Deputy PM to chair Cobra meeting on security situation in Khartoum as UK government prepares to end flights
The deadline for British nationals to reach the evacuation airfield in Sudan has passed as the government prepares to cease flights out of the country within hours.
The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, will chair a Cobra meeting on Saturday afternoon to discuss the security situation in Khartoum in advance of the final flight taking off at 6pm UK time.
Continue reading...Government announces end to airlifts amid calls for NHS doctors without UK passports to be rescued
British nationals trapped in Sudan have until midday on Saturday local time to get on a flight before they stop, ministers have announced, as a doctors’ union called for NHS medics without UK passports to also be airlifted.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said on Friday night more than 1,500 people had been flown out, and there had been a “significant decline in British nationals coming forward”, meaning it was time to end the operation.
Continue reading...Concerns truce agreement may not hold despite three-day extension as unrest continues
Street battles and gunfire threaten what remains of a fragile ceasefire in Sudan, now hanging by a thread despite a three-day extension of the truce agreement, as a Turkish evacuation plane was shot at as it attempted to land.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, traded blame for the incident at the Wadi Seidna airbase, 12.5 miles (20km) north of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile
Continue reading...Rapporteurs also chastise the German and Namibian governments for excluding Herero and Nama minorities from talks dealing with the mass murder of their ancestors
UN special rapporteurs have criticised the German and Namibian governments for violating the rights of Herero and Nama ethnic minorities by excluding them from talks over reparations for colonial crimes against their ancestors.
Publishing their communication with both governments, the seven UN representatives urged Germany to take responsibility for all its colonial crimes in Namibia – including mass murder – and said it was wrong for the Herero and Nama to have been involved indirectly in talks via an advisory committee. They called on Germany to pay reparations directly to the Herero and Nama and not to the Namibian government.
Continue reading...At Omdurman’s open-air market, half of the stalls are shut, customers are scarce and money is tight
“I haven’t sold anything since 6am today,” said Adam Musa, a vegetable seller at Omdurman’s open-air market, as fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces raged a few miles away. “There are no people buying.”
Musa, 55, faced two problems: a lack of customers, and an inability on the part of those who did come to pay what he was charging.
Continue reading...Family have been waiting more than 12 months for documents and are now trapped amid violence in Khartoum
The Home Office has been accused of putting the lives of a heavily pregnant woman and her three-year-old daughter at risk as they remain stranded in Sudan while waiting for a UK visa.
The family have been waiting more than a year for their documents to be issued, with the mother, who is almost nine months pregnant, trying to shield her daughter from the violence on the streets of Khartoum, the capital.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can read all our Sudan coverage here:
The US embassy in Khartoum has overnight reminded US citizens in Sudan to register in order to be informed of opportunities to evacuate when they arise. The US has previously evacuated its diplomatic staff from the country.
The Sky News Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall has reported from Larnaca airport that the extended 72-hour ceasefire gives international partners a chance to press for a longer-lasting peace, and that the emphasis on aid efforts might switch from getting people out of Sudan to getting supplies in. He told viewers:
I think, as many people predicted, it went quite close to the line before both sides came to an agreement that there should be a lull, or at least a lull of sorts, in the fighting. So that is good news.
Now what needs to happen is that the evacuation flights need to continue apace to get as many people out as possible. But also, I think what you’ll find, is that the foreign diplomatic community tries to bring together the two factions, in order to find something more long lasting and stable, rather than these sort of multiple iterations of 72 hours that have got people living on edge.
Continue reading...Army and RSF agree to extend truce but violence means no respite for exhausted civilians
Rival factions in Sudan agreed on Thursday night to extend a ceasefire despite reports of surging fighting across the country that many fear suggests intense violence in the days to come.
A 72-hour truce from Monday night had initially brought relative calm to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and so facilitated the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals in recent days. But fighting between the Sudanese army and its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), escalated through Thursday in the city and its environs, as well as in the country’s restive south-west.
Continue reading...Former ambassadors and analysts say lasting ceasefire vital to thwart attempts to capitalise on unrest
Securing a lasting ceasefire in Sudan is essential in order to limit the opportunity for malign outside actors to intervene in the fighting on a greater scale, former diplomats and analysts have said.
Foreign leaders including the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Israeli officials have offered to help mediate in Sudan, while the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he had engaged the African Union in an attempt to ensure a long-term ceasefire.
Continue reading...Casting of Black actor in upcoming docudrama produced by Jada Pinkett Smith has angered groups in Egypt who say it is ‘a falsification of Egyptian history’
Egypt’s antiquities ministry insisted on Thursday that Cleopatra had “white skin and Hellenistic characteristics” in an ongoing row over a Netflix drama-documentary depicting the famed beauty of antiquity as black.
Queen Cleopatra, produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and starring Adele James, is due for release on the streaming platform on 10 May.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary welcomes ceasefire but cites need for haste as Tory MP presses him over fate of Britons’ Sudanese parents
Britain said it had evacuated nearly 900 people from Sudan and was hoping to continue evacuation flights overnight, although violence flared as the country’s warring factions agreed to extend a ceasefire.
