gadget
Gunmen kill 15 people, abduct 5 aid workers in north Nigeria
Gunmen killed 15 villagers and abducted five aid workers in separate attacks in Nigeria's troubled northern region, authorities said Thursday.
The assailants arrived in Benue state’s Apa area and opened fire on villagers in their homes, according to David Olofu, a senior state government official. He said military personnel were among those shot in the attack and many houses were razed as villagers fled to safety.
The incident in Benue is the latest in a spiral of violent attacks in which armed groups are targeting remote communities across Nigeria's northwest and central regions, often defying government and security measures.
More than 80 people have been killed in Benue in the past month in such attacks. No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, though authorities have blamed Fulani herdsmen, a group of mostly young pastoralists from the Fulani tribe caught up in Nigeria’s conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land.
In northeastern Nigeria, meanwhile, Islamic extremists abducted five aid workers in Ngala, Borno state, where an insurgency against the government has raged on for more than a decade.
The aid workers included three staff members and two contractors of the international non-government organization FHI 360, all “working to provide lifesaving medical care to the people of Nigeria,” the organization said Thursday, without further details on the incident.
FHI 360 condemned the abduction of the workers and called for their “unconditional, immediate and safe return,” according to a statement from Iorwakwagh Apera, the NGO's director in Nigeria. “Our priority at this time is to support our team and their families,” said Apera.
The Boko Haram extremist group has been waging a bitter war against Nigeria since 2009, and the insurgency has spread over the years to the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger and Chad. A breakaway faction of the group formed in 2016 and became known as the Islamic State in West Africa Province and is notorious for targeting security forces and aid workers.
Scientists: Climate change worsened Eastern Africa drought
The ongoing drought in Eastern Africa has been made worse by human-induced climate change, which also made it much likelier to occur in the first place, an international team of climate scientists concluded.
The report Wednesday came from World Weather Attribution, a group that seeks to quickly determine whether certain extreme weather events were influenced by climate change. Nineteen scientists from seven nations assessed how climate change affected rainfall in the region.
"Climate change caused the low rainfall in the region," Joyce Kimutai, principal meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department said. "Climate change has made the drought exceptional."
The scientists analyzed historical weather data, including changes in the two main rainfall patterns in the region alongside computer model simulations dating back to the 1800s. They found that the long rains season —March through May — was turning drier and the short rains season — typically October through December — was becoming wetter due to climate change. They called the region's experience with drought "one of a kind."
Friederike Otto, senior climate scientist at Imperial College London and the leader of the study, said it underscored how climate change's effects "strongly depend on how vulnerable we are."
While climate change has made drought more frequent and extreme in the Horn region, the scientists acknowledged that previous failed rainy seasons, high temperatures, conflict, fragile statehood and poverty are also to blame for the "devastating impacts."
The United Nations said more than 20 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda and South Sudan have been affected by the drought, with more than 2.2 million displaced in Somalia and Ethiopia and severe maternal risks to hundreds of thousands of expectant or breastfeeding women.
Rod Beadle, head of relief and humanitarian affairs at Food for the Hungry, said almost 15 million children are exposed to acute malnourishment.
"Despite the recent rains in North Kenya, the pressure from previous failed seasons makes for a dire situation. The flooding has impacted livestock and many pastoralists lost their primary livelihoods. The drought conditions have resulted in severely compacted soil that cannot absorb the water; hence the floods are more severe. The country is also facing severe outbreaks of cholera and other diseases as more refugees arrive," Beadle said.
Development gains in the countries have been offset by a long history of natural disasters, famine and disease, said Guyo Malicha Roba, a food security expert who heads the Jameel Observatory, which works on food insecurity issues in dryland nations.
Roba said the food situation in the region's drylands has addressed by raising money and with food distributions from governments and humanitarian partners, but more work needs to be done to use early-warning systems to respond more quickly to "food shocks."
Mass killing of civilians by security forces in Burkina Faso
The accounts are horrific. Women killed while carrying babies on their backs, the wounded hunted down and villagers watching the execution of their neighbors, fearing they'd be next. These are some of the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Burkina Faso's security forces in the north of the country, according to a statement Tuesday by locals from the village of Karma where the violence took place.
It was early morning last Thursday, when people in the village in Yatenga province, awoke to a large group of armed men in military fatigues, driving motorcycles and armored pickup trucks. “Some villagers, happy to see ‘our soldiers', came out of their houses to welcome them. Unfortunately, this joy was cut short when the first shots rang out, also causing the first casualties," said the statement from the villagers.
At least 150 civilians may have been killed and many others injured in the violence, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, in a statement Tuesday. The U.N. is calling for a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into what it called the “horrific killing of civilians”.
