Exclusive: British government adopted ‘least ambitious’ option months before RSF’s massacres in El Fasher
Britain rejected atrocity prevention plans for Sudan despite intelligence warnings that the city of El Fasher would fall amid a wave of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
Government officials turned down the plans six months into the 18-month siege of El Fasher in favour of the “least ambitious” option of four presented.
Continue reading...For months, Mohamed Khamis Douda shared accounts of what life was like under siege. He was killed when RSF fighters finally took the Darfur city, raising fears activists and civil society figures are being hunted down
For months, militiamen on the perimeters of El Fasher have asked those few who managed to escape the besieged Sudanese city whether Mohamed Khamis Douda was still inside. They shared videos threatening to kill him, which, as they hoped, made their way to the activist.
Even as the hunger and fear of living under siege and bombardment made him desperate to leave, Douda remained inside El Fasher, constantly working to let the outside world know what was happening to the people there. Then, on Sunday 26 October, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces overran the city and it was too late. His friends and family have confirmed to the Guardian that Douda has been killed.
Monday 4 August
I awake each morning tired from the efforts of the previous day. Our first struggle is the merciless hunger and the second is the constant artillery shelling.
Continue reading...Exclusive: two dossiers of material seen by the security council raise questions over export of British arms to the UAE, which has been accused of supplying weapons to paramilitary RSF group
British military equipment has been found on battlefields in Sudan, used by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused of genocide, according to documents seen by the UN security council.
UK-manufactured small-arms target systems and British-made engines for armoured personnel carriers have been recovered from combat sites in a conflict that has now caused the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe.
Continue reading...The city – the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the west of the country – has withstood more than 500 days of attacks by paramilitary RSF
The besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has been declared “uninhabitable” with new data indicating most homes are destroyed and critical levels of malnourishment among people trapped there.
The stark assessment comes as the city endures constant artillery and drone attacks, shoehorning its 250,000 starving people into a shrinking urban enclave.
Continue reading...Guardian investigation finds number killed in April attack by Rapid Support Forces far greater than current estimates
More than 1,500 civilians may have been massacred during an attack on Sudan’s largest displacement camp in April, in what would be the second-biggest war crime of the country’s catastrophic conflict.
A Guardian investigation into the 72-hour attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on North Darfur’s Zamzam camp, the country’s largest for people displaced by the war, found repeated testimony of mass executions and large-scale abductions. Hundreds of civilians remain unaccounted for.
Continue reading...UN rapporteur calls for move as food deliveries are attacked and starvation becomes a weapon of war in Gaza and Sudan
UN peacekeepers should be routinely deployed to protect aid convoys from attack in places such as Gaza and Sudan, a senior United Nations expert has proposed.
With starvation increasingly used as a weapon of war, Michael Fakhri said armed UN troops were now required to ensure that food reached vulnerable populations.
Continue reading...Thousands have been displaced and conservation work halted as series of killings jeopardises decades of work in Niassa, one of Africa’s biggest protected areas
One of Africa’s largest protected areas has been shaken by a series of attacks by Islamic State-linked extremists, which have left at least 10 people dead.
Conservationists in Niassa reserve, Mozambique, say decades of work to rebuild populations of lions, elephants and other keystone species are being jeopardised, as conservation operations grind to a halt.
Continue reading...Lawyers say evidence file outlines atrocities including torture and rape carried out by the Rapid Support Forces in the country’s brutal civil conflict
Scotland Yard has received a dossier of evidence documenting myriad alleged war crimes committed by a paramilitary group during the conflict in Sudan.
Lawyers have submitted a 142-page file of evidence to the war crimes unit of the Metropolitan police containing details of numerous atrocities perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Continue reading...As crucial London peace talks set to begin, report seen by the Guardian raises questions over ‘multiple’ flights into bases in Chad
Pressure is mounting on the United Arab Emirates over its presence at a crucial conference in London aimed at stopping the war in Sudan after a leaked confidential UN report raised fresh questions over the UAE’s role in the devastating conflict.
The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries via neighbouring Chad, a charge it has steadfastly denied.
Continue reading...Families of those displaced wait for news from Darfur amid reports of hundreds killed by paramilitary RSF
Sudan’s information blackout has left relatives of those in Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp struggling for news of their safety after it was overrun by militiamen at the weekend.
