monitoring the crisis unfolding across Sudan’s isolated regions.
New satellite images suggest ‘mass graves’ in Sudan’s El-Fasher
https://arab.news/m5whc
New satellite images suggest ‘mass graves’ in Sudan’s El-Fasher
- Yale researchers said in a report released Thursday, more than a week after mass killings were reported in the area
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
