Since fighting erupted last month, dozens of people have vanished, but communities are organising to find and bring them home
Kamal Ali Osman sent a text message to his family saying he was being stopped by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the militia group whose checkpoints now throttle the roads of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Minutes later, the text was deleted from his phone. He has not been heard from since.
Continue reading...Climate crisis a key factor in flash flooding of Beledweyne as rains end drought and Shabelle River breaks its banks
Floods have caused almost a quarter of a million people to flee their homes after the Shabelle River in central Somalia broke its banks and submerged the town of Beledweyne, even as the country faces its most severe drought in four decades, according to the government.
Aid agencies and scientists have warned that the climate crisis is among the most significant factors accelerating humanitarian emergencies, while those affected are some of the least responsible for CO2 emissions.
Continue reading...International academics join effort to highlight crackdown on freedom after jailing of opposition leader, Rached Ghannouchi
European powers must stand by pro-democracy Tunisians resisting a fierce onslaught designed to take the country back to the darkest days of dictatorship, a letter from more than 70 academics has urged.
The letter, designed to shine a light on the Tunisian crackdown, was in part collated by Soumaya Ghannoushi, whose father, the Tunisian opposition leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was sentenced to a year in jail on Monday.
Continue reading...Areej al-Sadhan sues on behalf of her brother, Abdulrahman, who was sentenced to 20 years for account mocking Saudi government
A US activist has filed a racketeering lawsuit against Twitter and senior Saudi officials on behalf of her brother, a Saudi aid worker who was forcibly disappeared – and then later sentenced to 20 years in jail – for using a satirical and anonymous Twitter account to mock the Riyadh government.
The lawsuit by Areej al-Sadhan alleges that Twitter has become a “participant tool” in a campaign of transnational repression by Saudi authorities as part of the company’s effort to monetise its relationship with the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is Twitter’s second-largest investor, after Elon Musk.
Continue reading...Rapid Support Forces claim to have captured 700 soldiers at base during new battles in and around capital
Airstrikes and artillery fire shook much of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and its neighbouring cities on Tuesday as fighting between the country’s warring factions intensified sharply.
New battles between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) flared from dawn in north and south Khartoum, as well as in the adjacent cities of Omdurman and Bahri, as the army sought to defend its bases from its paramilitary rival.
Continue reading...Union says increased sentence against Khalifa Guesmi under anti-terrorism law represents ‘dangerous authoritarian drift’
A Tunisian appeals court has sentenced a radio journalist to five years in prison for disclosing information about the country’s security services.
Khalifa Guesmi, of the Mosaique FM radio station, had appealed against a one-year term handed down in November before the sentence was increased under an anti-terrorism law.
Continue reading...Refugees are among those receiving support since civil war broke out last month – and officials believes more sexual assault cases are going unreported
There have been multiple reports of civilians being raped by armed men in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum where fighting broke out last month, say government officials.
Four women and a girl, three of them refugees, are being supported by a specialist unit whose director said she thought most of the sexual violence in the city was going unreported.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Qatari minister expected to take presidency of ILO event despite bribery investigation
The UN’s labour rights watchdog, the International Labour Organization (ILO), is facing a backlash over the nomination of Qatar to chair its flagship annual conference despite a police investigation into alleged bribery of EU lawmakers by the Gulf state.
The Guardian has learned that Qatar’s minister of labour, Ali bin Saeed bin Samikh Al Marri, is expected to take the presidency of the ILO’s international labour conference in Geneva in June, an annual event intended to advance global standards on workers’ rights.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Krish Kandiah wants same help given to Ukrainians offered to Sudanese families fleeing civil war
One of the architects of Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme is calling on the government to replicate the programme for refugees from Sudan.
Dr Krish Kandiah, the director of the Sanctuary Foundation, which was instrumental in matching many British hosts with Ukrainian refugees, said he wanted the country to show the “same generosity of spirit” to those fleeing war in Sudan as it did to Ukrainians.
Continue reading...Hostilities destroyed more than 50 homes and displaced about 950 people, says the UN
Relative calm has returned to the blockaded Gaza Strip after a ceasefire that has ended five days of cross-frontier fire between Israel and militant groups in the coastal enclave that killed 33 Palestinians and two people in Israel.
A truce mediated by Egyptian officials that went into effect at 10pm (8pm BST) on Saturday night appeared to hold, despite the firing of a rocket towards southern Israel on Sunday evening that Palestinian factions said had launched due to a “technical error”.
