CAIRO: The former chief of staff of Egypt’s military says he will not run for president, leaving a leftist politician as the only serious candidate to run against the nation’s military chief.
Sami Anan said his decision not to run in next month’s vote was rooted in the “nation’s higher interests” and out of the realization of the dangers facing it.
Anan played a key part in running Egypt when generals took power for nearly 17 months after Hosni Mubarak’s 2011 ouster. He was retired in 2012 by Mubarak’s successor, Muhammad Mursi.
Anan’s popular support is thought to be limited. His departure leaves leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi as Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi’s only significant rival in the race. El-Sissi has yet to formally declare his candidacy.
Meanwhile, the candidate who lost Egypt’s 2012 presidential election reiterated his support Thursday for El-Sissi, but also slammed the military for initially backing his candidacy openly.
Ahmed Shafiq — Hosni Mubarak’s last premier — endorsed El-Sissi. Shafiq narrowly lost the election that made Mursi Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
Shafiq called El-Sissi the “strongest candidate who has the highest chances of winning the presidency.” Shafiq said he was backing El-Sissi because he was “convinced of the need to unify our efforts and avoid a scattering of votes which is useless.”
General out of race; Shafiq backs Sissi
General out of race; Shafiq backs Sissi
Women bearing brunt of Sudan’s acute hunger crisis, UN says
- Germany plans to host aid conference around anniversary of 2023 outbreak of civil war in April
GENEVA: Women are bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, with the majority of female-headed households not having enough food to eat, the UN said on Friday.
“Female-headed households are now three times more likely to be food insecure. Three-quarters of these households report not having enough to eat,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said in Geneva.
“Hunger is becoming increasingly gendered,” he added, pointing to pre-existing gender inequalities in the country being exacerbated by the ongoing conflict, which entered its 1,000th day on Friday.
UN Women has previously warned that women face the risk of sexual violence while searching for food.
UN agencies called for immediate international action to provide aid to the Darfur city of El-Fasher, taken by the Rapid Support Forces in late October, as well as to Kadugli, another besieged city in Sudan’s south. Both cities are facing famine.
More than 100,000 are estimated to have fled El-Fasher since the RSF took control there following an 18-month siege.
OCHA said it is seeking to make Sudan the first country to sign an agreement with the US to receive part of the $2 billion in assistance it pledged at the end of December.
More than 21 million people are currently estimated to be acutely food insecure across the country. Some 34 million people are in need of humanitarian support, half of whom are children, according to the UN.
OCHA said it did not yet have an update on plans to return to El-Fasher, following international aid staff’s initial assessment of the city in December, since its takeover by the RSF.
Germany plans to host a Sudan aid conference in the spring to raise emergency relief funds.
The conference would be held around the anniversary of the 2023 outbreak of the civil war in April, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
“Today, the world commemorates a sad date: 1,000 days of war in Sudan,” she said in Berlin.
“Far too many people continue to suffer and die there, victims of hunger, thirst, displacement, and rape.” Previous Sudan aid conferences were held in Paris in 2024 and London in 2025.
“The world’s largest humanitarian crisis has already driven millions of civilians into poverty and many tens of thousands to their deaths,” the spokeswoman said.
“Germany is doing everything in its power, both politically and in humanitarian terms, to help the people on the ground and to end the fighting.”
