CAIRO: Cholera is spreading in war-torn Sudan, killing at least 388 people and sickening about 13,000 others over the past two months, health authorities said, as more than 17 months of fighting between the military and a notorious paramilitary group shows no sign of abating.
The disease is spreading in areas devastated by recent heavy rainfall and floods especially in eastern Sudan where millions of war displaced people sheltered.
The casualties from cholera included six dead and about 400 sickened over the weekend, according to Sunday’s report by the Health Ministry. The disease was detected in 10 of the country’s 18 provinces with the eastern Kassala and Al-Qadarif provinces the most hit, the ministry said.
Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated, according to the World Health Organization. It is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.
The disease is not uncommon in Sudan. A previous major outbreak left at least 700 dead and sickened about 22,000 in less than two months in 2017.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, exploded into open warfare across the country.
The fighting, which wrecked the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
It has killed at least 20,000 people and wounded tens of thousands others, according to the UN However, rights groups and activists say the toll was much higher.
The war also has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 13 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the fighting began, according to the International Organization for Migration. They include over 2.3 million who fled to neighboring countries.
Devastating seasonal floods and cholera have compounded the Sudanese misery. At least 225 people have been killed and about 900 others were injured in the floods, the Health Ministry said. Critical infrastructure has been washed away, and more than 76,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged, it said.
Famine was also confirmed in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people, which is located about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from North Darfur’s embattled capital of Al-Fasher, according to global experts from the Famine Review Committee. About 25.6 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — will face acute hunger this year, they warned.
Fighting, meanwhile, rages in Al-Fasher, the last major city in Darfur that is still held by the military. The RSF has been attempting to retake it since the start of the year.
Last week, the paramilitary force and its allied Arab militias launched a new attack on the city. The military said its forces, aided by rebel groups, managed to repel the attack and kill hundreds of RSF fighters, including two senior commanders.
Cholera is spreading in Sudan as fighting between rival generals shows no sign of abating
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Cholera is spreading in Sudan as fighting between rival generals shows no sign of abating
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric calls for end to Israeli ‘aggression’ on Lebanon
Sistani called for “the exercise of every possible effort” to end this “barbaric aggression and to protect the Lebanese people.”
Lebanon said 50 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes on the south on Monday, the heaviest daily toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.
“Continued Israeli enemy raids on southern towns and villages... killed 50 people and wounded more than 300, with children, women and emergency workers among the dead and wounded,” a health ministry statement said, adding that the toll was provisional.
Dozens of Israeli air strikes hit Lebanon’s south and east Monday as Israel’s military warned Lebanese to move away from Hezbollah targets.
World Health Organization visits UAE hospital in Gaza
- Both sides underscored the importance of coordinated efforts to evacuate the wounded
DUBAI: A delegation from the World Health Organization visited the UAE’s field hospital in Rafah recently to assess services provided for vulnerable Palestinians, Emirates News Agency reported on Sunday.
During the meeting, both sides underscored the importance of coordinated efforts to evacuate the wounded. And reaffirmed the hospital’s commitment to continue treating patients in response to Gaza’s critical healthcare needs.
They agreed to enhance essential services, establish mechanisms to strengthen the local healthcare sector, and provide treatment for children with cancer abroad.
The UAE has provided 12 tonnes of medicines and essential supplies to the WHO to help bolster hospitals and healthcare institutions dealing with the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
50 killed and more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, health ministry says
- Israel army tells Lebanese to 'move away' from Hezbollah sites
- The Israeli military had launched new strikes against Hezbollah sites since Monday morning
BEIRUT: Lebanon said 50 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes on the south on Monday, the heaviest daily toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.
“Continued Israeli enemy raids on southern towns and villages... killed 50 people and wounded more than 300, with children, women and emergency workers among the dead and wounded,” a health ministry statement said, adding that the toll was provisional.
Dozens of Israeli air strikes hit Lebanon’s south and east Monday as Israel’s military warned Lebanese to move away from Hezbollah targets.
The Israeli military said it carried out about 150 strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the course of one hour beginning at 6:30 am (0330 GMT).
