How armed groups are using fire to displace communities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur 

Special How armed groups are using fire to displace communities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur 
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Special How armed groups are using fire to displace communities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur 
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Displaced people arrive in South Sudan from Sudan through the Joda border crossing. (Photo courtesy: UNHCR)
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Updated 23 May 2024
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How armed groups are using fire to displace communities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur 

How armed groups are using fire to displace communities in Sudan’s troubled Darfur 
  • Satellite images show fires have ravaged settlements surrounding the westen city of Al-Fashir in recent weeks 
  • UN officials have accused combatants of setting fires to sow fear and ethnically cleanse tribal communities 

LONDON: Fires in western Sudan, reportedly set by militiamen, have torn through hundreds of settlements in recent months, forcing thousands of civilians to flee their homes, while those who remain live in constant fear of attack.

A recent report by the Sudan Witness project of the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience found that a total of 201 villages and settlements in western Sudan had suffered fire damage since the start of the war.

April was the worst month on record, with 72 communities impacted by fires set deliberately or as a byproduct of the fighting that has raged between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.

The report, published on May 12, highlighted a surge in the number of fires to the north and west of the city of Al-Fashir in North Darfur State, which has seen escalating violence.

Analysts believe the fires are being set deliberately to displace the population of these areas.

“When we see reports of fighting or airstrikes coinciding with clusters of fires, it indicates that fire is being used indiscriminately as a weapon of war,” Anouk Theunissen, project director at Sudan Witness, stated in the report.

He warned that “the trend is worsening and continues to lead to the mass displacement of Sudanese people.”

Sudan Witness investigators pieced together open-source NASA satellite imagery and social media content to map the pattern of fires since the onset of the Sudanese conflict more than a year ago. They primarily focused on Kordofan and the troubled Darfur region.

Until the end of April 2024, at least 311 individual fires broke out in the two provinces. The assessment also revealed that 51 settlements of various sizes have suffered multiple fires since the war began.




Investigators have pieced together open-source satellite imagery, left, and social media content to map the pattern of fires in Kordofan and Darfur since the onset of the Sudanese conflict more than a year ago. (AFP file)

Expressing horror at the violence unfolding in Al-Fashir, UN human rights chief Volker Turk described the situation in the city as “hell on Earth” and renewed calls for the warring parties to end the hostilities.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at least 58 civilians had been reported killed and 213 others injured in Al-Fashir “since fighting dramatically escalated.”

INNUMBERS

• 201 Villages and settlements in western Sudan which have suffered fire damage since April last year.

• 311 Individual fires that had broken out until the end of April 2024 in Kordofan and Darfur.

During a press briefing in Geneva on May 17, she said “these figures are certainly an underestimate,” warning that the fighting between the two parties and their allied armed militias was taking “a deeply devastating toll on civilians.”

She said Turk had held phone conversations with both sides to urge them to cease hostilities, to ensure the protection of civilians, and to warn them that fighting in Al-Fashir “would have a catastrophic impact on civilians and deepen intercommunal conflict with disastrous humanitarian consequences.”

Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, has been under siege by the RSF for several months, trapping an estimated 1.8 million residents and internally displaced people, according to UN figures.




This picture taken on June 16, 2023, shows bodies strewn outdoors near houses in the West Darfur state capital El Geneina. (AFP/File photo)

Anticipating the worst, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, warned in late April of a potentially imminent massacre in Al-Fashir. 

“As I’ve said before, history is repeating itself in Darfur in the worst possible way. And an attack on Al-Fashir would be a disaster on top of a disaster,” she said during the UN Security Council Stakeout on the Situation in Sudan.

“It would put 500,000 internally displaced persons at risk, people who traveled from across Darfur to seek refuge. And that’s on top of the 2 million Sudanese who call Al-Fashir home.”

Cut off from the outside world, the people in Al-Fashir are now at imminent risk of famine. Yet the UN says it has received just 12 percent of the $2.7 billion it had requested from donors to head off mass starvation.




Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gedaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)

Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan last year, at least 15,500 people have been killed, more than 33,000 injured, and some 6.8 million displaced inside the country, according to UN figures.

“Half of the population, 25 million people, need humanitarian aid,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP news agency.

“Famine is closing in. Diseases are closing in. The fighting is closing in on civilians, especially in Darfur.”

Health infrastructure in Al-Fashir has also not been spared. On May 19, the RSF launched a barrage of artillery at the city’s Women’s, Maternity and Neonatal Hospital, injuring nine people and causing significant damage to the facility, according to the Sudan Tribune.

A recent report by the New York-based monitor Human Rights Watch accused the RSF and its allied militias of committing “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” in West Darfur.




The RSF has said its fighters are not involved in what it describes as ‘a tribal conflict’ in Darfur. (AFP file)

The report, published May 16, emphasized that the hostilities in El-Geneina alone from April to November last year left thousands dead and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The RSF has said it is not involved in what it describes as a “tribal conflict” in Darfur. 

Even the use of fire as a weapon of war is nothing new in Sudan. The Sudan Witness project published a map in October last year plotting multiple fire incidents in the country since the start of the conflict.

The map revealed that the highest concentration of fire incidents was in the southwest of the country, with 68 villages in the Masalit-majority Darfur region having been set ablaze by the RSF and its allied militias, according to media reports.

Masalit tribes were among the rebel groups that fought the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia — the forerunner of the RSF — during the war in Darfur that started in 2003, leading to reprisals and ethnic cleansing.

Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s minister for development and Africa, warned in December that the latest reported targeting and mass displacement of the Masalit community in Darfur “bears all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing.”

Alice Nderitu, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, warned on Tuesday that Sudan is exhibiting all the signs that genocide could — and may already — be taking place.




Alice Nderitu, UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide. (Supplied)

“The protection of civilians in Sudan cannot wait,” Nderitu told a meeting of the UN Security Council. “The risk of genocide exists in Sudan. It is real and it is growing, every single day.

“In Darfur and Al-Fashir, civilians are being attacked and killed because of the color of their skin, because of their ethnicity, because of who they are. They are also targeted with hate speech and with direct incitement to violence.”

Nderitu said the burning and destruction of villages and settlements around Al-Fashir is intended to cause displacement and fear, rather than accomplish any specific military objectives.

“It is imperative that all possible actions aimed at the protection of innocent civilian populations, in Al-Fashir as in the entire territory of Sudan, are expedited,” she said. “It is urgent to stop ethnically motivated violence.”
 

 


Iranian capital builds ‘defensive tunnel’ after Israeli strikes

Iranian capital builds ‘defensive tunnel’ after Israeli strikes
Updated 16 sec ago
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Iranian capital builds ‘defensive tunnel’ after Israeli strikes

Iranian capital builds ‘defensive tunnel’ after Israeli strikes

DUBAI: Iran is building a “defensive tunnel” in the capital Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday, following strikes by Israel on targets in the country.
The tunnel, located near the city center, will link a station on the Tehran metro to the Imam Khomeini hospital, thus allowing direct underground access to the medical facility.
“For the first time in the country, a tunnel with defensive applications is being built in Tehran,” the head of transport for Tehran City Council told Tasnim.
Last month, Israel carried out its first officially-recognized strikes in Iran, hitting missile factories and other sites near Tehran and in the country’s west, as a response to Iran’s Oct.1 attack on Israeli territory.


Wave of Israeli strikes hit south Beirut after evacuation warning

Wave of Israeli strikes hit south Beirut after evacuation warning
Updated 12 November 2024
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Wave of Israeli strikes hit south Beirut after evacuation warning

