AL-LAFFA: It was Efrem Desta’s yearning for freedom that made him flee his home country of Eritrea and enter Sudan illegally, hoping that he could later make it to Europe.
But he and a group of fellow migrants were abducted by Sudanese Bedouin Rashaida tribesmen after they crossed into east Sudan near Al-Laffa village.
“We fled Eritrea because we wanted freedom, but when we got here we were captured by Rashaida,” said Desta, 20, speaking in his native Tigrinya language.
“After five days in captivity, we were rescued.”
Sudanese security forces, who have stepped up their patrols along the 600-km frontier with Eritrea in a bid to curb migrant smuggling, freed the group.
They were found handcuffed and in chains, security officers said, and have now joined nearly 30,000 other refugees in Wadi Sherifay camp, a vast conglomerate of thatched huts and dusty tracks near the border.
Most of the rescued Eritreans say they fled their country to escape military conscription, but some do admit leaving to seek better jobs abroad.
Sudanese police and agents of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) say dozens of Eritreans try to enter Sudan illegally every day.
“There are many ways they enter, including walking along the river Gash,” one security officer told an AFP correspondent who toured border areas of Kassala state at the beginning of May.
The migrants cross into Sudan on foot after walking for days or in some cases even weeks.
“They usually travel at night and hide out during the day in farms, plantations and forests,” the officer said, pointing to a patch of trees lining the dry riverbed.
Although Syrians fleeing their brutal civil war fuel the current migration crisis, experts say there are also many Eritreans trying to reach Europe.
“An estimated 100,000 migrants traveled across Sudan in 2016, the bulk of them being Eritreans,” said Asfand Waqar, analyst at the International Organization of Migration (IOM).
Sudan, in the Horn of Africa, is a key transit point on the migrant route to Europe.
From Kassala, the Eritreans travel across Sudan to Libya or Egypt.
Smugglers then cram them aboard rickety boats for perilous Mediterranean voyages aimed at reaching landfall in Europe.
In summer, the long windswept cross-border Gash riverbed comes alive at night with the march of migrants.
“We still don’t do night patrols, so it’s easy for them to move during the hours of darkness,” the security officer said.
Behind him under the scorching midday sun, a group of machine gun-toting border guards crossed the riverbed in pick-up trucks to begin a patrol.
Officers say that their boosted presence along the border had also helped them catch several people smugglers.
“The smugglers, who are mostly Eritrean, have excellent networks and high-tech communications gear,” another security officer said.
“They know more about us than we know about them.”
Migrant smuggling has become a multi-billion-dollar business, experts say.
“It’s the financial capability of a migrant that determines how much he would be charged. It’s an exploitative system,” said Waqar, with the cost ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
An Eritrean woman planning to travel to Europe from Khartoum said she was told to raise $2,500.
Kassala police chief Gen. Yahya Sulayman said Sudan alone cannot stop the smuggling of people along the “long and complicated” border.
“We need international help, hi-tech communication equipment, vehicles, cameras and even drones to monitor the border,” he told AFP.
Washington-based think tank Enough Project says the EU paid Khartoum millions of euros to buy equipment that would help stem the migrant flow.
Some funding also went to the Rapid Support Force (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting rebels in war-torn Darfur and whose members are also used for border patrols, the think tank said.
Gen. Sulayman denied that any RSF members were deployed along the Sudan-Eritrea border.
“The border patrols are carried out by police, NISS and Sudanese armed forces,” he said.
“All these troops are jointly fighting organized cross-border crime.”
Eritreans in camps such as Wadi Sherifay say they live in a constant state of fear.
“The Eritrean military has its agents everywhere. They can catch us and take us back,” said one who still dreams of reaching Europe.
“It’s not safe for us to be here for long.”
Sudan boosts border patrols to curb people smuggling
Sudan boosts border patrols to curb people smuggling
Germany brushes off Musk calling Scholz a ‘fool’
A tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly“
BERLIN: German officials on Friday brushed off tech billionaire Elon Musk labelling Olaf Scholz a “fool” on his social media platform X after the dramatic collapse of the chancellor’s coalition government.
In a comment Thursday above a post about the implosion of Scholz’s long-troubled coalition, the world’s richest man tweeted in German: “Olaf ist ein Narr” — “Olaf is a fool.”
Asked about Musk’s comment, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann took a playful dig at the US tycoon, saying that “on X, you have Narrenfreiheit,” which translates to the freedom to act like a fool.
The word refers to revellers during Germany’s traditional carnival season, which starts next week, having the freedom to act without inhibitions.
Historically, the term echoes the notion of the “jester’s privilege” — the right of a court jester to mock those in power without being punished by the king.
