Médecins Sans Frontières report sparks calls for Sudan’s warring parties to be held to account for rapes and attacks
As Sudan’s Darfur region has been overrun by militias, women are facing the constant threat of sexual violence, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has reported.
The medical charity said in the South Darfur region alone its workers treated 659 sexual violence survivors between January and March this year, more than two-thirds of whom had been raped.
Continue reading...Leader from 2006 to 2009 says Palestinian victims are at ‘monstrous proportions’ and Netanyahu heads a ‘criminal gang’
The former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert has said Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers”.
Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”.
Continue reading...Royal Navy leader also accused of overseeing denial of resettlement claims made by Afghans who aided UK forces
A general accused of failing to report evidence of war crimes committed by the SAS in Afghanistan has been appointed as the new head of the Royal Navy.
Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins – the first Royal Marine to become First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff – replaces Adm Sir Ben Key, who was removed from it last week while under investigation over allegations of misconduct.
Continue reading...NGOs and UN say country is ‘worse off than ever before’ with wide-scale displacement, hunger and attacks on refugee camps
Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year.
The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks. However, diplomatic efforts have often been sidelined by other crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
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...Golani troops were under command of reservist Armoured 14th Brigade, part of division led by Brig Gen Yehuda Vach
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit involved in the killings of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers in the Gaza Strip last month was under the command of a brigade led by a notorious Israeli general previously accused by some of his own troops of having “contempt for human life”.
The IDF has confirmed that troops from Golani, one of the army’s five infantry brigades, opened fire on two convoys of ambulances in Rafah on 23 March and dug a mass grave to cover the bodies of those killed until the corpses could be retrieved by a UN team six days later. It has disputed allegations from two witnesses who exhumed the bodies and newly released postmortem results that found several of those killed had close-range gunshot wounds to the head and chest and were discovered with their hands or legs tied.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Met to be handed dossier of evidence alleging crimes including killings of civilians and aid workers
A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.
Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.
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...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...Men are accused of involvement in the execution of nearly 300 civilians by government forces in Damascus in 2013, which the perpetrators filmed
Authorities in Damascus have arrested three men they claim were involved in a notorious massacre of civilians by Syrian security forces revealed by the Guardian three years ago.
Footage posted online purported to show one of the men, Monzer al-Jazairi, with his hands bound and being led through the heavily damaged streets of Tadamon, the Damascus suburb where nearly 300 people were killed in an atrocity filmed by the perpetrators themselves and then leaked by a whistleblower to activists in Europe.
Continue reading...Lord Sumption says Israel’s actions ‘grossly disproportionate’ and in new book points to suppression of free speech over Palestinian cause
A former UK supreme court judge has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “grossly disproportionate” and said there was “at least an arguable case” that it was genocidal.
Lord Sumption, who served on the UK’s highest court from 2012 to 2018, was one of the highest profile signatories of a letter last year warning that the UK government was breaching international law by arming Israel.
Continue reading...Ex-Foreign Office official says he saw conduct that ‘crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes’
Britain’s system for controlling arms exports is broken, subject to political manipulation and has seen conduct that crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes, a former UK diplomat has claimed.
Writing for the Guardian, Mark Smith, who resigned from the Foreign Office in August, said officials were instructed to manipulate findings on the misuse of UK arms by allies, and if they did not do so, their reports were edited by senior colleagues to give the impression that the UK was in compliance with the law.
Continue reading...Academics fear US president’s lack of reference to international law could lead to global breakdown of peace and security
Donald Trump’s proposal to permanently move millions of Palestinians out of Gaza to allow its reconstruction under US “ownership” could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity, experts in international law have said.
The experts said the US president’s framing of his plan without any reference to international law set a dangerous precedent that would encourage other world leaders to do similarly and contribute to a global breakdown of peace and security.
Continue reading...Leadership at international criminal court fears new US administration will move quickly to shut it down
The international criminal court is bracing itself for Donald Trump to launch aggressive economic sanctions against it this week, amid fears such a move could paralyse its work and pose an existential threat.
ICC officials are preparing for Trump’s new US administration to act quickly once in office to impose draconian financial and travel restrictions against the court and senior staff, including its chief prosecutor and judges.
Continue reading...Killing of journalists in Israeli strike could be war crime, legal experts say after Guardian investigation
A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in a 25 October attack in south Lebanon which legal experts have called a potential war crime.
On 25 October at 3.19am, an Israeli jet shot two bombs at a chalet hosting three journalists – cameraman Ghassan Najjar and technician Mohammad Reda from pro-Hezbollah outlet al-Mayadeen, as well as cameraman Wissam Qassem from the Hezbollah-affiliated outlet al-Manar.
Continue reading...Al-Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud had been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity
The international criminal court has sentenced an al-Qaida-linked extremist leader to 10 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out when he headed the Islamic police in Timbuktu in Mali, west Africa.
Al-Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud was convicted in June of torture, religious persecution and other inhumane acts. Judges found he was a “key figure” in a reign of terror after Islamic extremist rebels overran the ancient desert city in 2012.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can read all our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here and all our coverage of Israel’s war on Lebanon here
Overnight the IDF announced that six soldiers had been killed in clashes with Hezbollah inside southern Lebanon.
The Times of Israel reports “it was one of the heaviest single-day losses in the operation that began in late September,” and that “according to an initial IDF probe, the soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with at least four Hezbollah operatives inside a building in a village in southern Lebanon.”
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...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.
US rapper says he will not perform in United Arab Emirates until it ‘stops arming’ the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, where thousands have been killed
Macklemore has cancelled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that has been fighting government troops there.
The announcement by the US rapper reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.
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