As leaders across the globe prepared to meet for peace talks in London to pressure the backers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army to agree a ceasefire, the RSF launched a deadly assault, seizing Zamzam after weeks of tightening its siege.
Continue reading...US and Europe criticised by head of Norwegian Refugee Council for ‘neglect’ of people living ‘subhuman’ existence
World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.
In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.
Continue reading...Only a few statues remain, with thousands of priceless artefacts from Nubian and Kushite kingdoms missing
Videos of Sudan’s national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country’s antiquities.
Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent.
Continue reading...Tigray’s interim leader flees as rival faction seizes control, while Ethiopian tanks and troops move to border of Eritrea
Aregawi was building a tour-guiding business when war struck Ethiopia’s Tigray region in 2020. He spent the next two years fighting on the frontline. Now he is among those who fear Tigray is on the brink of conflict once more.
“We don’t want to become a battleground, but it seems like war is near, maybe even inevitable,” he said.
Continue reading...Calls grow to control military use of unmanned aerial vehicles which, despite claims of precise targeting, are claiming civilian lives
Almost 1,000 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured in military drone attacks across Africa as the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles continues unchecked on the continent, according to a report.
At least 50 separate deadly strikes by armed forces in Africa have been confirmed during the three years up to November 2024, with analysts describing a “striking pattern of civilian harm” with little or no accountability.
Continue reading...Exclusive: What appears to be a vast burial site found at former Rapid Support Forces base in Sudan, while rescued detainees speak of torture, starvation and deaths of fellow inmates
More than 500 people may have been tortured or starved to death and then buried in a secret mass grave north of Khartoum, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.
A visit to a base belonging to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shortly after it was retaken by the Sudanese military found a previously unknown detention centre, with manacles hanging from doors, apparent punishment chambers and bloodstains on the floor. Accounts from people held at the detention centre describe being repeatedly tortured by their captors.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Foreign minister says she sought meeting with the north London Premier League club to discuss sponsorship by country accused of aiding armed rebels
Arsenal Football Club has been accused of delivering an “outrageous” snub to the Congolese government by not meeting the foreign minister to discuss its sponsorship deal with Rwanda.
Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who was in London this week to raise concerns over Rwanda’s support for the M23 militia, said she attempted to meet Arsenal officials to discuss the club’s Visit Rwanda sponsorship deal.
Continue reading...Law to stop armed groups profiting from trade in gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum is being breached, rights groups say
The European Union has been urged to clamp down on illegal imports of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after evidence was found that current regulations had been breached.
The advocacy group Global Witness (GW) said there remained a “high risk” of the EU’s mineral imports being used to fund militias and state repression in several countries.
Continue reading...Airstrikes on the city’s hospitals have led to death of at least two patients as well as the evacuation of medics and those being treated
Health services are no longer functioning in the Syrian city of Idlib after a series of airstrikes on key hospitals damaged intensive care units and specialised services, doctors said.
At least two intensive care patients have died because of power and oxygen shortages caused by the airstrikes, according to the rescue group White Helmets, and hospitals have had to evacuate patients or move them into basements.
Continue reading...Data shows a threefold increase in internal displacement across the African continent since 2009, with flooding and drought posing a growing threat
Wars and climate disasters have driven a threefold increase in the number of internally displaced people in Africa over the past 15 years, according to new data.
There are now 35 million people internally displaced on the continent, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), compared with 11.6 million in 2009, when African governments signed a landmark deal legally binding them to tackle the causes of displacement.
Continue reading...Israeli move follows Guardian report that 12-year-old girl’s evacuation for treatment had been repeatedly blocked
The Israeli authorities have permitted Mazyouna Damoo, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl whose face was “ripped off” when an Israeli missile struck her home in June, to leave Gaza for medical treatment, five days after the Guardian reported that repeated requests for her urgent medical evacuation had been denied.
Last Friday, the Guardian highlighted the Damoo family’s desperate battle to get Mazyouna evacuated from Gaza to the United States to receive emergency surgery on devastating injuries to her face sustained in a missile attack by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which tore off half of her cheek and exposed her jawbone.
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