On Khartoum front line, Sudan women medics risk all for patients

Khansa Al-Moatasem, head of the nursing team at Al-Nao hospital in Omdurman, speaks during an interview on Thursday. (AFP)
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Updated 22 March 2025
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On Khartoum front line, Sudan women medics risk all for patients

  • Their operating theaters were turned into battlegrounds, their hospitals bombed, and their colleagues killed where they stood. Yet through bombs and bullets, they turned up for their patients every day

OMDURMAN: When fighting first gripped the Sudanese capital in April 2023, quickly overwhelming Khartoum’s hospitals, Dr. Safaa Ali faced an impossible choice: her family or her patients.
She said she stayed up all night before deciding not to follow her husband to Egypt with her four children.
“I was torn. I could either be with my children or stay and do my duty,” she said.
She has not seen her family since.
Nearly two years into the war between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces, she is one of the last remaining obstetricians in the capital, risking her life to give Sudanese women a shot at safe births.

We find strength in our love of our country, our passion for our work, and the oath we swore,” she said in a war-damaged delivery room.

Dr. Safaa Ali

“We find strength in our love of our country, our passion for our work, and the oath we swore,” she said in a war-damaged delivery room.
She is one of a cohort of doctors, nurses, technicians, and janitorial staff who met in the last hospitals in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city just across the Nile.
Their operating theaters were turned into battlegrounds, their hospitals bombed, and their colleagues killed where they stood. Yet through bombs and bullets, they turned up for their patients every day.
Bothaina Abdelrahman has been a janitor at Omdurman’s Al-Nao hospital for 27 years.
She sheltered with her family in a neighboring district for the first 48 hours of the war but has not missed a day of work since.
“I would walk two hours to the hospital and walk two hours back,” she said at the hospital, mop in hand.
For months, medical personnel have been subjected to routine accusations from combatants that they have been collaborating with the enemy or failing to treat their comrades.
“Health professionals were attacked, kidnapped, killed, and taken hostage for ransom,” said Dr. Khalid Abdelsalam, Khartoum project coordinator for medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF.
Nationwide, up to 90 percent of hospitals in conflict zones have been forced shut, according to Sudan’s doctors’ union, which says at least 78 health workers have been killed since the war began. By October, the World Health Organization had recorded 119 attacks on health facilities.
“At one point, there wasn’t a single working MRI machine in the country” for medical scans, said Abdelsalam.
Despite repeated attacks, Khansa Al-Moatasem heads the 180-person nursing team at Al-Nao, Omdurman’s only hospital functioning throughout the war.
“It’s an honor to give the hospital everything I have and learned,” she said, pink headscarf glowing under the fluorescent lights.
According to MSF, which supports the complex of two-story buildings, Al-Nao has suffered three direct hits since the war began.
A sign reads: “No weapons allowed,” but it frequently goes unheeded at the hospital gates.
After the RSF stormed the nearby maternity hospital early in the war, Dr. Ali, who serves as the hospital’s director, steeled her nerves and went to the paramilitary forces herself.
“I met their field commander and told him this was a women’s hospital, only for them to storm it again the next day with even more fighters,” she recalled.
In July 2023, she watched one of her colleagues die when the hospital was bombed.
Eventually, the hospital was forced to close its doors after its ceilings collapsed, its equipment was looted, and the walls of its delivery rooms were left riddled with bullets.
Dr. Ali set up mobile clinics and a temporary maternity ward at Al-Nao until the Saudi hospital partially reopened this month.
Since army forces recaptured much of Omdurman in early 2024, a semblance of normality has slowly returned, but hospitals have continued to come under attack.
As recently as February, Al-Nao was rocked by RSF shelling as its exhausted doctors raced to treat dozens of casualties from RSF artillery fire on a crowded market.
Those hospitals that still function have been forced to rely increasingly on the help of volunteers from the local Emergency Response Rooms. The neighborhood groups are part of a grassroots aid network delivering frontline aid across Sudan but mainly comprise young Sudanese with few resources.
With no senior physicians left, Dr. Fathia Abdelmajed, a pediatrician for 40 years, has become the “mother” of Al-Buluk Hospital.
For years, she treated patients at home in the Bant neighborhood of Omdurman.
But since November 2023, she has been training teams at the small, overwhelmed hospital, “where hardworking young people were struggling since the start of the war,” Abdelmajed said.
She said the work was often harrowing, but the honor of serving alongside such dedicated volunteers “has made this the highlight of my career.”

 


Israel defense ministry says arms exports hit all time high in 2024

Updated 57 min 8 sec ago
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Israel defense ministry says arms exports hit all time high in 2024

  • “Israel again reached an all-time peak in defense exports in 2024,” the ministry said

JERUSALEM: Israel’s defense ministry said Wednesday that its arms exports hit an all-time high of more than $14.7 billion in 2024, with a sharp rise in deals with Arab Gulf states, despite international criticism of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.

