CAIRO: Refugees from Sudan’s civil war who fled into neighboring Ethiopia say they have been forced to move on again and take shelter in a forest and on roadsides after repeated attacks by gunmen left their tents pock-marked with bullet holes.
About 8,000 people have left the Kumer and Awlala refugee camps, set up by the United Nations in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, since repeated assaults last month, mostly by bandits, camp representatives told Reuters this week.
They had originally fled fighting that broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023 that has led to extreme hunger in parts of that country and accusations of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
“We left our country because we were scared of the stray bullets from the army and RSF,” one young man told Reuters by phone.
“We sought refuge in Ethiopia to save our lives, and now we are facing the same danger.”
He said he had originally left Sudan’s capital Khartoum, then the camps, and was now sheltering in a forest with fellow refugees in the Amhara region — where militias have been battling Ethiopian federal government troops in a separate conflict.
Images sent via WhatsApp and Telegram showed makeshift dwellings made out of branches and tarp, and scores of people, including many children, sitting outside along a roadside. Reuters confirmed the date and location of the photographs.
Like others there, the young man spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisals. Their accounts highlighted the lack of options facing Sudan’s refugees as they look for shelter in countries with their own conflicts and shortages.
The Ethiopian government’s Refugee and Returnee Service did not respond to requests for comment. In early May it said it was engaged with refugees to address safety and service concerns, despite limited resources.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR referred Reuters to a statement from last week that acknowledged security incidents and a “deeply challenging” security environment, without going into further details.
In the statement it said Ethiopian police had increased patrols, and that it continued to provide services inside the two camps and to encourage what it said were around 1,000 people outside Awlala to return. There was no-one immediately available to comment on the different estimate of the numbers involved.
Sudan’s war has created the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than 8.9 million people fleeing their homes. Of the 2.1 million who left the country, more than 122,000 have gone to Ethiopia, according to the International Organization for Migration.
The aid group Medical Teams International, which has run a clinic near the camps in Ethiopia, said last week one of its staff was killed after armed men fired on a convoy.
’CATASTROPHE AFTER CATASTROPHE’
Refugees who were now sheltering outside the camps told Reuters people faced regular violence.
“People have to go to the valley to bathe and wash clothes. But they are either robbed, beaten up, or kidnapped daily,” said one member of a camp leadership committee.
“We are facing catastrophe after catastrophe,” they said.
Cholera has spread in Kumer, where there was at most one doctor available to see patients, several refugees and an aid worker, who asked not to be named, said. Monthly food deliveries by the UN World Food Programme last less than two weeks, two refugees told Reuters.
Three refugees told Reuters that about 6,000 people from Kumer and Awlala had set off together on May 1 to walk 170 km (105 miles) to the UNHCR’s headquarters in Amhara’s main city of Gondar to protest about their conditions.
They were stopped by police and sought shelter in a forest near the Awlala camp, the three refugees said.
Many of them began a 10-day hunger strike over conditions as supplies ran low, which they stopped after donations came in from Sudanese abroad, the only assistance received so far, the three said.
About 2,000 who remained at Kumer fled onto a main road after armed men began firing at the camp on May 1, the committee member and another refugee said. Those who later returned found gunshots had pierced the tents, they said, convincing them that the men aimed to drive them out.
Aid workers, who asked not to be named, say insecurity and a lack of funds have severely hampered relief efforts.
The UN says just $400,000 in funding for Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia has been delivered, out of an appeal for more than $175 million.
Attacks leave Sudanese refugees stranded in Ethiopian forest
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Attacks leave Sudanese refugees stranded in Ethiopian forest
- About 8,000 people have left the Kumer and Awlala refugee camps, set up by the United Nations in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, since repeated assaults last month
- “We left our country because we were scared of the stray bullets from the army and RSF,” one young man told Reuters
Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
At Saturday’s 20th “National March for Palestine” in London, familiar chants — “ceasefire now,” “stop bombing hospitals, stop bombing civilians“
LONDON: Thousands of protesters marched through central London on Saturday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon as the war in the Palestinian territory neared the one-year mark.
Pro-Palestinian supporters from across the country began the march from Russell Square to Downing Street demanding an end to the conflict, which has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza;
At Saturday’s 20th “National March for Palestine” in London, familiar chants — “ceasefire now,” “stop bombing hospitals, stop bombing civilians” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — were joined by shouts of “hands off Lebanon.”
The rally came ahead of the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack in Israel by fighters from Palestinian group Hamas which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the United Nations.
Zackerea Bakir, 28, said he has attended dozens of marches around the Uk.
Large numbers continue to turn up because “everyone wants a change,” Bakir told AFP.
“It’s continuing to just get worse and worse, and yet nothing seems to be changing... I think it’s tiring that we have to continue to come out,” said Bakir, joined at the rally by his mother and brother.