The foreign secretary was under pressure over a refusal to allow Britons trying to flee to take elderly parents with them, amid fears that renewed fighting between the army and paramilitaries could halt the airlift at any time.
Continue reading...Army and paramilitary opponents the RSF agree to extend fragile truce that was due to end at midnight
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has been defensive about criticism of UK evacuation efforts from Sudan affecting and delaying efforts by Germany and other European nations to evacuate people.
The BBC has reported that German authorities told it that the British operation to rescue diplomats at the weekend “jeopardised” the efforts of other nations, because it didn’t have the permission of the Sudanese authorities to take place. Cleverly told listeners:
My understanding is we did have permissions for those overflights. I will, of course, look at the circumstances of that. My understanding is we’ve had permissions for those flights. We enjoy a very, very close professional relationship with the German government and the German armed forces that have been on the on the ground.
The extremist putschist forces have attacked the camp of the RSF in the Kafouri area with aviation and artillery. Our forces confronted the aggressor forces … and inflicted heavy losses … and seized their military equipment. The attacks of the putschists and the remnants of the former regime on the camps of our forces come during the humanitarian truce that was allocated to open humanitarian corridors for citizens and residents of brotherly and friendly countries.
Continue reading...In El Fasher, in North Darfur, only one hospital remains functional, with bomb damage, power cuts and only weeks until lifesaving equipment and drugs run out
Until gunfire broke out on the streets of El Fasher this month, the state capital of North Darfur had several main hospitals. There was the big teaching hospital, the Saudi hospital, a paediatric hospital and the South hospital, a modest 35-bed facility with big ambitions and a specific remit: to help bring down the high numbers of local women dying in pregnancy and childbirth.
Now, almost two weeks into the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), two weeks of bloodshed that has seen terror return to a region once synonymous with human suffering, those options have narrowed.
Continue reading...David Tebbutt’s widow ‘delighted’ as court rules conviction of Ali Kololo for robbery with violence was unsafe
A man found guilty of being part of a gang of pirates who murdered a British tourist 12 years ago has had his conviction quashed by Kenya’s high court.
Ali Kololo, from Lamu County, was convicted of robbery with violence in connection with the 2011 attack that left David Tebbutt dead and his wife, Judith, held captive in Somalia for six months.
Continue reading...Ezekiel Odero arrested and more than 100 people evacuated from church, days after discovery of bodies linked to another church
One of Kenya’s highest-profile pastors is facing charges over the “mass killing of his followers”, the government has said, just days after the discovery of dozens of bodies linked to another church.
Ezekiel Odero, the head of the New Life Prayer Centre and Church, “has been arrested and is being processed to face criminal charges related to the mass killing of his followers”, the interior minister, Kithure Kindiki, said in a statement.
Continue reading...Artwork exhibited at Kensington Palace among nearly 2,000 artefacts in royal collection
For more than a decade, Prince William has spoken out vehemently against the use of ivory, calling it “a symbol of destruction, not of luxury”. The royal patron of the anti-ivory charity Tusk has lobbied leaders in China, the US and countries across Africa.
He has even said that he wants to destroy all the ivory owned by the royals. In 2019, a spokesperson for William clarified that while destroying all the ivory in the royal collection was beyond the prince’s control, he had “ensured there is no ivory from the collection at Kensington Palace”, his place of residence.
Continue reading...UK military chiefs say flights will continue as long as conditions are safe
Renewed clashes in Khartoum and in south-west Sudan have raised fears that the current three-day ceasefire due to expire on Thursday night will not be extended and fighting will instead intensify
A surge in violence would threaten the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals who remain in Sudan. UK military chiefs said flights would continue as long as conditions were safe, although the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many would depart once the ceasefire ends.
Continue reading...Military says emergency flights will operate as long as conditions are safe, as civilians arrive in Britain
Britain could continue running evacuation flights from Sudan once the current three-day ceasefire expires on Thursday night, the army officer in charge of the rescue said, as the first planeload of civilians rescued from the country’s civil war arrived at Stansted airport.
Brig Dan Reeve said the airlift from a base north of Khartoum would continue as long as conditions were safe, including possibly beyond the ceasefire period, if people could still travel there.
Continue reading...More than 300 British nationals have fled bombing and shelling to reach a rescue flight out of Khartoum
After embarking on a perilous escape through military checkpoints and continuing clashes, British nationals evacuated from Sudan have spoken of their nightmare ordeals.
More than 300 Britons made the dangerous journey to the Wadi Seidna airbase north of Khartoum in the hope of boarding a rescue flight out of Sudan to Cyprus.
Continue reading...UK all-party group says failure to bring to justice Darfur abusers 20 years ago has led to current violence
The UK should impose sanctions on human rights abusers in senior Sudanese military positions as well as designate the Wagner group operating in Sudan as a terrorist group, a report from the all-party group on Sudan has urged.
The group, including the Conservative former Africa minister Vicky Ford, said on Wednesday the west has allowed impunity to become the norm, and the failure to bring to justice many of those responsible for the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago has allowed the same militia to regroup and form part of the forces now blocking democracy in the country.
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