Also Read: At least 44 people killed by extremists in Burkina Faso's north
Earlier this week, Burkina Faso's prosecutor said it had already opened an investigation into the killings, but put the death toll at 60, less than half the number estimated by the U.N. and local residents.
Jihadi fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have waged a violent insurgency in Burkina Faso for seven years. The violence has killed thousands of people and divided the country, leading to two coups last year.
Since Capt. Ibrahim Traore seized power in September 2022 during the second coup, extrajudicial killings of civilians have increased, according to rights groups and residents.
This incident — one of the deadliest against civilians by security forces — comes amid mounting allegations against the military for committing abuses against those it believes to be supporting the jihadis.
Also Read: More than 70 soldiers killed in Burkina Faso, extremists say
Earlier this month, Burkina Faso’s government announced it was opening other investigations into allegations of human rights abuses by its security forces after a video surfaced that appeared to show the extrajudicial killing of seven children in the country’s north.
The Associated Press this month published its own findings about the video. AP’s investigation determined that Burkina Faso’s security forces killed the children in a military base outside the town of Ouahigouya.
Days before last week's attack, some 40 security sources were killed near Ouahigouya. Survivors said the soldiers accused them of being jihadi accomplices, by letting them pass through their town, according to the statement from the villagers.
One survivor of the attack, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, told The Associated Press that when the soldiers started shooting people indiscriminately, he grabbed the hand of his 11-year-old son and fled into this house with the rest of his family. However, the soldiers forced their way in, shooting open the door, he said.
Also Read: Burkina Faso says 66 women, children freed from extremists
“It was like a dream. If someone told us we wouldn’t die, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. They made them sit with a group of people in the middle of the village threatening to kill them multiple times. Instead, they killed another group of people and went door to door searching for two of the injured who had fled, he said.
Since the violence, people in the community haven't been able to bury their relatives as an army roadblock prevented them reaching the village, said the statement.
The abuses will create a backlash against Burkina Faso's junta and drive people into the hands of the jihadis, say conflict analysts.
“The reported human rights abuses advance the playbook of militants, it gives them talking points against the security forces and helps their recruitment efforts in the north. This is an awful recipe of consequences,” said Laith Alkhouri, CEO of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory, which provides intelligence analysis.
Sudan fighting eclipses new truce as aid groups raise alarm
Sudanese and foreigners streamed out of the capital of Khartoum and other battle zones, as fighting Tuesday shook a new three-day truce brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Aid agencies raised increasing alarm over the crumbling humanitarian situation in a country reliant on outside help.
A series of short cease-fires the past week have either failed outright or brought only intermittent lulls in the fighting that has raged between forces loyal to the country's two top generals since April 15. The lulls have been enough for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of foreigners by air and land, which continued Tuesday.
But they have brought no relief to millions of Sudanese caught in the crossfire, struggling to find food, shelter and medical care as explosions, gunfire and looters wreck their neighborhoods. In a country where a third of the population of 46 million already needed humanitarian assistance, multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations and dozens of hospitals have been forced to shut down. The U.N. refugee agency said it was gearing up for potentially tens of thousands of people fleeing into neighboring countries.
Also Read: UN warns of lab risk, more displacement amid Sudan conflict
Calls for negotiations to end the crisis in Africa’s third-largest nation have been ignored. For many Sudanese, the departure of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners and the closure of embassies are terrifying signs that international powers expect the mayhem to only worsen.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the power struggle between rival generals and their military forces is not only putting Sudan's future at risk, “it is lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.”
The U.N. chief urged the Sudanese military, commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, “to silence the guns” immediately.
Also Read: UN fears more ‘displacement’ from Sudan despite cease-fire
""The conflict will not, and must not, be resolved on the battlefield," Guterres told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council late Tuesday.
U.N. special envoy for Sudan Volker Perthes, who moved from Khartoum to Port Sudan with most U.N. staff and many humanitarian organizations, accused both warring parties of fighting “with disregard for the laws and norms of war,” citing attacks on densely populated areas.
With supply lines running out, he said, there is mounting fear of increased criminality, and “reports of prisoners being released from detention centers across Khartoum have compounded these fears.”
Thousands of Sudanese have been fleeing Khartoum and its neighboring city of Omdurman. Bus stations in the capital were packed Tuesday morning with people who had spent the night there in hopes of getting on a departing bus.
Drivers increased prices, sometimes tenfold, for routes to the border crossing with Egypt or the eastern Red Sea city of Port Sudan. Fuel prices have skyrocketed, to $67 a gallon from $4.20, and prices for food and water have doubled in many cases, the Norwegian Refugee Council said.
Also Read: Bangladesh to evacuate nationals from Sudan through other countries: Shahriar Alam
Those lucky enough to reach the border crossings face additional hardships.
