11 Sudanese migrants killed a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say
CAIRO (AP) — Eleven Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed Friday in a car crash in the desert in Libya, authorities said, the latest tragedy involving Sudanese fleeing a civil war in their home country.
The crash between the migrants' vehicle and a truck happened early Friday in the desert, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Libyan town of Kufra, the town's Ambulance and Emergency Service said in a statement.
The dead included three women and two children, the service's director Ibrahim Abu al-Hassan told The Associated Press.
A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash, he added.
It was the latest deadly incident involving Sudanese migrants in the Libyan desert.
Earlier this month, seven Sudanese were found dead after their vehicle broke down in the desert. The vehicle broke down in a path used by traffickers between Chad and Libya, leaving 34 migrants on board stranded for several days in the desert.
Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
It has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to seek better lives in Europe. The country shares borders with six nations and has a long coastline along the Mediterranean.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across Libya's borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled to Libya since April 2023 after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into street fighting across the country.
The conflict in Sudan has turned into a civil war that killed thousands people, displaced over 14 million, and pushed parts of the county into famine.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Is Civil War Coming to Europe?
Whether the debate is occasioned by a polemical book or a movie like last year's 'Civil War,' I consistently take the negative on the question of whether the United States is headed for a genuine civil war. In those debates it's usually liberals warning that populism or Trumpism is steering the United States toward the abyss. But with European politics the pattern is different: In France and Britain, and among American observers of the continent, a preoccupation with looming civil war tends to be more common among conservatives. For years, figures associated with the French right and French military have warned of an impending civil conflict driven by the country's failure to assimilate immigrants from the Muslim world. (The great reactionary novelist Michel Houellebecq's 'Submission' famously imagines this war being averted by the sudden conversion of French elites to Islam.) Lately there has been a similar discussion around Britain touched off by an essay by the military historian David Betz that argues that multicultural Britain is in danger of tearing itself apart, and lately taken up by the political strategist, Brexit-campaign architect and former Boris Johnson adviser Dominic Cummings in an essay warning that British elites are increasingly fearful of organized violence from nativists and radicalized immigrants alike. When I've written skeptically about scenarios for an American civil war, I've tended to stress several realities: the absence of a clear geographical division between our contending factions; the diminishment, not exacerbation, of racial and ethnic polarization in the Trump era; the fact that we're rich and aging and comfortable, not poor and young and desperate, giving even groups that hate each other a stake in the system and elites strong reasons to sustain it; the absence of enthusiasm for organized communal violence as opposed to lone-wolf forays. Does the European landscape look different? On some fronts, maybe. Tensions between natives and new arrivals are common on both sides of the Atlantic, but ethnic and religious differences arguably loom larger in Europe than they do in the United States: There is more intense cultural separatism in immigrant communities in suburban Paris or Marseilles than in Los Angeles or Chicago, more simmering discontent that easily turns to riots. At the same time, British and French elites have been more successful than American elites at keeping populist forces out of power, but their tools — not just the exclusion of populists from government, but an increasingly authoritarian throttling of free speech — have markedly diminished their own legitimacy among discontented natives. This means that neither under-assimilated immigrants nor working-class whites feel especially invested in the system, making multiple forms of political violence more plausible: pitting immigrant or native rebels against the government, or pitting immigrants against natives with the government trying to suppress the conflict, or, finally, pitting different immigrant groups against one another. (English cities have already played host to bursts of Muslim-Hindu violence.) Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Hegseth orders the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk scrubbed from Navy ship
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War. U.S. officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler and that a new name is expected this month. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the next name had not yet been chosen. The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth's objectives to 're-establish the warrior culture.' It marks the latest move by Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon's campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military. The decision was first reported by Phelan's office did not respond to a request for comment. The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights. Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office. Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. It passed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill. The ship was christened in 2021, and during the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted to be at the event 'not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we're committed to them in the future.' The ship is operated by Military Sealift Command, with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners. The Navy says it conducted its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024, while operating in the Virginia Capes. It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast until it began scheduled maintenance at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year. While the renaming is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from U.S. military installations. The USS Chancellorsville — named for the Civil War battle — was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved person. And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship originally named after a Confederate sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods. ___
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Hegseth orders the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk scrubbed from Navy ship
It marks the latest move by Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon's campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The decision was first reported by Phelan's office did not respond to a request for comment. Advertisement The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights. Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office. Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. It passed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. Advertisement On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill. The ship was christened in 2021, and during the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted to be at the event 'not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we're committed to them in the future.' The ship is operated by Military Sealift Command, with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners. The Navy says it conducted its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024, while operating in the Virginia Capes. It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast until it began scheduled maintenance at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year. While the renaming is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from U.S. military installations. The USS Chancellorsville — named for the Civil War battle — was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved person. And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship originally named after a Confederate sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Advertisement Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods.