Wave of Israeli strikes hit south Beirut after evacuation warning

BEIRUT: Israel launched at least 10 air strikes on south Beirut Tuesday morning, Lebanese state media said, shortly after Israel’s army urged residents of several neighborhoods to evacuate the Hezbollah bastion.
“Israeli warplanes launched a very violent tenth strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs,” the official National News Agency reported.
AFPTV footage showed grey smoke covering the area, with big plumes rising after each strike.
Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli army told residents of four south Beirut neighborhoods to leave immediately, warning it would strike Hezbollah targets there.
“You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, against which the Israel Defense Forces will act in the near future,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
The post included a map showing the buildings it would target in the Lebanese capital’s south.
Witnesses told AFP they heard gunfire in the area ahead of the strikes — warning shots by residents for people to leave following the evacuation call.
NNA also reported Israeli strikes across Lebanon’s south that destroyed a building in the main southern city of Nabatiyeh and also targeted the eastern city of Hermel.
Last month, Israeli strikes razed Nabatiyeh’s historic marketplace, with another wave of attacks also hitting its municipality building and killing several including the mayor.
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its air campaign, mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon’s east and south and in southern Beirut. A week later, it sent in ground troops.
It came after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire, launched by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
More than 3,240 people have been killed in Lebanon since the clashes began last year, according to the health ministry, the majority of them since late September.


A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sees explosions near ship in Red Sea

A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sees explosions near ship in Red Sea
Updated 12 November 2024
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A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sees explosions near ship in Red Sea

A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sees explosions near ship in Red Sea
  • The attack comes as the rebels continue their monthslong assault targeting shipping
  • The Houthis have insisted that the attacks will continue as long as the wars go on

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels saw multiple explosions strike near a vessel traveling through the Red Sea on Tuesday, though no damage was immediately reported by the ship, authorities said.
The attack comes as the rebels continue their monthslong assault targeting shipping through a waterway that typically sees $1 trillion in goods pass through it a year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon.
The Houthis have insisted that the attacks will continue as long as the wars go on, and the assaults already have halved shipping through the region. Meanwhile, a UN panel of experts now allege that the Houthis may be shaking down some shippers for about $180 million a month for safe passage through the area.
A vessel in the southern reaches of the Red Sea, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, reported the attack, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.
No one was wounded on board in the blasts, and the ship was continuing on its journey, the UKMTO added.
The Houthis didn’t immediately claim the attack. However, it can take the rebels hours or even days before they acknowledge one of their assaults.
The Houthis have targeted more than 90 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign, which also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
The Houthis have shot down multiple American MQ-9 Reaper drones as well.
The last Houthi maritime attack came Oct. 28 and targeted the Liberian-flagged bulk tanker Motaro. Before that, an Oct. 10 attack targeted the Liberian-flagged chemical tanker Olympic Spirit.
It’s unclear why the Houthis’ attacks have dropped, though they have launched multiple missiles toward Israel as well. On Oct. 17, the US military unleashed B-2 stealth bombers to target underground bunkers used by the rebels. US airstrikes also have been targeting Houthi positions in recent days as well.
Meanwhile, a report by UN experts from October says “the Houthis allegedly collected illegal fees from a few shipping agencies to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden without being attacked.” It put the money generated a month at around $180 million, though it stressed it hadn’t been able to corroborate the information provided by sources to the panel.
The Houthis haven’t directly responded to the allegation. However, the report did include two threatening emails the Houthis sent to shippers, with one of those vessels later coming under attack by the rebels.


No repeat of Jerusalem incident will be accepted, France says

No repeat of Jerusalem incident will be accepted, France says
Updated 12 November 2024
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No repeat of Jerusalem incident will be accepted, France says

No repeat of Jerusalem incident will be accepted, France says

PARIS: A repeat of an incident in Jerusalem that saw armed Israeli security forces entering a property administered by France must never happen again, France’s foreign minister said ahead of summoning Israel’s envoy on Tuesday.
Two French security officials with diplomatic status were briefly detained on Nov. 7 after Jean-Noel Barrot was due to visit the compound of The Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives.
The site, one of four administered by France in Jerusalem, is under Paris’ responsibility and it not the first time that problems have arisen over France’s historic holdings in the Holy City.
“It is an opportunity for France to reiterate that it will not tolerate Israeli armed forces entering these areas, for which it (France) is responsible, for which it ensures protection,” Barrot told France 24 television when asked what the ambassador would be told.
“And to strongly reaffirm that this incident must never happen again, meaning that Israeli forces enter armed and without authorization.”
Israel’s ambassador is due to meet Barrot’s chief of staff at the foreign ministry on Tuesday.
Israel’s foreign ministry has said that every visiting foreign leader is accompanied by its security personnel, a point that had been “clarified in advance in the preparatory dialogue with the French Embassy in Israel.”
Diplomatic relations between France and Israel have worsened since President Emmanuel Macron called for an end to the supply to Israel of offensive weapons used in Gaza.
The French government also attempted to ban Israeli weapons’ firms from exhibiting at a trade fair in Paris and has become increasingly uneasy over Israel’s conduct in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.


