KHARTOUM: A UN flight landed at Khartoum airport on Thursday, the first since Sudan’s nearly three-year war began, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the country said, calling it “a big deal” for aid workers trying to reach millions of Sudanese in need.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a devastating conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced some 11 million people.
Khartoum, which was overrun by the RSF early in the conflict, has slowly begun to recover since the army retook it in March last year.
“I’d like to reiterate how pleased I am to have taken the first United Nations Humanitarian Air Service flight to Khartoum in three years,” Denise Brown said after stepping off the aircraft.
“It’s a big deal for the humanitarian community.” The flight had come from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.
Khartoum’s airport was badly damaged early in the war and was one of the RSF’s last strongholds during the army offensive that reclaimed the capital.
Earlier this month, a passenger flight also landed at Khartoum airport for the first time since the war began.
Although renovated, the airport was hit last year by several drone strikes, including one on the eve of its planned reopening in October.
“Being able to get around the Sudan, which is a huge country, in a plane is going to facilitate our work,” said Brown.
The UN’s most senior official for Sudan, who was traveling onwards to the Kordofan region, where the cities of Kadugli and Dilling were besieged for months before the army lifted the blockade in recent weeks.
Brown said access to the cities had been effectively impossible.
“We were not able to get supplies in. We had to remove our staff for their own safety,” she said.
Humanitarian deliveries resumed only last week, with more than 50 trucks carrying essential supplies for frontline Sudanese responders.
Brown echoed growing UN alarm over escalating hunger, saying that available data suggested there were currently famine conditions in Dilling, which has not been officially confirmed.
In El-Fasher and Kadugli, famine has already been confirmed by a UN-backed assessment.
“It’s essential that the world understands the consequences of war,” she said, urging global leaders to “put their heads together to find a solution.”
First UN flight lands in Sudan capital since war began
https://arab.news/6b6gj
First UN flight lands in Sudan capital since war began
- “I’d like to reiterate how pleased I am to have taken the first United Nations Humanitarian Air Service flight to Khartoum in three years,” Brown
- “It’s a big deal for the humanitarian community“
Iranian strikes kill two in UAE, injure eight in Qatar as regional conflict escalates
- UAE defense ministry said Iran fired 137 missiles and 209 drones at the territory
- Qatar intercepted most of the 65 missiles and 12 drones launched by Iran, said officials
ABU DHABI: Explosions rocked cities across the Gulf on Saturday, killing two people in Abu Dhabi, while smoke and flames rose from Dubai landmark The Palm as Iran launched waves of attacks in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes.
The attacks hit airports in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Kuwait, as well as Gulf military bases and residential areas, raising fears of a wider conflict and rattling a region long seen as a haven of peace and security.
Across the UAE, Iran fired 137 missiles and 209 drones at the territory, the country’s defense ministry said, as projectiles streaked across the skies of every Gulf state but Oman, a mediator in the recent US-Iran talks.
The UAE defense ministry said most of the missiles and drones were intercepted but at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport officials said at least one person was killed and seven wounded in an “incident.”
Earlier, falling debris killed a Pakistani civilian in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital, officials said.
At Dubai International Airport four people were injured according to airport authorities and four others were also hurt at the luxury Palm development.
In Qatar, officials said Iran launched 65 missiles and 12 drones toward the Gulf state, most of which were intercepted, but eight people were injured in the salvos, with one of them in critical condition.
“We are scared of what the future is for us now, and we can’t say how the next few days are going to be,” Maha Manbaz, a nursing student in Doha told AFP.
Terrified’
Smoke poured from US bases in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain’s capital Manama, home of the American navy’s Fifth Fleet, witnesses saw.
A drone struck Kuwait’s international airport and a base housing US personnel was targeted. Three Kuwaiti soldiers and 12 other people were wounded, authorities said.
After Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reported missile strikes, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on X that no American naval vessels were hit, damage to US facilities was minimal, and no US casualties had been reported.
Residential buildings were also targeted in Manama, with officials saying firefighters and civil defense teams had been dispatched to the scene.
“The sound of the first explosion terrified me,” said a 50-year-old retiree living near the US base in Manama’s Juffair area, where residents were quickly evacuated.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar warned they reserved the right to respond to the attacks.
The oil-and-gas-rich Arab monarchies, lying just across the Gulf from Iran, are long-term American allies and host a clutch of US military bases.
“The Gulf states are sandwiched between Iran and Israel, and have to bear the worst inclinations of both,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University.
“Iran’s attacks on the Gulf are misplaced. They’ll only alienate its neighbors and invite further distancing from Iran,” he added.
Conflict is unusual in the Gulf, which has traded on its reputation for stability to become the Middle East’s commercial and diplomatic hub.
‘Significant damage’
The unprecedented barrage targeted Qatar’s Al Udeid base, the region’s biggest US military base, as well as Riyadh and eastern Saudi Arabia.
The UAE, Qatar and Kuwait all announced that their airspace was closed.
An AFP journalist in Qatar saw one missile destroyed in a puff of white smoke, while another in Dubai saw a volley of Patriot interceptors taking off.
Iran fired missiles at Al Udeid last June after US strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities during a brief war with Israel.
The escalation also saw Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed speak for the first time since a public row in late December.
The Saudi de facto ruler called the Emirati president and the pair discussed Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the Gulf and expressed solidarity and sympathy.
In Kuwait, an Iranian missile attack caused “significant damage” to the runway at an air base hosting Italian air force personnel, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying.
Late on Saturday, Kuwaiti officials said a drone targeted a naval base there with air defense forces intercepting the projectile, according to a post by the defense ministry on X.
For many residents in the Gulf, which has drawn a cosmopolitan, largely expat population, the reaction was one of shock.
“I heard the explosions, I don’t know what I felt,” a Lebanese woman living in Riyadh told AFP.
“We came to the Gulf because it’s known to be safer than Lebanon. Now I don’t know what to do or how to think really.”