Asked later about the comment, a tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly,” adding that Internet companies are “not organs of state so I did not even pay it any attention.”
Musk strongly supported US election winner Donald Trump, and is now positioned to take up a role in his administration as a deputy tasked with restructuring government operations.
It is not the first time the Tesla boss has had run-ins with German officials online.
Last year he said Berlin-funded migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean could be seen as an “invasion” of Italy, sparking a terse response from the German foreign ministry.
He has also expressed sympathy for some of the positions of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which has notched up a string of recent electoral successes and is riding high in the opinion polls.
First flight with Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam lands in Tel Aviv
- The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv had passengers evacuated from Amsterdam
TEL AVIV: The first flight carrying Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam after violent clashes following a football match there landed on Friday at Ben Gurion International Airport, the Israel Airports Authority said.
“The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv now has passengers evacuated from Amsterdam,” Liza Dvir, spokeswoman for the airport authority told AFP.
India’s Modi rejects calls to restore Kashmir’s partial autonomy
- Modi revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh
- Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade this year, newly-elected lawmakers passed resolution this week seeking restoration
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly backed his government’s contentious 2019 decision to revoke the partial autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, days after the territory’s newly elected lawmakers sought its restoration.
“Only the constitution of Babasaheb Ambedkar will operate in Kashmir... No power in the world can restore Article 370 (partial autonomy) in Kashmir,” Modi said, referring to one of the founding fathers of the Indian constitution.
Modi was speaking at a state election rally in the western state of Maharashtra, where Ambedkar was from.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh — a move that was opposed by many political groups in the Himalayan region.
Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade in September and October and the newly-elected lawmakers passed a resolution this week seeking the restoration.
Jammu and Kashmir’s ruling National Conference party had promised in its election manifesto that it would restore the partial autonomy, although the power to do so lies with Modi’s federal government.
Jammu and Kashmir’s new lawmakers can legislate on local issues like other Indian states, except matters regarding public order and policing. They will also need the approval of the federally-appointed administrator on all policy decisions that have financial implications.
Under the system of partial autonomy, Kashmir had its own constitution and the freedom to make laws on all issues except foreign affairs, defense and communications.
The troubled region, where separatist militants have fought security forces since 1989, is India’s only Muslim-majority territory.
It has been at the center of a territorial dispute with Pakistan since the neighbors gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by both India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over the region.
Kyiv says Russia has returned bodies of 563 soldiers
- The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation
- The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen
KYIV: Ukraine said on Friday it had received the bodies of 563 soldiers from Russian authorities, mainly troops that had died in combat in the eastern Donetsk region.
The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022.
“The bodies of 563 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.
The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the war.
The statement said that 320 of the remains were returned from the Donetsk region and that 89 of the soldiers had been killed near Bakhmut, a town captured by Russia in May last year after a costly battle.
Another 154 of the bodies were returned from morgues inside Russia, the statement added.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publicly disclose how many military personnel have been killed fighting.
Russia sentences soldiers who massacred Ukraine family to life in prison
- The court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred“
- The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine
MOSCOW: A Russian court sentenced two soldiers to life in prison for the massacre of a family of nine people in their home in occupied Ukraine, state media reported on Friday.
Russian prosecutors said in October 2023, the two Russian soldiers, Anton Sopov and Stanislav Rau, entered the home of the Kapkanets family in the city of Volnovakha with guns equipped with silencers.
They then shot all nine family members who lived there, including two children aged five and nine.
The southern district military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.
The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine.
Kyiv alleged at the time that the Russian soldiers had murdered the family in their sleep after they refused to move out of their home to allow Russian soldiers to live there.
“The occupiers killed the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give up their home,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said a day after the murder.
Russian forces seized the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region at the start of their full-scale military offensive.
It was virtually destroyed by Russian artillery strikes.
Russian soldiers have been accused of multiple instances of killing civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities they have occupied since February 2022.
Moscow has always denied targeting civilians and tried to claim reports of atrocities at places like Bucha were fake, despite widespread evidence from multiple independent sources.
The arrest and sentencing in this case is a rare example of Russia admitting to a crime committed by its troops in Ukraine.
State media did not say what prosecutors determined the reason for the attack was.
TASS suggested it could have been a “domestic dispute,” while both the independent Radio Free Europe and Kommersant business outlets said it could have been linked to a dispute over obtaining vodka.
The trial was held in secret.
The independent Radio Free Europe outlet reported the Rau, 28, and Sopov, 21 were mercenaries for the Wagner paramilitary before joining Russia’s official army.
They had both received state awards a few months before the mass murder, it said.