CAIRO/DUBAI: Residents are fleeing missile fire and sheltering without food and water amid escalating fighting in the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir, witnesses and aid workers said, adding to fears of an all-out battle.
The city is the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the western Darfur region. Its capture would be a major boost for the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as regional and international powers try to push the sides to negotiate an end to a 13-month war.
Locals and aid workers fear the clashes could also lead to a new round of bloodletting after ethnically-driven violence blamed on the RSF and its allies elsewhere in Darfur last year.
Many of Al-Fashir’s 1.6 million residents arrived during the violence between Arabs and non-Arabs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the early-2000s. The RSF’s origins lie in the Arab janjaweed militias accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide then.
In recent weeks the RSF has almost surrounded Al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, while soldiers from the army and allied non-Arab armed groups fill the city.
In a sign of mounting ethnic tensions, Mini Minnawi, head of one of the groups, said on X he had made a wide call for fighters to come and defend Al-Fashir, in response to what he said was a similar call by the RSF.
Al-Fashir residents report snipers, stray missiles and army air strikes causing fires in the east and north of the city. Many civilians have taken up arms.
“The situation in the city has been difficult the past few days. Missiles from both sides are falling inside neighborhoods and homes, and getting to hospitals is dangerous,” said 38-year-old resident Hussein Adam.
Medical aid agency MSF said on Thursday that the city’s South Hospital had seen 489 casualties since May 10, including 64 deaths, though it said the real toll was far higher.
Another hospital it supports, which saw 27 people killed last weekend, was forced to shut down after an army air strike 50 meters away, MSF said.
The RSF and army blame each other for the violence.
On Wednesday, the United States imposed sanctions on two top RSF commanders, including the force’s head of operations, for the attacks on Al-Fashir.
“We are prepared to take further action against those who actively escalate this war – including any offensive actions on El Fasher – create barriers to humanitarian access, or commit atrocities,” US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield posted on X.
Experts have raised warnings of impending famine in the displacement camps that dot Al-Fashir. The city also suffers from water shortages, network outages, and high prices.
In one of those camps, Abu Shouk in the north of the city, nine people were killed by stray missiles, camp leaders said on Sunday.
Residents say displaced people from eastern neighborhoods are sheltering under trees and in open squares.
“Most families have moved west, women and children with nothing to eat or drink,” said resident Mohamed Jamal, a volunteer with the local emergency response room.
The army has so far insisted that international aid delivered via Chad for other parts of Darfur pass through Al-Fashir, something that the escalating violence prevents.
Carl Skau, Chief Operating Officer of the World Food Programme, said the agency had trucks ready in the Chadian border town of Tina, but they needed to be able to move soon.
“The window is closing, the rains are coming and we need action in the next couple of weeks,” he told Reuters after a trip to Port Sudan where he tried to negotiate with the army for better access this week.
The UN’s World Food Programme expects more people are being driven to the brink of starvation in other parts of Sudan worst affected by the war including the capital Khartoum, El Gezira state and the Kordofan regions.
“We really need to step up a concerted effort to avoid an even worse catastrophe,” Skau said.
Residents cower as fighting picks up in Sudan’s Al-Fashir
https://arab.news/g69y6
Residents cower as fighting picks up in Sudan’s Al-Fashir
UN rights chief demands accountability for Lebanon pager blasts
GENEVA: Those responsible for a deadly wave of explosions across Lebanon targeting paging devices used by members of the Hezbollah militant group “must be held to account,” the UN rights chief said Wednesday.
“Simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law,” Volker Turk said in a statement.
Blinken says Sudan progress threatened by new RSF offensive in Al-Fashir
- Progress in Sudan is threatened by RSF’s new offensive in Al-Fashir
CAIRO: The progress in Sudan is threatened by a new offensive by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the southwestern city of Al-Fashir, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Wednesday during a visit to Cairo.
Egypt won’t accept security changes on Gaza border, foreign minister says
- Security on the border, and whether Israel will maintain a troop presence along a 14-km (9-mile) buffer zone known as the Philadelphi Corridor, have become a focal point of months-long talks
- Israeli troops entered the buffer zone in May as they pursued an offensive around Rafah
CAIRO: Egypt will not accept any changes to the security arrangements that were in place on its border with Gaza before war broke out between Israel and Hamas last October, the Egyptian foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Security on the border, and whether Israel will maintain a troop presence along a 14-km (9-mile) buffer zone known as the Philadelphi Corridor, have become a focal point of months-long talks aimed at securing a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza.
Israeli troops entered the buffer zone in May as they pursued an offensive around Rafah.
Egypt, which is a mediator in ceasefire talks, says Israel must withdraw and that a Palestinian presence needs to be restored at the Rafah crossing between Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza.
“Egypt reiterates its position, it rejects any military presence along the opposite side of the border crossing and the aforementioned (Philadelphi) corridor,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told reporters during a press conference in Cairo with US counterpart Antony Blinken.
Abdelatty also said that any escalation, including blasts that wounded Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon on Tuesday, would create hurdles for the completion of a Gaza ceasefire deal.