“Israel again reached an all-time peak in defense exports in 2024, marking the fourth consecutive record-breaking year in the scope of defense agreements,” the ministry, which oversees and approves the exports of Israel’s defense industries, said in a statement.


Suspected crypto kidnappings mastermind arrested in Morocco

Updated 04 June 2025
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Suspected crypto kidnappings mastermind arrested in Morocco

  • France thanks Morocco for arresting 24-year-old after kidnappings targeting French crypto entrepreneurs

PARIS: France’s justice minister on Wednesday said that Morocco had arrested a man suspected of ordering a series of kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency entrepreneurs in France.
“I sincerely thank Morocco for this arrest, which demonstrates excellent judicial cooperation between our two countries, particularly in the fight against organized crime,” Gerald Darmanin said on X.


Turkiye’s AJet to start flights to Syria’s Damascus

Updated 04 June 2025
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Turkiye’s AJet to start flights to Syria’s Damascus

  • AJet said flights from Sabiha Gokcen airport will begin from Jun. 16
  • Flights to Damascus from Ankara will start from Jun. 17

ISTANBUL: Turkish Airlines subsidiary AJet said it will start flights to Damascus International from Istanbul and Ankara airports in mid-June.

AJet said in a statement that flights from Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport will begin from Jun. 16. Flights will initially take place four times per week before operating daily from July, it added.

Flights to Damascus from the Turkish capital Ankara will start from Jun. 17, three-times per week, the carrier also said.

Turkish Airlines resumed flights to Damascus in January after a 13-year suspension.

Turkiye, a close ally of the new government in Damascus, has pledged to support the country’s reconstruction. Ankara has already helped with the improvement and maintenance of Syria’s airports, the Turkish transport minister has said.


UAE president meets Egypt’s Sisi in Abu Dhabi

Updated 04 June 2025
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UAE president meets Egypt’s Sisi in Abu Dhabi

DUBAI: UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed met his counterpart Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.  
El-Sisi, who is on a visit to the UAE, arrived at the presidential airport and was received by the UAE leader along with a number of senior officials.


Turkiye backing Syria’s military and has no immediate withdrawal plans, defense minister says

Updated 04 June 2025
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Turkiye backing Syria’s military and has no immediate withdrawal plans, defense minister says

  • Guler says Israel de-confliction talks continue
  • Turkish troops stay for now in Syria, he tells Reuters

ANKARA: Turkiye is training and advising Syria’s armed forces and helping improve its defenses, and has no immediate plans for the withdrawal or relocation of its troops stationed there, Defense Minister Yasar Guler told Reuters.
Turkiye has emerged as a key foreign ally of Syria’s new government since rebels — some of them backed for years by Ankara — ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December to end his family’s five-decade rule.
It has promised to help rebuild neighboring Syria and facilitate the return of millions of Syrian civil war refugees, and played a key role last month getting US and European sanctions on Syria lifted.
The newfound Turkish influence in Damascus has raised Israeli concerns and risked a standoff or worse in Syria between the regional powers.
In written answers to questions from Reuters, Guler said Turkiye and Israel — which carried out its latest airstrikes on southern Syria late on Tuesday — are continuing de-confliction talks to avoid military accidents in the country.
Turkiye’s overall priority in Syria is preserving its territorial integrity and unity, and ridding it of terrorism, he said, adding Ankara was supporting Damascus in these efforts.
“We have started providing military training and consultancy services, while taking steps to increase Syria’s defense capacity,” Guler said, without elaborating on those steps.
Named to the post by President Tayyip Erdogan two years ago, Guler said it was too early to discuss possible withdrawal or relocation of the more than 20,000 Turkish troops in Syria.
Ankara controlled swathes of northern Syria and established dozens of bases there after several cross-border operations in recent years against Kurdish militants it deems terrorists.
This can “only be re-evaluated when Syria achieves peace and stability, when the threat of terrorism in the region is fully removed, when our border security is fully ensured, and when the honorable return of people who had to flee is done,” he said.
NATO member Turkiye has accused Israel of undermining Syrian peace and rebuilding with its military operations there in recent months and, since late 2023, has also fiercely criticized Israel’s assault on Gaza.
But the two regional powers have been quietly working to establish a de-confliction mechanism in Syria.
Guler described the talks as “technical level meetings to establish a de-confliction mechanism to prevent unwanted events” or direct conflict, as well as “a communication and coordination structure.”
“Our efforts to form this line and make it fully operational continue. Yet it should not be forgotten that the de-confliction mechanism is not a normalization,” he told Reuters.