Federal prosecutor says woman is suspected of dealing weapons to Africa on behalf of Iranian government
A California woman was arrested at Los Angeles international airport after allegedly trafficking weapons on behalf of the Iranian government to contacts in Africa, including Sudan.
Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills was detained on Saturday night by federal agents, according to the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Donors exceed funding target at Berlin conference but prospects for ceasefire remain distant
More than £1bn (€1.15bn) has been pledged for war-ravaged Sudan at a conference in Berlin, eclipsing the funding target organisers had set to help mitigate the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
The financial commitments made on Wednesday will also help offset a chronic humanitarian funding shortfall in a country devastated by three years of conflict, where two-thirds of its population – 34m people – require assistance.
Continue reading...British aid to double as 19m people face acute hunger, but summit unlikely to end conflict amid Saudi-UAE tensions
The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will urge Sudan’s warring parties to “cease bloodshed” during a major conference on Wednesday, which analysts believe is unlikely to deliver a significant step towards peace.
The talks in Berlin – held on the third anniversary of the start of Sudan’s ruinous war – are expected to help address a catastrophic funding shortfall that is compounding the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Continue reading...A top UN official has criticised lack of global urgency as reports confirm the world’s largest humanitarian crisis is worsening
Efforts to end Sudan’s catastrophic war have been criticised as “unacceptable” by the country’s top UN official as a series of new reports confirm that the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis is worsening.
Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the third anniversary of the war, Denise Brown expressed her concern over the apparent lack of political urgency to end a conflict that has forced 14 million Sudanese to flee their homes. Tens of thousands of people are missing.
Continue reading...Market in North Darfur and truck carrying civilians in North Kordofan hit as civil war approaches fourth year
At least 28 civilians have been killed in two separate drone strikes in Sudan, according to health workers, as the country’s brutal civil war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) approaches its fourth year.
A strike hit a market in the town of Saraf Omra, in North Darfur state, on Wednesday, killing “22 people, including an infant, and injuring 17 more”, a health worker at the local clinic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Continue reading...Hostilities should halt and healthcare facilities must be treated as ‘safe havens’, WHO’s regional chief has said
A total stop to hostilities in the Middle East is needed to halt a “health crisis unfolding in real time”, the World Health Organization’s chief in the region has said.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must be treated as “safe havens”, urged Dr Hanan Balkhy, the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean.
Continue reading...Victims of army drone attack on East Darfur health facility included children and medical personnel
A strike on a healthcare facility in Sudan has killed 64 people and wounded 89 more, the World Health Organization reported on Saturday.
The UN’s humanitarian office in Sudan had earlier said it was “appalled by the attack on a hospital in East Darfur yesterday, reportedly killing dozens, including children, and injuring more”.
Continue reading...Strike in Shukeiri killed schoolgirls, teachers and healthcare workers in latest incident in three-year war
At least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed on Wednesday when an explosive-laden drone blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck a secondary school and a health care centre.
At least 10 people were wounded in the strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province, according to Dr Musa al-Majeri, director of Douiem hospital, the nearest major medical facility to the village.
Continue reading...Report details harrowing 18-month occupation of North Darfur capital, showing destruction aimed at ethnic communities
The siege and capture of the Sudanese city of El Fasher by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group last October bore “the hallmarks of genocide”, a UN-mandated fact-finding mission has said.
In a report detailing the harrowing 18-month occupation of the capital of North Darfur, investigators concluded that the RSF and allied militias deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic communities.
Continue reading...Abdalmonim Alrabea has appeared in hundreds of videos in which he expresses support for paramilitary group accused of committing genocide
A British citizen based in Sheffield appeared in a TikTok live broadcast laughing along while a notorious fighter from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group boasted about participating in mass killings in the city of El Fasher.
The video, broadcast on 27 October, is just one of hundreds posted to social media in which 44-year-old Abdalmonim Alrabea expresses support for the RSF and the ethnically targeted atrocities it has committed in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Continue reading...Fears rise for displaced civilians as UN reports deteriorating situation and MSF warns of ‘staggering’ malnutrition
There are grave fears for civilians who survived the capture of El Fasher by a Sudanese paramilitary group last month, as the UN warned relief operations were on the brink of collapse and an aid group said malnutrition in displacement camps had reached “staggering” levels.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured El Fasher – the capital of North Darfur state and the last urban centre outside of its grasp in the wider Darfur region – on 26 October. Survivor accounts and video and satellite evidence suggest more than 1,500 people were killed in ethnically targeted massacres in the immediate aftermath.
Continue reading...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...International mediators broker three-month halt to civil war as further evidence emerges of mass civilian killings
A Sudanese paramilitary group accused of killing thousands of unarmed civilians in an ethnically motivated massacre has agreed to a truce.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is facing mounting criticism over apparent war crimes committed by its fighters in the city of El Fasher last month, said it had agreed to a “humanitarian ceasefire” put forward by the quad countries of the US, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading...António Guterres calls for the violence to end but there appears little appetite for ceasefire proposed by US
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said the war in Sudan is spiralling out of control as he called for a halt to the fighting and an end to the violence.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized El Fasher in Darfur last week after a near 18-month siege. Some of its soldiers have posted videos of civilians being shot, including in the town’s maternity hospital.
Continue reading...After mass killings in El Fasher and four years on from a coup, UAE now admits its Sudan policy has gone wrong
The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy after suffering reputational damage over its support for the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group that has carried out mass killings in El Fasher since it captured the city late last month.
Speaking in Bahrain on Sunday, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said the UAE and others had been wrong not to impose sanctions on the instigators of the 2021 coup – led jointly by the RSF and the army – that overthrew Sudan’s transitional civilian government.
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...Reports of indiscriminate violence and ethnic targeting in El Fasher have led to growing global outrage
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim to have arrested several of their fighters after outrage over the extent of killing in the city of El Fasher continues to build.
But the paramilitary group’s move has been greeted with scepticism from human rights campaigners and Sudanese people, who see it as an attempt to temper criticism over the violence.
Continue reading...Emergency security council session criticises killings of civilians in El Fasher and external supply of arms to RSF
Diplomats and senior UN figures speaking at the UN security council have condemned mass killings by the Rapid Support Forces in El Fasher after the Sudanese city “descended into an even darker hell” following the paramilitary group’s takeover at the weekend.
Widespread reports of ethnically targeted killings in recent days prompted the UK, as the UN penholder on Sudan, to call an emergency session of the security council in New York on Thursday.
Continue reading...Thousands have fled the North Darfur city in terror with stories of the Rapid Support Forces attacking and killing civilians
Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a nurse for three years at El Fasher South hospital when the city was captured on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was busy treating patients, including an elderly woman who needed a blood transfusion, when the attack began.
“They killed six wounded soldiers and civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she says. “I don’t know what happened to my other patients. I had to run when they stormed the hospital.”
Continue reading...Rapid Support Forces, which claimed control of El Fasher on Sunday, reportedly killed at least 460 people ‘in cold blood’
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces killed hundreds of patients and staff inside a hospital in El Fasher, according to the World Health Organization and the Sudan Doctors Network, after the paramilitary group claimed control of the city on Sunday.
The WHO secretary general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “appalled and deeply shocked” at reports that more than 460 people had been killed at the Saudi maternity hospital, without assigning blame, in a post on X.
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