PORT SUDAN: Fighting intensified in southern Sudan’s North Kordofan region on Tuesday as residents in the capital El-Obeid told AFP a paramilitary drone had exploded near an army division headquarters.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been battling Sudan’s army since April 2023 — capturing El-Fasher, the last military stronghold in Darfur, western Sudan, in late October.
The takeover in Darfur was accompanied by reports of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions and looting, which led to increasingly vocal international calls for a ceasefire.
But the RSF victory in Darfur has allowed its forces to turn more attention to the oil-rich south.
One resident in El-Obeid, speaking to AFP anonymously for fear of reprisal, said they saw “smoke rising from the area” after a strike targeting the base of the army’s 5th Division.
Another witness reported hearing a blast before “clouds of smoke” rose from the direction of the military base.
El-Obeid, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum, hosts an airport and lies on a key supply route linking Darfur and the capital.
There has also been renewed fighting 400 kilometers southwest of El-Obeid in Babanusa — the army’s last remaining foothold in West Kordofan.
On Tuesday, the RSF released video footage appearing to show its fighters inside the base of the 22nd Infantry Division, the city’s army headquarters.
A day earlier the group said it had secured “the liberation” of the entire city after repelling what it called a “surprise attack” by army units.
The army denied on Tuesday losing Babanusa, saying its forces had repelled a new RSF attack the previous day.
The army also accused the paramilitary force of launching daily drone and artillery strikes despite a unilateral ceasefire announcement by RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Kordofan — an area nearly the size of France — has become a major battleground as the army seeks to push the RSF away from the vital highway linking the capital Khartoum to Darfur.
Meanwhile, international efforts to end the war have stalled.
Fighting intensifies in oil-rich southern Sudan
https://arab.news/9edeu
Fighting intensifies in oil-rich southern Sudan
- RSF takeover of Darfur has allowed its forces to turn more attention to the oil-rich south
- The army denied losing Babanusa and accused the RSF of violating the ceasefire announcement
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.