Exploding pagers in attack on Hezbollah were made by a Hungarian company, another firm says
- “According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions,” Gold Apollo said
- BAC Consulting Kft., a limited liability company, was registered in May 2022, according to company records
TAIPEI: A company based in Hungary was responsible for manufacturing the pagers that exploded in an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah, another firm said Wednesday.
The attack marked a new escalation in the conflict between the two foes that has often threatened to escalate into all-out war.
Pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah exploded nearly simultaneously a day earlier in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and wounding around 2,800. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel.
An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the attack, in which small amounts of explosive hidden in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The sophisticated apparently remote attack renewed fears that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza could spill into a wider regional conflict.
Hamas’ ally Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire nearly daily since Oct. 8, the day after a deadly Hamas-led assault in southern Israel triggered the war. Since then, hundreds have been killed in the strikes in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, while tens of thousands on each side of the border have been displaced.
Despite periodic cycles of escalation, Hezbollah and Israel have carefully avoided an all-out war, but Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks that they might increase operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel began moving more troops to its border with Lebanon on Wednesday as a precautionary measure, according to an official with knowledge of the movements who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The AR-924 pagers used Tuesday’s attack were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, according to a statement released by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese firm that authorized the use of its brand on the pagers.
BAC appeared to be a shell company.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement.
The company’s chair, Hsu Ching-kuang, told journalists Wednesday that the firm has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years.
BAC Consulting Kft., a limited liability company, was registered in May 2022, according to company records. It has 7,840 euros in standing capital, the records showed, and had revenue of $725,768 in 2022 and $593,972 in 2023.
At the headquarters in a building in a residential neighborhood of Budapest, Associated Press journalists saw the names of multiple companies, including BAC Consulting, posted on pieces of paper on a window.
A woman who emerged from the building and declined to give her name said the site provides headquarter addresses to various companies.
BAC is registered to Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, whose describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a strategic adviser and business developer. Among other positions, Bársony-Arcidiacono says on the page that she has served on the board of directors of the Earth Child Institute, a sustainability group. The group does not list Bársony-Arcidiacono as among its board members on its website.
The AP has attempted to reach Bársony-Arcidiacono via the LinkedIn page and has been unable to establish a connection between her or BAC and the exploding pagers.
The attack in Lebanon started Tuesday afternoon, when pagers in their owners’ hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.
It appeared that most of those hit were members or linked to members of Hezbollah — whether fighters or civilians — but it was not immediately clear if people with no ties to Hezbollah were also hit.
The Health Ministry said health care workers and two children were among those killed. In the village of Nadi Sheet in the Bekaa Valley, dozens gathered to mourn the death of one of the children, 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah. The Health Ministry had previously given her age as 8.
Her mother, wearing black and donning a yellow Hezbollah scarf, wept alongside other women and children as they gathered around the little girl’s coffin before her burial.
Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday morning that it would continue its normal strikes against Israel as part of what it describes as a support front for its ally, Hamas, and Palestinians in Gaza.
“This path is continuous and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” it said. “This is another reckoning that will come, God willing.”
At hospitals in Beirut on Wednesday, the chaos of the night before had largely subsided, but relatives of the wounded continued to wait.
Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told journalists during a tour on hospitals Wednesday morning that many of the wounded had severe injuries to the eyes, and others had limbs amputated. Journalists were not allowed to enter hospital rooms or film patients.
Abiad said that the wounded had been sent to various area hospitals to avoid any single facility being overloaded and added that Turkiye, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt offered to help treat the patients.
Earlier Wednesday, an Iraqi military plane landed in Beirut carrying 15 tons of medicine and medical equipment, he said.
Experts believe explosive material was put into the pagers prior to their delivery.
The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before they were removed after the attack.
It claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. That would be crucial in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common after years of economic collapse. Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones, making them more resilient in emergencies — one of the reasons why many hospitals worldwide still rely on them.
For Hezbollah, the pagers also provided a means to sidestep what’s believed to be intensive Israeli electronic surveillance on mobile phone networks in Lebanon.
“The phone that we have in our hands — I do not have a phone in my hand — is a listening device,” warned Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a February speech.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said from the beginning of 2022 until August 2024, Gold Apollo has exported 260,000 sets of pagers, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August of this year. The ministry said that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.
Iran’s president names first Sunni governor in 45 years
- Arash Zerehtan was appointed head of the western state
- He is the first Sunni to be made a regional governor in the predominantly Shiite country
TEHRAN: Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on Wednesday nominated a member of the Sunni Muslim minority to be governor of Kurdistan province, official media reported.
Arash Zerehtan was appointed head of the western state, IRNA news agency said, citing government spokesman Fatemeh MoHajjerani.
He is the first Sunni to be made a regional governor in the predominantly Shiite country since the earliest days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Zerehtan, 48, served as a member of parliament for the city of Paveh between 2020 and this year.
Sunnis account for about 10 percent of Iran’s population, where the vast majority are Shiites and Shiite Islam is the official state religion.
They have very rarely held key positions of power since the revolution.
Pezeshkian, 69, took office in July after an early election following the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
During his election campaign, Pezeshkian criticized the lack of representation for ethnic and religious minorities, in particular Sunni Kurds, in important positions.
In August, he made another member of the Sunni minority, Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh, one of his vice presidents.
