UNITED NATIONS : Paramilitary forces and their allied militias fighting to take power in Sudan carried out widespread ethnic killings and rapes while taking control of much of western Darfur that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, United Nations experts said in a new report.
The report to the UN Security Council, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, paints a horrifying picture of the brutality of Rapid Support Forces against Africans in Darfur. It also details how the RSF succeeded in gaining control of four out of Darfur’s five states, including through complex financial networks that involve dozens of companies.
Sudan plunged into chaos in April, when long-simmering tensions between its military led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum.
Fighting spread to other parts of the country, but in Sudan’s Darfur region it took on a different form: brutal attacks by the RSF on African civilians, especially the ethnic Masalit.
Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias against populations that identify as Central or East African. It seems that legacy has returned, with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan saying in late January there are grounds to believe both sides are committing possible war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.
The panel of experts said Darfur is experiencing “its worst violence since 2005.”
The ongoing conflict has caused a large-scale humanitarian crisis and displaced approximately 6.8 million people — 5.4 million within Sudan and 1.4 million who have fled to other countries, including approximately 555,000 to neighboring Chad, the experts said.
The RSF and rival Sudanese government forces have both used heavy artillery and shelling in highly populated areas, causing widespread destruction of critical water, sanitation, education and health care facilities.
In their 47-page report, the experts said the RSF and its militias targeted sites in Darfur where displaced people had found shelter, civilian neighborhoods and medical facilities.
According to intelligence sources, the panel said, in just one city — Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state near the Chad border — between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed.
The experts said sexual violence by the RSF and its allied militia was widespread.
The panel said that, according to reliable sources from Geneina, women and girls as young as 14 years old were raped by RSF elements in a UN World Food Program storage facility that the paramilitary force controlled, in their homes, or when returning home to collect belongings after being displaced by the violence. Additionally, 16 girls were reportedly kidnapped by RSF soldiers and raped in an RSF house.
“Racial slurs toward the Masalit and non-Arab community formed part of the attacks,” the panel said. “Neighborhoods and homes were continuously attacked, looted, burned and destroyed,” especially those where Masalit and other African communities lived, and their people were harassed, assaulted, sexually abused, and at times executed.
The experts said prominent Masalit community members were singled out by the RSF, which had a list, and the group’s leaders were harassed and some executed. At least two lawyers, three prominent doctors and seven staff members, and human rights activists monitoring and reporting on the events were also killed, they said.
The RSF and its allied militias looted and destroyed all hospitals and medical storage facilities, which resulted in the collapse of health services and the deaths of 37 women with childbirth complications and 200 patients needing kidney dialysis, the panel said.
After the killing of the wali, or governor, of West Darfur in June, the report said, Masalit and African communities decided to seek protection at Ardamata, just outside Geneina. A convoy of thousands moved out at midnight but as they reached a bridge, RSF and allied militias indiscriminately opened fire, and survivors reported that an estimated 1,000 people were killed, they said.
The panel stressed that disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians — including torture, rapes and killings as well as destruction of critical civilian infrastructure — constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva conventions.
The RSF was formed out of Janjaweed fighters by Sudan’s former President Omar Al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades, was overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019, and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
According to the panel, the “RSF’s takeover of Darfur relied on three lines of support: the Arab allied communities, dynamic and complex financial networks, and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.”
While both the Sudanese military and RSF engaged in widespread recruitment drives across Darfur from late 2022, the RSF was more successful, the experts said. And it “invested large proceeds from its pre-war gold business in several industries, creating a network of as many as 50 companies.”
The RSF’s complex financial networks “enabled it to acquire weapons, pay salaries, fund media campaigns, lobby, and buy the support of other political and armed groups,” the experts said.
United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who visited Chad in September, called the report’s findings “horrific” and expressed “deep disappointment” that the UN Security Council and the international community have paid such little attention to the allegations.
“The people of Sudan feel that they have been forgotten,” she said.
In light of the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan and the broader region, Thomas-Greenfield demanded that the Sudanese military lift its prohibition on cross-border assistance from Chad and facilitate cross-line assistance from the east. She also demanded in a statement Wednesday that the RSF halt the looting of humanitarian warehouses and that both parties stop harassing humanitarian aid workers.
“The council must act urgently to alleviate human suffering, hold perpetrators to account, and bring the conflict in Sudan to an end,” the US ambassador said. “Time is running out.”
