Latest news with #Darfur-based
Los Angeles Times
12-04-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Attacks on famine-hit camps in Sudan's Darfur leave at least 100 people dead, U.N. says
CAIRO — Sudan's notorious paramilitary group launched a two-day attack on famine-hit camps for displaced people that left more than 100 dead, including 20 children and nine aid workers, in the Darfur region, a U.N. official said Saturday. The Rapid Support Forces and allied militias launched an offensive on the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps and the nearby city of El Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, on Friday, said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. El Fasher is under the control of the military, which has fought the RSF since Sudan descended into civil war two years ago, causing the deaths of more than 24,000 people, according to the U.N., though activists say the number is probably far higher. The camps were attacked again on Saturday, Nkweta-Salami said in a statement. She said that nine aid workers were killed 'while operating one of the very few remaining health posts still operational' in Zamzam camp. 'This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers in Sudan since the onset of this conflict nearly two years ago,' she said. Nkweta-Salami didn't identify the aid workers, but Sudan's Doctors Union said in a statement that six medical workers with Relief International were killed when their hospital in Zamzam came under attack Friday. They include Dr. Mahmoud Babaker Idris, a physician at the hospital, and Adam Babaker Abdallah, head of the group in the region, the union said. It blamed the RSF for 'this criminal and barbaric act.' In a statement Saturday evening, Relief International mourned the death of its nine workers, saying they were killed the previous day in a 'targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region,' including the group's clinic. The group said the central market in Zamzam along with hundreds of makeshift homes in the camp were destroyed in the attack. The offensive forced about 2,400 people to flee the camps and El Fasher, according to the Darfur-based General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees. Zamzam and Abu Shouk shelter more than 700,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes across Darfur during past bouts of fighting in the region, Nkweta-Salami said. Late last month, the Sudanese military regained control over Khartoum, the capital, a major symbolic victory in the war. But the RSF still controls most of Darfur and other areas. The two camps are among five areas in Sudan where famine was detected by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global hunger monitoring group. The war has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with about 25 million people — half of Sudan's population — facing extreme hunger. Magdy writes for the Associated Press.
The National
24-03-2025
- Politics
- The National
Sudan's war far from over despite significant army gains over RSF
Taking back vital areas in the heart of Sudan's capital has boosted the army's morale and restored much of its standing after the battlefield setbacks it suffered in the early days of the war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. However, the litmus test for Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his troops still may lie ahead. The army and its Islamist allies have over the past week retaken important sites in the capital, including the presidential palace – the seat of Sudan's government for nearly 200 years – as well as the central bank headquarters, the national museum and several government ministries. Their gains in central Khartoum added to successes late last year when they regained control of the armed forces headquarters and most of Khartoum's twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri. They also threw the paramilitaries out of central Sudan, the breadbasket of the vast and impoverished Afro-Arab nation. However, the RSF, led by Gen Mohamed Dagalo, is still in control of the capital's only international airport, parts of Omdurman and large residential districts in Khartoum, where its fighters are deeply embedded and may prove challenging to push out. Analysts, however, say it may only be a matter of time before the army and its allies retake the rest of the sprawling capital on the Nile. 'Besides the strategic and symbolic significance of taking back control of the capital, the army's objective there was also to salvage the prestige of Al Burhan and the army, which had been embarrassingly run out of the capital by the RSF,' said Sami Saeed, a US-based Sudan expert. 'It's widely anticipated now that the army will dig deep in the capital as well as central, eastern and northern Sudan, while the RSF will do the same in its strongholds in the west,' explained Mr Saeed. 'The narrative propagated by both sides partially supports that notion, with the Islamists allied with the army speaking of a Sudan whose boundaries stretch from the Red Sea to the Nile, and the RSF actively championing the rights of the 'marginalised' people of Darfur and Kordofan." The RSF, whose forerunner was a notorious, Darfur-based militia called the Janjaweed, controls most of Darfur and large areas of Kordofan, to the south-west. Like Darfur, Kordofan has been mired in strife for years, with indigenous rebels pitted against successive governments in Khartoum. Addressing mourners at the funeral of a senior officer killed in an RSF drone attack in Khartoum last weekend, Gen Al Burhan was adamant the war would only end when the RSF surrenders or is defeated. He rejected out of hand the idea of mediation. His pledges to press on with the war could only add to the devastation Sudan has suffered since the war broke out in April 2023. Tens of thousands have been killed, more than 12 million displaced and one of the world's worst humanitarian crises has developed, with some 25 million facing acute hunger. However, Mr Saeed and other analysts believe taking the war to Darfur, where the RSF has the support of most residents, and Kordofan, where the paramilitary is allied with a powerful rebel group, is likely to prove a tough challenge for an army with a poor track record of fighting adversaries in the nation's outlying regions. Additionally, there is growing evidence that the RSF is pulling its most combat-seasoned fighters and heavy weaponry from the capital and sending them to Darfur, a vast region the size of France where the army is holding on to just one major city – El Fasher – which has been under siege by the paramilitary for nearly a year. 