Israel says it is pushing to get aid into Gaza before US deadline as fighting persists

Israel says it is pushing to get aid into Gaza before US deadline as fighting persists
Updated 37 min 16 sec ago
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Israel says it is pushing to get aid into Gaza before US deadline as fighting persists

Israel says it is pushing to get aid into Gaza before US deadline as fighting persists
  • US gave 30-day deadline to Israel to get aid in to Gaza
  • Aid groups say not enough has been done
  • Some 24 Palestinians, 4 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza

CAIRO/JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had delivered hundreds of packets of food to cut-off areas of northern Gaza as fighting raged ahead of a US deadline for Israel to get more aid into the Palestinian enclave or face cuts in military assistance.
Palestinian medics said at least 24 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in different parts of the Gaza Strip overnight and into Tuesday, including 10 people killed in a house in Beit Hanoun and two others in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed in northern Gaza, the military said.
For more than a month, Israeli troops have been laying siege to the northern end of Gaza in a push the military says is aimed at squeezing out Hamas militants reforming in the area around the town of Jabalia.
The military says it has killed or captured hundreds of fighters but Israel has faced growing international pressure over the disastrous humanitarian situation facing civilians who have been largely cut off from aid for weeks.
“We are witnessing alarming cases of malnutrition among both children and adults. We are struggling to provide even one meal a day for our hospital workers amidst severe food and medical supply shortages,” said Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
“We are losing lives every day due to the lack of specialized care and resources,” he added.
This week, the outgoing US administration is expected to judge whether Israel has done enough to meet a demand issued last month to get more aid flowing into Gaza, now reduced to a wasteland after more than a year of war.
Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned of a strong likelihood that famine was imminent in certain areas of northern Gaza, a claim which Israel rejected.
As the 30-day deadline imposed by Washington has approached, Israeli authorities have been rushing to meet some of the US demands but it remains unclear whether enough has been done to satisfy US requirements.
On Tuesday, the military said it had opened a fifth crossing into Gaza, one of the US demands, which it said would help get food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment to central and southern Gaza.
It said hundreds of food packages and thousands of liters of water had been delivered a day earlier to distribution centers for civilians in the area of Beit Hanoun, on Gaza’s northern edge.
It said 741 trucks of aid had been delivered into northern Gaza through the Erez crossing since October, while 244 patients had been evacuated for treatment.
However international aid groups said the effort falls short of what would be needed while Israel’s military operation in northern Gaza had worsened the situation.

FIGHTING CONTINUES
Even as the military announced the deliveries, prospects of an agreement to halt the fighting appeared as distant as ever with the imminent return of Donald Trump as US President giving a lift to hard-liners in the Israeli government.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has offered heavy backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. But as the toll from Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza has mounted, relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have been increasingly fractious.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble where more than 2 million Gazans seek shelter as best they can.
Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled accusations from Palestinians and others that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers to the area after the war.
On Tuesday, residents said Israeli tanks advanced deeper in Beit Hanoun and besieged four displaced families before ordering them to leave toward Gaza City.
The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hard-liners in his government have talked openly about going back.
On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that, with the backing of the next Trump administration, he hoped Israel could annex parts of the occupied West Bank as early as next year, although no formal cabinet decision has been taken.
The call was nonetheless condemned by Qatar, which has said it will it halt its efforts to mediate a Gaza ceasefire and a hostage return until both sides show “willingness and seriousness.”