PORT SUDAN: Sudanese shop owner Ishaq Mohammed has been trapped in his home for a month, sheltering from violence in El-Fasher, the last major city in the country’s vast Darfur region not under paramilitary control.
For more than a year, Sudan has suffered a war between the army, headed by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Experts have warned the northeast African country is at risk of breaking apart.
According to the United Nations, Sudan “is experiencing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions,” with famine threatening and more than 8.7 million people uprooted — more than anywhere else in the world.
Among the war’s many horrors, Darfur has already seen some of the worst. Now, experts and residents are bracing for more.
“We’re living in constant terror,” Mohammed told AFP by telephone, as the UN, world leaders and aid groups voice fears of carnage in the North Darfur state capital of 1.5 million people.
“We can’t move for the bombardments,” Mohammed said.
The RSF has seized four out of five state capitals in Darfur, a region about the size of France and home to around one quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people.
“We’re under a total siege,” another resident, Ahmed Adam, told AFP in a text message that got through despite a near-total communications blackout in Darfur.
“There’s no way in or out of the city that’s not controlled by the RSF,” he said.
For months, El-Fasher was protected by a fragile peace.
But unrest has soared since last month when the city’s two most powerful armed groups — which had helped to keep the peace there — pledged to fight alongside the army.
Since then, El-Fasher and the surrounding countryside have seen “systematic burning of entire villages in rural areas, escalating air bombardments... and a tightening siege,” according to Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.
At least 23 communities in North Darfur have been burned in apparent arson, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab found in a report last week.
The war’s overall death toll, however, remains unclear, a factor “that captures just how invisible and horrific this war is,” Tom Perriello, US special envoy for Sudan, told a congressional committee on May 1.
While figures of 15,000-30,000 have been mentioned, “some think it’s at 150,000,” Perriello said.
UN experts reported up to 15,000 people killed in the West Darfur capital El-Geneina alone.
Members of the non-Arab Massalit ethnic group in El-Geneina last year were targeted for killing and other abuses by the RSF and allied militias, forcing an exodus to neighboring Chad, which the UN says is hosting more than 745,000 people from Sudan.
The International Criminal Court, currently investigating ethnic-based killings primarily by the RSF in Darfur, says it has “grounds to believe” both sides are committing atrocities in the war.
As El-Fasher is home to both Arab and African communities, an all-out battle for control of the city causing massive civilian bloodshed “would lead to revenge attacks across the five Darfur states and beyond Darfur’s borders,” said Harward.
In late April, United States ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that El-Fasher “is on the precipice of a large-scale massacre.”
Eyewitnesses report fighting “is now inside” the nearby Abu Shouk camp, established 20 years ago for people displaced by ethnic violence committed by the Janjaweed militia, which led to ICC war crimes charges.
The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF.
“Everyone who hasn’t managed to leave is trapped at home,” camp resident Issa Abdelrahman told AFP.
“People are running out of food, and no one can get to them.”
According to UN experts, the RSF has repeatedly besieged and set fire to villages and displacement camps in Darfur.
Their siege of El-Fasher has halted aid convoys and commercial trade, Harward said.
Shortages have also hit the El-Fasher Southern Hospital — the city’s only remaining medical facility, where personnel are “completely exhausted,” a medical source told AFP.
Requesting anonymity for fear of both sides’ well-documented targeting of medics, the source said “some doctors haven’t left the hospital in over a month,” tirelessly treating gunshot wounds, bombardment injuries and child malnutrition.
The Darfur region was already facing widespread hunger, but now “people are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells,” according to Michael Dunford, the World Food Programme’s regional director for Eastern Africa.
Yet it is difficult for them to flee.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said encirclement of El-Fasher by armed groups and restrictions on movement along key roads “are limiting families from leaving.”
Early this year the RSF declared victories across Sudan, but the army has since mounted defenses in key locations.
The RSF has for months threatened an attack on El-Fasher but has held off, in large part due to the locally brokered truce.
They also seem to have been deterred by “heightened international demands and warnings,” according to Amjad Farid, a Sudanese political analyst and former aide to ex-civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok.
But these warnings are “falling on deaf ears,” Harward says.
With the US having announced an imminent resumption of peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Farid said the RSF has focused anew on El-Fasher.
“These are negotiations the militia cannot enter from a position of weakness,” Farid told AFP.
‘Constant terror’ in key Darfur city as fighting closes in
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‘Constant terror’ in key Darfur city as fighting closes in
- Experts have warned Sudan is at risk of breaking apart
WFP says three staff killed in aerial bombardment in Sudan
“WFP is outraged by the killing of three of its staff members in an aerial bombardment in Sudan on December 19, 2024,” the agency said in a statement on X.
“A WFP field office was hit during the attack. We are gathering more information and will provide updates as we learn more.”
A spokesman was unable to give more details when contacted by AFP.
War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army under de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The WFP on Thursday warned that Sudan risks becoming the world’s largest hunger crisis in recent history, with 1.7 million people across the country either facing famine or at risk of famine.
Turkiye will support Syria’s reconstruction, improve cooperation
- Turkish president says to intensify trade relations with Syria and Iraq ‘to bring new dynamism for both Syria and Turkiye in every respect’
ANKARA: Turkiye will do whatever necessary for the reconstruction of Syria following the ouster of Bashar Assad, including improving ties in trade, energy and defense, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
“We will intensify our trade relations with Syria and Iraq. This will bring new dynamism for both Syria and Turkiye in every respect,” Erdogan said, according to a transcript of remarks he made to journalists on his return flight from Egypt.
“We will collaborate in many areas, from defense to education and energy. Syria currently faces serious energy issues. But we will swiftly address all of these problems.”
