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.
Continue reading...Wars have spread and intensified, with far-reaching impacts on global economic growth and food security, according to latest Conflict Intensity Index
The proportion of the world engulfed by conflict has grown 65% – equivalent to nearly double the size of India – over the past three years, according to a new report.
Ukraine, Myanmar, the Middle East and a “conflict corridor” around Africa’s Sahel region have seen wars and unrest spread and intensify since 2021, according to the latest Conflict Intensity Index (CII), published by risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft.
Continue reading...Images released by MSF doctors highlight impact of conflict in the country, with medical supplies and aid unable to reach people due to fighting
A series of X-rays showing a piece of shrapnel buried deep inside a 20-month-old girl’s head and a bullet embedded in an 18-month-old boy’s chest are among images released by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealing the impact of the war in Sudan on children.
The two babies were treated at Khartoum’s Bashair teaching hospital.
Continue reading...Group says it has identified the Galix defence system on armoured vehicles imported from the UAE and calls for government to investigate
France must investigate the use of its military systems by Sudan’s paramilitary forces, which could be in breach of an arms embargo, Amnesty International has said.
The group said it had identified the French-made Galix defence system being used in Sudan on armoured vehicles manufactured in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – considered a key supplier of weapons to the Rapid Support Force (RSF).
Continue reading...Experts fear reports of 124 dead in attack on villages south of Khartoum are significant underestimation
Sudanese militia have been accused of killings, sexual violence, looting and arson during eight days of attacks on villages south of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
The UN said there were reports of “gross human rights abuses” linked to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group, which has escalated attacks on civilians in el-Gezira state since the area’s key commander was reported to have defected to government forces on 20 October.
Continue reading...UN Women says figure doubled in 2023 amid ‘blatant disregard’ of laws that left women and children unprotected
The proportion of women killed in conflicts around the world doubled last year, with women now accounting for 40% of all those killed in war zones, according to a new report by the United Nations.
The report from UN Women, which looks at the security situation for women and girls affected by war, says UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence also rose by 50% in 2023 compared with 2022.
Continue reading...Hundreds of poor and desperate children targeted in anticipation of long and bloody battle, says Human Rights Watch
Haitian armed gangs are recruiting starving children to swell their ranks ahead of an anticipated long and bloody battle with international security forces, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.
Armed groups – which control most of Haiti – are enticing hundreds, if not thousands, of impoverished children to take up arms with offers of food and shelter, the rights groups said.
Continue reading...Ten children reportedly among those killed during intense aerial campaigns last month
Myanmar’s military has launched some of its heaviest aerial campaigns since the 2021 coup in recent months, killing at least 26 people in a series of attacks in early September.
The military, which has repeatedly been accused of indiscriminate aerial bombardments, launched at least seven airstrikes in four days between 3 and 6 September. According to Unicef, 10 children were among those killed. A pregnant woman also lost her unborn child.
A camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Pekhon township, southern Shan state, was one of the seven locations targeted. Daw Ohn Mar Khaing, a volunteer teacher at the camp, known as “Bangkok”, told the Guardian it was struck despite there being no fighting in the township, or opposition fighters nearby.
“We only have helpless women and children, who were displaced from the war in their villages,” she said.
Overcrowded boat on Lake Kivu capsizes as it was about to dock near Goma, with death toll likely to rise significantly
At least 78 people have drowned and many more are missing after a boat belived to be carrying 278 passengers capsized on Thursday morning just a few hundred metres from the shore of Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The accident happened just as the vessel, MV Merdy, was about to dock at the port of Kituku, just outside the city of Goma, after crossing the lake from the town of Minova.
Continue reading...Analysis of UN data shows rising toll on children who are being caught in the crossfire, as well as recruited to kidnap, loot and murder, say aid groups
Five children have been killed or injured in Haiti for every week of the first six months of 2024, caught in the crossfire of warring gangs.
At least 131 children have been killed or injured so far this year, according to analysis of UN Data by Save the Children – up 47% on the final six months of 2023 when 89 cases were documented.
Continue reading...Tom Perriello condemns tactics of Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese military before peace talks in Geneva
The US special envoy for Sudan has accused the two factions in the country’s civil war of “cowardice” before crucial peace talks that are due to start on Wednesday.
Tom Perriello told the Guardian that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese military “lacked courage and honour” because of their continued use of starvation as a weapon.
Continue reading...Armed gangs control much of Caribbean country’s capital with reports of 40 rape victims a day in areas, UN reports
The UN has called for the deployment of international security forces in Haiti to be accelerated after a report that at least 1,379 people were killed or wounded in gang warfare and 428 people kidnapped in the country between April and June this year.
“Service providers report receiving an average of 40 rape victims a day in some areas of the capital,” warns the new report from the UN’s office in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch accuses RSF militia of ‘countless’ cases of rape and torture in Khartoum in 15-month civil war
Gunmen from a notorious militia roamed Sudan’s capital gang-raping “countless” women and girls, some as young as nine, according to an investigation documenting the shocking prevalence of sexual violence in Khartoum during the country’s civil war.
Some of the attacks by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were so brutal that women and girls died “due to the violence associated with the act of rape”, according to the research by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
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