'The war may have entered the countdown stage but it will not end before the whole of Khartoum is regained as well as Darfur and Kordofan,' said Sudanese analyst Salah Mansour, a retired army brigadier general. 'The RSF is in a weak and defensive position but will use urban warfare to prolong the war.' 'Shifting men and resources to the war in Darfur is a costly and difficult task with an uncertain outcome. Most residents in Darfur are armed and everyone has a problem with the central government,' said Mr Saeed. 'The army may at the end settle for making life hard for the RSF there' using air strikes, artillery and drones. In contrast, military analyst and retired army general Al Moatasem Abdel Ghafar believes fighting the RSF in Darfur and Kordofan could prove less challenging for the army than battling the paramilitaries in Khartoum. 'It will be less difficult if enough resources are mobilised to do the job in Darfur and Kordofan,' he said. 'The battles of Khartoum and central Sudan have proven that the RSF suffers structural problems manifested in the absence of reliable and consistent communication between commanders and men on the ground." The army's chronic lack of sufficient manpower has forced it into an alliance with Islamist militiamen and volunteers linked to the regime of former dictator Omar Al Bashir. The alliance has cost Gen Al Burhan and his military-backed government significant popular support given the notoriety of Al Bashir's 29-year regime and the brutality with which his loyal militias dealt with dissent. Experts believe the army's Islamist allies will soon want to collect political rewards for helping the army and may not have the appetite to fight outside the hinterlands of Sudan's Arabs in places like Darfur and Kordofan. In another ominous sign for the army, the RSF, whose fighters are mostly drawn from Arab tribes, has recently forged alliances with two Darfur militias whose members are from the ethnic African Zaghawa and Fur tribes. On another level, the alliances signal a shift in the ethnic power balance in Darfur with the potential to have an impact on the course of the conflict in Darfur given the RSF's history, dating back to the 2000s, of widespread abuse of African communities there Another threat that faces the army is the potential of a wider conflict that drags some of Sudan's neighbours into its war against the RSF. Already the army frequently claims that thousands of Africans from neighbouring nations are fighting alongside the RSF.
Asharq Al-Awsat
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Army Says It Seized Key Buildings in Khartoum after Retaking the Republican Palace
Sudan 's military on Saturday consolidated its grip on the capital, retaking more key government buildings a day after it gained control of the Republican Palace from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, said troops expelled the RSF from the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service and Corinthia Hotel in central Khartoum. The army also retook the headquarters of the Central Bank of Sudan and other government and educational buildings in the area, Abdullah said. Hundreds of RSF fighters were killed while trying to flee the capital city, he said. There was no immediate comment from the RSF. The army's gain came as a Sudanese pro-democracy activist group said RSF fighters had killed at least 45 people in a city in the western region of Darfur. On Friday, the military retook the Republican Palace, the prewar seat of the government, in a major symbolic victory for the Sudanese military in its nearly two years of war against the RSF. A drone attack on the palace Friday believed to have been launched by the RSF killed two journalists and a driver with Sudanese state television, according to the ministry of information. Lt. Col. Hassan Ibrahim, from the military's media office, was also killed in the attack, the military said. Volker Perthes, former UN envoy for Sudan, the latest military advances will force the RSF to withdraw to its stronghold in the western region of Darfur. 'The army has gained an important and significant victory in Khartoum militarily and politically,' Perthes told The Associated Press, adding that the military will soon clear the capital and its surrounding areas from the RSF. But the advances don't mean the end of the war as the RSF holds territory in the western Darfur region and elsewhere. Perthes argued that the war will likely turn into an insurgency between the Darfur-based RSF and the military-led government in the capital. 'The RSF will be largely restricted to Darfur ... We will return to the early 2000s,' he said, in reference to the conflict between rebel groups and the Khartoum government, then led by former President Omar al-Bashir. At the start of the war in April 2023, the RSF took over multiple government and military buildings in the capital including the Republican Palace, the headquarters of the state television and the besieged military's headquarters, known as the General Command. It also occupied people's houses and turned them into bases for their attacks against troops. In recent months, the military took the lead in the fighting. It reclaimed much of Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North, along with other cities elsewhere in the country. In late January, troops lifted the RSF siege on the General Command, paving the way to retake the palace less than two months later. The military is now likely to try to retake the Khartoum International Airport, only some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) southeast of the palace, which has been held by the RSF since the start of the war. Videos posted on social media Saturday purportedly showed soldiers on a road leading to the airport. The RSF was accused on Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 45 people in the Darfur city of al-Maliha. The pro-democracy Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war, said the RSF entered the city on Thursday and carried out attacks. The dead included at least a dozen women, according to a partial casualty list published by the group. Al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur near the borders with Chad and Libya, is around 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the city of el-Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by besieging RSF. The war, which has wrecked the capital and other urban cities, has claimed the lives of more than 28,000 people, forced millions more to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll. The fighting 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.