Moaz al-Ser, a teacher, arrived at the Arqin border crossing with Egypt early Tuesday with his wife and three children after a harrowing trip from Omdurman. They were among hundreds of families who were waiting to be processed. Many had spent the night in an open area near the border.
“The crossing point is overwhelmed and authorities on both sides don’t have the capacity to handle such a growing number of arrivals,” he said.
Secretary-General Guterres cited reports of armed clashes across the country, with people fleeing their homes in Blue Nile and North Kordofan states and across Western Darfur as well. Terrified people remain trapped indoors with dwindling food, water, medicine and fuel, and health services near collapse, he said.
Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said at least 20 hospitals have been forced to close due to damage, military use or lack of resources. She also told the council “there have been numerous reports of sexual and gender-based violence.”
Also Read: Fitful start to new 3-day truce in Sudan; airlifts continue
The 72-hour cease-fire announced by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to last until late Thursday night, extending a nominal three-day truce over the weekend.
The rival forces said Tuesday they would observe the cease-fire. In separate announcements, they said Saudi Arabia played a role in the negotiations.
But fighting continued, with explosions, gunfire and the roar of warplanes overhead around the capital region.
“They stop only when they run out of ammunition,” Omdurman resident Amin Ishaq said. Al-Roumy, a medical facility in Omdurman, said it suspended its services after it was hit by a shell Tuesday.
“They don’t respect cease-fires,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, a senior figure in the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, a group that monitors casualties.
Dr. Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman, a Sudanese-American physician who headed the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Khartoum, was stabbed to death outside his home, the Doctors' Syndicate said. He had practiced medicine for many years in the United States, where his children reside, but had returned to Sudan to train doctors. Colleagues said he had been treating those wounded in the fighting in recent days and that it was not known who killed him.
The World Heath Organization, meanwhile, expressed concern that one of the warring parties had seized control of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum.
“That is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab,” Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO representative in Sudan, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva by video call from Port Sudan.
He did not identify which side held the facility but said they had expelled technicians and power was cut, so it was not possible to properly manage the biological materials. “There is a huge biological risk.”
Clashes meanwhile escalated in the western Darfur region, residents said. Armed groups, wearing RSF uniforms, attacked several areas in Genena, a provincial capital, burning and looting properties and camps for displaced people.
“Fierce battles are raging all over the city,” said a doctor in Genena, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "All eyes are on Khartoum but the situation here is unimaginable.”
Women and children were fleeing homes in the city center, and the city's main hospital has not functioned for days, with unknown numbers of dead and wounded, she said.
More fighters on motorcycles and horses have flowed into the city to join the battles, with dead bodies lying in the streets, according to Darfur 24, an online news outlet focusing on covering the war-wrecked region.
The RSF has its roots in Darfur, where it emerged from the notorious Janjaweed militias that committed atrocities there while putting down a rebellion in the 2000s.
At least 459 people, including civilians and fighters, have been killed, and over 4,000 wounded since fighting began, the U.N. health agency said, citing Sudan’s Health Ministry. Among them were 166 deaths and over 2,300 wounded in Khartoum, it said.
Secretary-General Guterres said four U.N. staff were killed. The U.N. said they were three Sudanese working for the World Food Program and one Sudanese working for the International Organization for Migration.
Those who are able have made their way to the Egyptian border, Port Sudan or relatively calmer provinces along the Nile. But the full scale of displacement has been difficult to measure.
Msuya said the U.N. has received reports “of tens of thousands of people arriving in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.”
Mohammed Mahdi, of the International Rescue Committee, warned that resources were growing thin at the Tunaydbah refugee camp in eastern Sudan after 3,000 people fleeing Khartoum took refuge there, joining some 28,000 refugees from Ethiopia.
At least 20,000 people have fled from Khartoum to the city of Wad Madani, 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the south, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. Some 20,000 Sudanese have fled to Chad and around 4,000 South Sudanese refugees living in Sudan have returned home, according to the U.N. refugee agency, which is gearing up for tens of thousands more to flee to neighboring countries.
UN warns of lab risk, more displacement amid Sudan conflict
U.N. officials said Tuesday that one side in the Sudan conflict has seized control of a national health lab in the capital of Khartoum that holds biological material, calling it an "extremely dangerous" development.
The announcement came as officials warned that more refugees could flee Sudan despite a cease-fire between rival forces.
The fighting has plunged Sudan into chaos, pushing the already heavily aid-dependent African nation to the brink of collapse. Before the clashes, the U.N. estimated that a third of Sudan's population — or about 16 million people — needed assistance, a figure that is likely to increase.
Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, the World Health Organization's representative in Sudan, expressed concerns that "one of the fighting parties" — he did not identify which one — had seized control of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum and "kicked out all of the technicians."
"That is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab," he told a U.N. briefing in Geneva by video call from Port Sudan. "There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties."