Continue reading...Dozens of rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, prompting airstrikes in return, in the half-hour leading up to the truce
A ceasefire has taken effect in and around the Gaza Strip after five days of cross-border exchanges that have killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza and two people in Israel.
The truce was due to take effect at 10pm local time (20.00 BST) on Saturday, Egyptian and Palestinian sources said. But, in the final 30 minutes before, dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, prompting renewed airstrikes, AFP correspondents in the territory said.
Continue reading...Outbreak of violence – now in its fourth day – has killed dozens, all but one of them Palestinian
Israel and Gaza militants have traded heavy fire as hopes faded of securing a truce to end days of fighting during which dozens have been killed, all but one of them Palestinian.
There have been international calls for de-escalation, with the EU pushing for an “immediate comprehensive ceasefire”.
Continue reading...Videos released of Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaqoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi confessing, which families say were torture-induced
A recent spate of executions in Iran looks set to continue after authorities released videos of three protesters confessing to the killing of three security officers in the so-called Isfahan House case.
The men have already been found guilty of the murder and have no further grounds for appeal. More than 60 people have been executed in Iran since late April, some for drug offences and many from the region of Balochistan, where the protests have been most intense.
Continue reading...Francesca Albanese says Israel is maintaining occupation to get as much land as possible for Jewish people
Israel treats the Palestinian territories as its colonies, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories has said on her first visit to London since her appointment last year.
Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer and human rights academic, has faced calls to resign by Israeli government ministers, such as Amichai Chikli, who accused her of “spewing hatred and antisemitism”, and Zionist groups have described her as biased.
Continue reading...With makeshift coolbags and an endless quest for ice, refugees are desperately struggling to protect their precious medication – if they can access any at all
Bags of ice and wet towels have become the emergency lifelines for Sudanese diabetics struggling to keep their insulin cool while waiting in extreme heat as they try to escape the recent violence.
A vital medication for many diabetics, insulin must be kept cool to remain effective, But since fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces last month, hospitals and pharmacies have forced to close and there has been damage to cold-storage facilities.
Continue reading...Fighting reported in far south and communal clashes in Darfur, amid power struggle between generals
The deaths of dozens of civilians in fighting in the far south of Sudan and an outbreak of communal violence in the restive Darfur region have fuelled fears that communities across the frontier regions of Africa’s third biggest country are being drawn into the bloody contest between two rival generals.
Fighting in the southern state of North Kordofan between militias aligned with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and local brigades of the Sudanese army has centred on the strategically important state capital, El Obeid.
Continue reading...Negotiations in Jeddah will continue, but US says two parties remain ‘quite far apart’
Sudan’s warring parties have signed a commitment to protect civilians but have not yet agreed to a ceasefire in talks described by US diplomats as difficult.
Representatives of the army and paramilitary forces, whose nearly one month of fighting has killed more than 750 people and displaced thousands, signed the agreement as they kept negotiating in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
Continue reading...Clashes between Israel and militants leave 29 dead so far, with airstrikes targeting homes of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders
Fighting between Israel and militant groups in the blockaded Gaza Strip has intensified for the third day despite ceasefire efforts brokered by Egypt, in the worst bout of violence in the region in months that has killed 29 people in Gaza, including at least 10 civilians, and one civilian in Israel.
The latest conflagration began in the early hours of Tuesday, when Israel launched surprise airstrikes targeting the homes of three senior commanders in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second most powerful group in the strip after Hamas, despite a fragile ceasefire in place since a day of cross-frontier fire last week.
Continue reading...War in Ukraine and Pakistan’s ‘monsoon on steroids’ among events driving surge on ‘scale never seen before’ as 71m people displaced
The number of people around the world who were forced to flee their homes leapt by a fifth last year, as a “perfect storm” of Russia’s assault on Ukraine and climate disasters brought displacement on an unprecedented scale.
By the end of 2022 the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) – those forced from their homes but remaining within their country of residence – reached 71 million, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), up from 59.1 million in 2021.
Continue reading...Israeli forces admit ‘high possibility’ Al Jazeera reporter was shot by sniper at West Bank refugee camp
Family members, friends and colleagues of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was almost certainly fatally shot by an Israeli sniper, have renewed calls for justice on the first anniversary of her killing, during a week of memorials and events celebrating her life.
Abu Akleh, a household name in the Arab world who worked for Qatar-based Al Jazeera, was shot in the head in the slumlike refugee camp on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on 11 May last year while covering an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid. International outrage at the reporter’s death was fuelled by scenes of violence at her funeral in Jerusalem, when Israeli police attacked pallbearers, almost causing them to drop the coffin.
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