UN experts: Sudan’s paramilitary forces carried out ethnic killings and rapes that may be war crimes
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UN experts: Sudan’s paramilitary forces carried out ethnic killings and rapes that may be war crimes
- Report to the UN Security Council,paints a horrifying picture of the brutality of the Rapid Support Forces
Hamas official says ready to free 34 Gaza hostages under mooted deal
- Israeli PM says Hamas has yet to provide list of hostages to be released under agreement
- Mediators Qatar, Egypt and US have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A Hamas official on Sunday said the Palestinian militants were ready to free 34 hostages in the “first phase” of a potential deal with Israel, after Israel said indirect talks on a truce and hostage release agreement had resumed in Qatar.
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war. The latest effort comes just days before Donald Trump takes office as president of the United States on January 20.
The talks took place as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 23 people according to rescuers, nearly 15 months into the war.
During that time there has been only one truce, a one-week pause in November 2023 that saw 80 Israeli hostages freed along with 240 Palestinians from Israeli jails.
“Hamas has agreed to release 34 Israeli prisoners from a list presented by Israel as part of the first phase of a prisoner exchange deal,” the Hamas official said.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas has yet to provide a list of hostages to be released under an agreement.
The Hamas official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing negotiations with the media, said the initial swap would include all the women, children, elderly people and sick captives still held in Gaza.
He said some may be dead and that Hamas requires time to determine their condition.
“Hamas has agreed to release the 34 prisoners, whether alive or dead. However, the group needs a week of calm to communicate with the captors and identify those who are alive and those who are dead,” the official said.
During their attack on October 7, 2023 which began the Gaza war, militants seized 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.
Until the Hamas official’s comment there had been no update on the talks which both warring sides were to resume in Qatar over the weekend.
“Efforts are under way to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told relatives of a hostage on Saturday, according to his office.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, in an interview with RTL radio, said that “we continue to exert the necessary pressure” to reach a deal.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t depend only on us.”
In December, Qatar expressed optimism that “momentum” was returning to the talks following Trump’s election victory.
But Hamas and Israel then traded accusations of imposing new conditions and obstacles.
In northern Gaza on Sunday, the Civil Defense agency said an air strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan area killed at least 11 people.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the victims included women and children, and rescuers were using their “bare hands” to search for five people still trapped under rubble.
The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck more than 100 “terror targets” in Gaza over the past two days, marking an apparent escalation in its assault.
The Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said a total of 88 people were killed over the previous 24 hours.
In one strike, five people died when the house of the Abu Jarbou family was struck in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, rescuers said.
AFP footage from another strike, on Bureij camp near Nuseirat, showed rescuers transporting bodies and injured people to a hospital.
In one scene, a medic attempted to resuscitate a wounded man inside an ambulance, while another carried an injured child to the hospital.
Relatives cried over the bodies of two men wrapped in white shrouds, the images showed.
Several of the strikes targeted sites from which militants had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.
The military separately announced that its forced had killed a militant commander in close combat in northern Gaza last week.
It said the slain man was a member of militant group Islamic Jihad’s rocket array, and had participated in the October 7, 2023 attack.
Last week, Katz warned of intensified strikes if the incoming rocket fire continued.
Rocket fire had become less frequent as the war dragged on but has recently intensified, as Israel pressed a major land and air offensive in the territory’s north since early October.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli data.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 45,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Algerians campaign to save treasured songbird from hunters
- Goldfinches are native to Western Europe and North Africa, and raising them is a cherished hobby in Algeria, where they are known locally as “maknin”
- Caging the wild birds cause them to suffer from serious health problems due to abrupt changes in their diet and environment, say advocates
SÉTIF, Algeria: With its vivid plumage and sweet trill, the goldfinch has long been revered in Algeria, but the national obsession has also driven illegal hunting, prompting calls to protect the songbird.
Amid a persistent demand for the bird that many choose to keep in their homes, conservation groups in the North African country are now calling for the species to be safeguarded from illegal hunting and trading.
“The moment these wild birds are caged, they often suffer from serious health problems, such as intestinal swelling, due to abrupt changes in their diet and environment,” said Zinelabidine Chibout, a volunteer with the Wild Songbird Protection Association in Setif, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) east of the capital, Algiers.
Goldfinches are native to Western Europe and North Africa, and raising them is a cherished hobby in Algeria, where they are known locally as “maknin.”
The bird is considered a symbol of freedom, and was favored by poets and artists around the time of Algeria’s war for independence in the 1950s and 60s. The country even dedicates an annual day in March to the goldfinch.
Laws enacted in 2012 classified the bird as a protected species and made its capture and sale illegal.
But the practices remain common, as protections are lacking and the bird is frequently sold in pet shops and markets.