Several protesters carried posters reading “Starmer has blood on his hands.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas, as well as suspended some arms licenses to Israel.
However, many at the rally said it was not enough.
Sophia Thomson, 27, found the Labour government’s stance “hypocritical.”
According to Thomson, the size of the protests “goes to show the government doesn’t speak for the people.”
“It’s not good enough. It’s not good enough,” added Bakir, calling for the government to “stop giving a carte blanche of support to the Israeli government.”
London’s Metropolitan police put in place a “significant” policing operation ahead of planned protests and memorial events.
While the rally was largely peaceful, two were arrested for assaulting an emergency worker, according to the Met.
Three others were arrested as tensions rose between the main march and a counter protest.
While exact numbers at the demonstration were unclear, “it appears to be greater than other recent protests,” the Met said on X.
Another rally also took place simultaneously in the Irish capital, Dublin.
A memorial for the October 7 attack will be held in London on Sunday.
Displaced Gazan mothers struggle to care for their newborns
- “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant or given birth during the war because life is completely different,” said Rana Salah
- Milana is one of around 20,000 babies to have been born in Gaza in the last year, according to UNICEF statistics
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Gazan mother Rana Salah cradles her one-month-old daughter Milana in her arms in a sweltering tent for the displaced, and speaks of the guilt she feels for bringing her child into a world of war and suffering.
“If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant or given birth during the war because life is completely different; we’ve never lived this life before,” she said, speaking at a camp in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“I gave birth twice before, and life was better and easier for me and the child. Now, I feel like I’ve wronged both myself and the child because we deserve to live better than this.”
Milana was born in a hospital tent by caesarean owing to complications with Salah’s pregnancy. The family have not been able to return home due to the conflict, moving instead from one tent to another.
Milana is one of around 20,000 babies to have been born in Gaza in the last year, according to UNICEF statistics.
The current war, a particularly deadly episode in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israeli air and artillery strikes in response have reduced much of the Palestinian enclave to rubble and more than 41,500 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to the Gaza health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
INFECTION RISK
Salah fans Milana with cardboard and says the heat is bad for the baby’s skin.
“Instead of returning to our house, we keep moving from one tent to another... where diseases are widespread and the water is contaminated.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said postnatal services have decreased significantly in Gaza, so women who have complications have less access to the care they need, as do their babies.
Rick Brennan, the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional emergency director, said malnutrition was a threat to newborns, particularly if their mothers were unable to breastfeed, as there was no access to breast milk substitutes.
Displacement and being constantly on the move are disruptive for a newborn and expose them to risks of infection, he said.
Manar Abu Jarad is staying in a school shelter run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). Her youngest daughter Sahar was born on Sept. 4th, also by caesarean section. Her husband was killed in the war.
On hearing she would need a caesarean for the birth, she worried about how she would care for her other children.
“I already have three girls. I started shouting... How can I carry (water) buckets? How can I bathe my daughters? How can I help them and my husband is not with me, he was martyred.”
Children rock baby Sahar, who is swaddled in a crib, next to Jarad.
“I’ve reached the point where I cannot carry the responsibility for this girl ... Thank God I found some help here,” she said. She has borrowed what she can from family and uses one diaper a day for the baby as she can’t afford more.
“I don’t have the money to provide diapers or milk for her.”
Jarad longs for an end to the war and a return to her home, even if it is just a tent next to her former home.
“The important thing is to go home. Enough of all the exhaustion we are experiencing here, enough carrying buckets, enough of the dirt in the bathrooms. It’s really, really hard and really tiring for us. Diseases are everywhere.”
Macron urges halt to arms deliveries to Israel for use in Gaza
- “The priority is that we return to a political solution,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday urged a halt to arms deliveries to Israel, which has been criticized over the conduct of its retaliatory operation in Gaza.
“I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter, adding that France was not sending any arms to Israel.
Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History
- “It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, said
GENEVA: Archaeological treasures from the Gaza Strip are going on display in Geneva, with the Swiss city protecting the heritage of a territory devastated by a year of war.
Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History (MAH).
“It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, told AFP. “Heritage is really the history of this strip of land, the history of the people who live there.”
The artefacts are from a collection of more than 530 objects that have been stored in crates in a secure warehouse in Geneva since 2007, unable to return to Gaza.
The exhibition, which runs from Saturday until February 9, also includes artefacts from Sudan, Syria and Libya.
It was staged to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
The exhibition looks at the responsibility of museums in saving such property from damage, looting and conflict, reminding visitors that deliberately destroying heritage is a war crime.
“The forces of obscurantism understand that cultural property is what is at stake for civilization, because they have never stopped wanting to destroy this heritage, as in Mosul,” said Geneva city councillor Alfonso Gomez — a reference to the northern Iraqi city captured by the Islamic State jihadist group in 2014.