Palestinian officials accuse Israeli settlers of mosque arson in West Bank
- Attack targeted the Bir Al-Walidain mosque in the village of Marda
- Settlers also vandalized the mosque’s walls with “racist graffiti” in Hebrew
NABLUS: Palestinian officials reported on Friday that Israeli settlers had set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank, an act Israeli police said was under investigation.
According to Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, the attack targeted the Bir Al-Walidain mosque in the village of Marda.
“A group of settlers carried out an attack early this morning by setting fire to the mosque,” Kamil said in a statement.
In addition to the arson, the settlers vandalized the mosque’s walls with “racist graffiti” in Hebrew, he said.
Photographs shared on social media showed slogans spray-painted in black including “Death to Arabs.”
Villagers of Marda confirmed the details, with one resident telling AFP: “They set fire to the entrance of the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on its walls.”
Another resident said the fire was extinguished before it could engulf the entire structure.
An AFP photographer at the scene saw villagers gathering at the mosque to assess the extent of the damage.
Governor Kamil alleged that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army,” and that similar acts of vandalism and graffiti had been reported in nearby areas.
The Palestinian foreign ministry in Ramallah condemned the incident, calling it a “blatant act of racism” and a reflection of the ” widespread incitement campaigns against our people carried out by elements of the extremist right-wing ruling government” of Israel.
Israeli police and the domestic Shin Bet security agency described the incident as a matter of “great severity.”
They said they would “act decisively to ensure accountability for those responsible,” adding an investigation was underway, with authorities gathering testimony and evidence from the scene.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has intensified since the war in Gaza began on October 7 last year following Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Since the start of the war, at least 803 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In the same period, Palestinian attacks have claimed the lives of at least 24 Israelis in the West Bank, based on Israeli official data.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
US diplomats and hostage envoy in Syria on first visit since Assad ouster
- First group of American diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade since the US shuttered its embassy in Damascus in 2012
WASHINGTON: The first US diplomats to visit Syria since President Bashar Assad’s ouster earlier this month are now in Damascus to hold talks with the country’s new leaders and seek information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein and the Biden administration’s chief envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, made the trip for talks with Syria’s interim leaders, the State Department said early Friday.
The team is also the first group of American diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade since the US shuttered its embassy in Damascus in 2012.
“They will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” the State Department said.
At the top of their agenda will be information about Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012. And they will push the principles of inclusion, protection of minorities and a rejection of terrorism and chemical weapons that the Biden administration says will be critical for any US support for a new government.
The US has redoubled efforts to find Tice and return him home, saying officials have communicated with the rebels who ousted Assad’s government about the American journalist. Carstens traveled previously to Lebanon to seek information.
Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.
A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. Assad’s government publicly denied that it was holding him.
The rebel group that spearheaded the assault on Damascus that forced Assad to flee — Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS — is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others. While that designation comes with a raft of sanctions, it does not prohibit US officials from speaking to its members or leaders.
The State Department said Rubinstein, Leaf and Carstens would meet with HTS officials but did not say if the group’s leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with Al-Qaeda, would be among those they see.
US officials say Al-Sharaa’s public statements about protecting minority and women’s rights are welcomed, but they remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.
The US has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Syria since 2012, when it suspended operations at its embassy in Damascus during the country’s civil war, although there are US troops in small parts of Syria engaged in the fight against the Islamic State militant group.
The Pentagon revealed Thursday that the US had doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight IS before Assad’s fall. The US also has significantly stepped up airstrikes against IS targets over concern that a power vacuum would allow the militant group to reconstitute itself.
The diplomats’ visit to Damascus will not result in the immediate reopening of the US embassy, which is under the protection of the Czech government, according to US officials, who said decisions on diplomatic recognition will be made when the new Syrian authorities make their intentions clear.
UN human rights office to send team to Syria next week
- Under Assad, the UN human rights team has not been allowed in Syria for years
- Large-scale refugee returns could overwhelm Syria, UN migration agency chief warns
GENEVA: The UN human rights office will send a small team of human rights officers to Syria next week for the first time in years following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, UN spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told a press briefing on Friday.
As part of the takeover, rebels have flung open prisons and government offices and raising fresh hopes for accountability for crimes committed during Syria’s more than 13-year civil war.
Under Assad, the UN human rights team has not been allowed in Syria for years, Al-Kheetan said, and has been monitoring abuses remotely.
He said that the team would support human rights issues and help ensure that any power transition is “inclusive and within the framework of international law.” “It is important for us to start establishing a presence,” he said. A UN investigative body also hopes to travel to Syria to secure evidence that could implicate top officials of the former government.
Earlier on Friday, the head of the UN migration agency warned that large-scale returns of refugees to Syria could overwhelm the country and even stoke conflict at a fragile moment with the fall of Assad regime.
The UN refugee agency has estimated that 1 million people will return to Syria in the first six months of 2025. Some European countries have already frozen asylum applications for Syrians.
“We believe that millions of people returning would create conflict within an already fragile society,” Amy Pope, director-general of the International Organization for Migration, told a Geneva press briefing after a trip to Syria.
“We are not promoting large-scale returns. The communities, frankly, are just not ready to absorb the people who are displaced,” she said, calling for support from donors to help stabilize and rebuild the country.
Pope said she was urging governments to “slow down on any plans to sent people back.”
She said some communities could yet flee because of uncertainties about life under the new authorities, led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group which once had ties to Al-Qaeda.
“We heard from communities, for example, the Christian community, who hasn’t yet left, but are very much worried about the next several months and want to make sure that they don’t become the targets of attack,” Pope said.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
The United States, other Western powers and many Syrians welcomed Assad’s fall, but it is not clear whether HTS will impose strict Islamic rule or show flexibility.
There is widespread apprehension among Syrians that the new administration will gravitate toward hard-line religious rule, marginalizing minority communities and excluding women from public life.