A 2021 study by Guelma University estimated that at least six million goldfinches are kept in captivity by enthusiasts and traders.
Researchers visiting markets documented the sale of hundreds of goldfinches in a single day.
At one market in Annaba, in eastern Algeria, they counted around 300 birds offered for sale.
Back to the wild
Chibout’s association has been working to reverse the trend by purchasing injured and neglected goldfinches and treating them.
“We treat them in large cages, and once they recover and can fly again, we release them back into the wild,” he said.
Others have also called on enthusiasts to breed the species in order to offset demand.
Madjid Ben Daoud, a goldfinch aficionado and member of an environmental association in Algiers, said the approach could safeguard the bird’s wild population and reduce demand for it on the market.
“Our goal is to encourage the breeding of goldfinches already in captivity, so people no longer feel the need to capture them from the wild,” he said.
Souhila Larkam, who raises goldfinches at home, said people should only keep a goldfinch “if they ensure its reproduction.”
The Wild Songbird Protection Association also targets the next generation with education campaigns.
Abderrahmane Abed, vice president of the association, recently led a group of children on a trip to the forest to teach them about the bird’s role in the ecosystem.
“We want to instill in them the idea that these are wild birds that deserve our respect,” he said. “They shouldn’t be hunted or harmed.”
Israel’s defense chief threatens ceasefire collapse if Lebanese army not deployed south of Litani river
- Under the agreement, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away
- Lebanese army soldiers and UN peacekeepers are to be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon
Israel’s defense chief warned Sunday that the truce that ended more than a year of fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah is at risk.
During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River, while Israeli troops that invaded southern Lebanon need to withdraw all within 60 days.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the agreement also requires Lebanese troops to eliminate any Hezbollah infrastructure in the buffer zone — “something that hasn’t happened yet.”
Lebanese army soldiers are to deploy in large numbers and alongside United Nations peacekeepers be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon.
“If this condition is not met, there will be no agreement, and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of the residents of (Israel’s) north to their homes,” he said.
Katz made the statement after Hezbollah’s current leader Naim Kassem warned in a televised address Saturday that its fighters could strike Israel if its troops don’t leave the south by the end of the month.
Top Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa told a news conference Sunday that Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who negotiated the ceasefire deal with Washington, told Hezbollah that the government will meet with US envoy Amos Hochstein soon.
“And in light of what happens, then there will be a position,” said Safa.
Hochstein had led the shuttle diplomacy efforts to reach the fragile truce.
Erdogan expects support from Syria in Turkiye’s battle with PKK
- “The new administration in Syria is showing an extremely determined stance in preserving the country’s territorial integrity and unitary structure,” he said
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Syria’s new leadership is determined to root out separatists there, as Ankara said its military had “neutralized” 32 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in the country.
A rebellion by groups close to Turkiye ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad last month. Since then, Turkiye-backed Syrian forces have occasionally clashed in the north with U.S-backed Kurdish forces that Ankara deems terrorists.
“With the revolution in Syria... the hopes of the separatist terrorist organization hit a wall,” Erdogan told his party’s provincial congress in Trabzon.
“The new administration in Syria is showing an extremely determined stance in preserving the country’s territorial integrity and unitary structure,” he said.
“The end of the terrorist organization is near. There is no option left other than to surrender their weapons, abandon terrorism, and dissolve the organization. They will face Turkiye’s iron fist,” Erdogan added.
The defense ministry separately announced the armed forces’ operation in northern Syria that it said had “neutralized” — a term that usually means killed — the 32 PKK members. It said Turkiye’s military had also “neutralized” four PKK members in northern Iraq, where the militants are based.
Palestinian ministry says Israeli forces kill teenager in West Bank raid
- Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Madani was hit when Israeli forces fired bullets, flares and tear gas
NABLUS, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian health ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank stated that Israeli forces had killed a teenager during a raid on a refugee camp near the city of Nablus Sunday.
Mutaz Ahmad Abdul Wahab Madani, 17, was “killed and two others were wounded by occupation forces’ gunfire during a raid near Askar Camp east of Nablus,” the Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Madani was hit when Israeli forces fired bullets, flares and tear gas.
Medics reported that Madani had been shot in the chest and that Israeli forces initially kept him with them before handing him to Palestinian medics.
He was then transported to Rafidia hospital in a critical condition but succumbed to his wounds, a medic said.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since war broke out in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Since then, at least 818 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to the health ministry.
In the same period, Palestinian attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 25 Israelis, according to official Israeli figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since conquering it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