MAH director Marc-Olivier Wahler told AFP: “Unfortunately, in the event of conflict, many aggressors attack cultural heritage because it is obviously erasing the identity of a people, erasing its history.”
Thankfully, “there are museums, rules and conventions that protect this heritage.”
Since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, cultural sites in the Palestinian territory have paid a heavy price, says the United Nations’ cultural organization.
UNESCO has verified damage to 69 sites: 10 religious sites, 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, two depositories of movable cultural property, six monuments, one museum and seven archaeological sites.
At a time when Palestinian cultural heritage is “the victim of unprecedented destruction, the patrimonial value of the Gazan objects held in Geneva seems greater than ever,” said the MAH.
Some of the objects belonged to the Palestinian Authority. The rest belonged to the Palestinian entrepreneur Jawdat Khoudary, but he later gave ownership of them to the PA in 2018.
These artefacts, evoking daily, civil and religious life from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era, arrived in Geneva in 2006 to be shown at the “Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations” exhibition, inaugurated by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
They had been meant to form the foundation of an archaeological museum to be built in Gaza.
Instead, they were stuck in Geneva for 17 years, the conditions for their safe return having never been met.
“At the time when the objects were due to leave, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and there were geopolitical tensions between Palestine and Israel,” said Blandin.
This “coincidence of circumstances,” she said, ultimately saved the artefacts: the rest of Khoudary’s private collection, which remained in Gaza, has been “totally destroyed” since October 7 last year.
Following a new cooperation agreement signed last September between the Palestinian Authority and Geneva, the Swiss city has committed to looking after the artefacts for as long as necessary.
The MAH also served as a refuge, in 1939 when the Spanish Republicans evacuated by train the greatest treasures from the Museo del Prado in Madrid and several other major collections.
And last year, Geneva hosted an exhibition of Ukrainian works of art.
According to the Swiss Museums Association, Switzerland, along with counterparts in other countries, has also been able to help more than 200 museums in Ukraine preserve their collections after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Frankly Speaking: How Fareed Zakaria views change in Saudi Arabia
- CNN journalist and author no longer skeptical about Arab Gulf states after seeing the Kingdom’s transformation
- Says they are moving region toward stability, economic integration, greater interdependence, ties with more countries
DUBAI: The changes taking place in Saudi Arabia will be viewed in the long run as nothing short of a revolution, but one that happened in an “incremental” and “organic way,” according to CNN journalist, author and political analyst Fareed Zakaria.
He made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News show “Frankly Speaking” from the Saudi capital, which he visited last week and where he participated in a talk at the Riyadh International Book Fair around his latest book, “The Age of Revolutions.”
He said he feels the changes across the Kingdom are taking place at many levels. “The ones that I am most struck by, of course, are the role of women, but I am also struck by the role of (all) Saudis. And this to me is a very interesting and somewhat unremarked upon change,” he told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen.
“There are areas where (Saudi Arabia) is moving very fast; there are areas where it is still being somewhat restrained. … I am impressed that they are trying to strike a balance, that they are trying to push some things forward and modernize in some areas.”
Elaborating on the point, Zakaria said: “The role of women really has been transformed, but there are some areas, for example, where there’s still the requirement and encouragement that Saudis dress in traditional clothes. So, Saudi Arabia is trying to balance this in a way that doesn’t become too revolutionary.”
Overall, he said referring to the change, “when you look at it in historical terms, clearly this will be seen as a revolution, but it’s a revolution that is being played out in an incremental way, in an organic way … so that the changes are not so overwhelming.”
Moving on to the wider Arab Gulf region, Zakaria confessed that he was a skeptic for many years, considering these countries “very passive.”
“If you look at the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, the Arab world was defined by its big, large states that were historically important: Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Then in the ’70s, you went through maybe a period of turmoil around Iran and the Islamic Revolution,” he said.
“But today, what is clear is that (the Arab Gulf states), starting with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, are in the driver’s seat and they are trying, they are moving, they’re trying to move the region toward stability, economic integration, greater interdependence, more ties with more countries.”
Zakaria attributed said change in part to what is been happening in Saudi Arabia. “The UAE, to be fair, may even have been one of the first to begin that process. But now that Saudi Arabia is on board, of course, is much larger, much more powerful and can have a much more positive influence,” he said.
Alluding to the spirit of the landmark Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration in 2020, Zakaria noted that the Arab Gulf states are reaching out to India and China among other economic powers. “This is all for the good because the more trade, commerce, interdependence and integration takes place, the more the average person in the Arab world is going to benefit because his or her living standards will rise,” he said.
The Indian-born American journalist is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. A prolific author, Zakaria has a PhD in government from Harvard University where he studied under such famous scholars as Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann.