The official National News Agency (NNA) said “enemy warplanes launched... more than 80 air strikes in half an hour,” targeting south Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh district. It also reported strikes in the Tyre area.
At the same time, the NNA reported “intense raids in the Bekaa” Valley in the east, deep inside Lebanon near the Syrian border, including in the vicinity of Baalbek and the outskirts of Hermel.
The NNA said the strikes in the east killed a “civilian,” a shepherd, “and wounded two members of his family” and four others.
AFP correspondents in the south and east reported the sound of heavy strikes.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denounced a “destructive plan” amid intense Israeli strikes.
“The continuing Israeli aggression on Lebanon is a war of extermination in every sense of the word and a destructive plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns,” Mikati told a cabinet meeting.
He urged “the United Nations and the General Assembly and influential countries... to deter the (Israeli) aggression.”
A Hezbollah source, requesting anonymity, said strikes in the Bekaa Valley targeted the area from east to west.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that “we advise civilians from Lebanese villages located in and next to buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as those used to store weapons, to immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety.”
Hagari told a media briefing Israel’s military “will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon.”
Hezbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack triggered the Gaza war.
Violence has spiked dramatically in recent days, and Israel and Hezbollah traded heavy fire over the weekend, raising fears of all-out war.
Calls for Israel and Hezbollah to step back from the abyss
- Hezbollah deputy chief says group in "new phase" in battle against Israel
- Military escalation not in Israel's "best interest," says key ally United States
HAIFA, Israel: Israel and Hezbollah threatened on Sunday to escalate their cross-border attacks despite a chorus of international calls for both sides to step back from the brink of all-out war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after intense rocket fire from Lebanon that Israel has dealt “a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined.”
A defiant Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said the group was in a “new phase” in its battle against Israel.
Both spoke after attacks on northern Israel sent hundreds of thousands of people to bomb shelters and caused damage in the Haifa area.
“No country can tolerate attacks on its citizens,” Netanyahu said nearly a year into the Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that has also drawn in Iran-backed groups across the region, including Hezbollah.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said military actions “will continue until we reach a point where we may ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes.”
“This is our goal, this is our mission, and we will employ the means necessary to achieve it.”
Army chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in a video statement vowed to “hit anyone who threatens” Israelis.
Israel’s key ally the United States said military escalation is not in Israel’s “best interest,” with President Joe Biden saying Washington was doing everything possible to prevent a wider conflagration.
Biden said his administration was “going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out. And we’re still pushing hard.”
Ahead of the annual General Assembly, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned of the risk of Lebanon becoming “another Gaza” and said it was “clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire” in the Gaza war.
Hezbollah rocket fire reached Kiryat Bialik near north Israel’s largest city Haifa, leaving a building in flames, another pockmarked with shrapnel and vehicles incinerated.
“This is not pleasant. This is war,” said resident Sharon Hacmishvili.
Israel has signalled a focus shift to Iran-backed Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border fire that began in October in what Hezbollah calls support for Hamas Palestinian militants fighting Israel.
An Israeli air strike in a densely populated Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut Friday killed the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the strike killed 45 people.
It came after a series of coordinated communications device blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon that killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000, and which were blamed on Israel.
Speaking at Aqil’s funeral in Beirut Sunday, Qassem said: “We have entered a new phase, namely an open reckoning” with Israel.
“Threats will not stop us... We are ready to face all military possibilities.”
Hezbollah’s Radwan Force has spearheaded its ground operations, and Israel has repeatedly called for its fighters to be pushed back from the border.
UN special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert posted on X that the region was “on the brink of an imminent catastrophe.”
The Israeli army said more than 150 rockets, missiles and drones were fired at its territory during the night and early Sunday, most from Lebanon.
It said it attacked Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response and “to prevent a larger-scale attack.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said three people were killed in Israeli strikes on southern areas, and Hezbollah announced two fighters were killed.
Israel’s civil defense agency ordered all schools in the north closed after the rocket fire.
“It reminds me of October 7 when everybody stayed home,” Haifa resident Patrice Wolff told AFP.
Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli military production facilities and an air base in the Haifa area after this week’s communication device blasts.
“In an initial response,” Hezbollah said it “bombed the Rafael military industry complexes” in northern Israel with “dozens” of rockets.
It said it targeted Ramat David air base deep inside Israel with Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets in Hezbollah’s apparent first use of that rocket type since the Gaza war began.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has acknowledged that the communication devices attack was “unprecedented.” He vowed that Israel — which has not commented — would face retribution.
Months of near-daily exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel and the annexed Golan, forcing tens of thousands on both sides from their homes.
Netanyahu on Tuesday announced an expansion of Israel’s war goals to include the return home of northern residents.
International mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have for months tried to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, which diplomats repeatedly said would help calm regional tensions.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told AFP in an interview Sunday the Israel-Hezbollah flare-up “negatively affects” Gaza ceasefire efforts.
“The problem is the lack of political will on the Israeli side,” he added.
Netanyahu’s critics in Israel have accused him of dragging out the war.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has acknowledged the figures as reliable.
’Atrocious’ Sudan war pushing refugees further afield: UNHCR chief
- Sudan’s civil war has pitted the army led by general Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against the paramilitary RSF forces of general Mohamed Hamdane Dagalo, claiming tens of thousands of lives and plunging 26 million into severe food insecurity
UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN’s refugee chief questioned Sunday what future awaited the Sudanese people as the country’s civil war rages, pushing its people ever further afield including to Uganda and Europe’s maritime borders.
Since the start of the war in April 2023, “well over 10 million people have been chased away from their homes,” two million of whom fled Sudan, Filippo Grandi told AFP in an interview, ahead of the annual UN General Assembly high-level week.
“What’s the future for a country like Sudan, devastated by war?” Grandi asked.
Grandi’s role leading the UNHCR and its 20,000 staff is one of the most important in the United Nations due to the ever-growing number of refugees in the world, and the agency has won the Nobel Peace Prize twice.
Grandi said it was “worrying” that “people are starting to move away from the immediate neighborhood,” describing a sharp increase of Sudanese — around 40,000 — arriving in non-bordering Uganda.
“We have seen at least 100,000 Sudanese arrive in Libya,” Grandi said.
“We know that, given the active presence of trafficking networks and also the proximity with Europe, many of them may now try, or are already trying, to take boats on to Italy and other European countries,” Grandi said.
“We have been warning the Europeans,” he added, insisting that humanitarian aid for Sudan was inadequate, and that Sudanese people would continue to leave and would reach more countries.
“This crisis is really beginning to impact the whole region in very, very risky ways.”
Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic are home to tens of thousands of refugees, while Egypt, where many Sudanese migrants were already living, is home to millions.
Sudan’s civil war has pitted the army led by general Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against the paramilitary RSF forces of general Mohamed Hamdane Dagalo, claiming tens of thousands of lives and plunging 26 million into severe food insecurity.
Famine has been declared in Zamzam camp in Darfur near to the city of El-Fasher, where the RSF this weekend launched a large-scale offensive after months of siege.
“We have very patchy information about the situation inside,” Grandi said.
“(But) we know that there are certain patterns” — namely that militias, sometimes linked with one of the warring parties or the RSF itself “targets or puts pressure on civilians.”
The RSF, with the support of Arab militias, have killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in the West-Darfur town of El-Geneina alone, UN experts said.
“This most grave crisis — a crisis of human rights, a crisis of humanitarian needs — passes largely unobserved in our international community,” Grandi said.
“Every new crisis chases the other crisis away” — from Ukraine to Gaza.
But even before the deadly war in Gaza, the war in Sudan had been “marginalized” despite its massive impact, he said, condemning the “deficit of interest for crises in Africa,” like those in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahel, as “frightening and shocking.”
Grandi questioned the outlook for Sudan even if peace was achieved, warning that the Sudanese middle class which had “held the country together had been completely destroyed.
“They know that it’s over. They’ve lost their jobs, their homes have been destroyed,” he said.
“Many times relatives have been killed. It’s atrocious.”