The expulsion of technicians and power cuts in Khartoum mean "it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials that are stored in the lab for medical purposes," WHO said.
The lab is located in central Khartoum, close to flashpoints of the fighting that pits Sudan's military against the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias implicated in atrocities in the Darfur conflict.
Since the outbreak of fighting on April 15, at least 20,000 Sudanese have fled into Chad. Some 4,000 South Sudanese refugees who had been living in Sudan have returned to their home country, U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Olga Sarrado said.
The figures could rise, she cautioned. Sarrado did not have numbers for the five other countries neighboring Sudan, but the UNHCR has cited unspecified numbers of those fleeing Sudan arriving in Egypt.
"The fighting looks set to trigger further displacement both within and outside the country," she said, speaking at a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
The UNHCR was scaling up its operations, she said, even as foreign governments have raced to evacuate their embassy staff and citizens from Sudan. Many Sudanese have desperately sought ways to escape the chaos, fearing late their all-out battle for power once evacuations are completed.
Several previous cease-fires have failed, although intermittent lulls during the weekend's major Muslim holiday allowed for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners by air and land.
More than 800,000 South Sudanese refugees live in Sudan, a quarter of them in the capital of Khartoum, where they are directly affected by the fighting. Overall, Sudan hosts 1.1 million refugees, according to the UNHCR. There are also more than 3 million internally displaced persons, mostly in Darfur, a region mired in decades-long conflict, it said.
Along with the refugees, the U.N. migration agency said there are 300,000 registered migrants, as well as tens of thousands of unregistered migrants in the country.
Marie-Helene Verney, the UNHCR's chief in South Sudan, said from its capital of Juba that "the planning figure that we have for the most likely scenario is 125,000 returns of South Sudanese refugees into South Sudan, and 45,000 refugees," Sudanese fleeing the fighting.
The U.N. Population Fund has said that the fighting threatens tens of thousands of pregnant women, including 24,000 women expected to give birth in the coming weeks. For 219,000 pregnant women across the country it is too dangerous to venture outside their homes to seek urgent care in hospitals and clinics amid the clashes, the agency said.
Dozens of hospitals have shuttered in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country due to the fighting and dwindling medical and fuel supplies, according to the Sudanese Doctors' Syndicate.
"If the violence does not stop, there is a danger that the health system will collapse," the U.N. agency warned Friday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross welcomed the announced cease-fire as a "potential lifesaver for civilians" trapped in their homes in fighting-hit areas.
"It's clear that this ceasefire must be implemented up and down the chain of command and that it must hold for it to give a real respite to civilians suffering from the fighting," said Patrick Youssef, ICRC's regional director for Africa. He called on the international community to help find a "durable political solution to end the bloodshed."
Spokesman Jens Laerke of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said it has been forced to "reduce our footprint" because of the fighting. He pointed to "acute shortages of food, water, medicines and fuel and limited communications and electricity" and new reports of looting of humanitarian warehouses and aid stockpiles.
"The humanitarian needs in Sudan were already at record levels before this recent eruption of fighting … some 15.8 million people — that's about a third of the population — required humanitarian assistance," he said.
Some 3,000 people fled the fighting in Khartoum and took shelter at a refugee camp in the eastern province in al-Qadarif, further stretching the camp's resources, Mohammed Mahdi, deputy director for programs at the International Rescue Committee, said Tuesday.
The Tunaydbah refugee camp, he said, houses around 28,000 refugees, mostly Ethiopians who fled a devastating war in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray in late 2020.
Other aid agencies, including the World Food Program, were forced to suspend or scale down its operations in Sudan following attacks on aid workers and humanitarian compounds and warehouses. At least five aid workers, three from the WFP, have been killed since April 15.
The WFP has said its offices and warehouses in Nyala, the provincial capital of South Darfur, were attacked and looted last week. An ICRC office in Nyala was also looted, and warehouses for the Sudanese Red Crescent in Khartoum were attacked last week by armed men who took several of their vehicles and trucks, the charity said.
Arshad Malik, country director with Save the Children Sudan, urged the warring sides to ensure protection for humanitarian workers to allow resumption of aid flow in Sudan.
"Now we're seeing more children than ever going hungry. About 12% of the country's 22 million children are going without enough food," he said.
Fitful start to new 3-day truce in Sudan; airlifts continue
Sudan's warring generals pledged Tuesday to observe a new three-day truce that was brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in an attempt to pull Africa's third-largest nation back from the abyss.
The claims were immediately undercut by the sound of heavy gunfire and explosions in the capital of Khartoum. Residents said warplanes were flying overhead.
Several previous cease-fires declared since the April 15 outbreak of fighting were not observed, although intermittent lulls during the weekend's major Muslim holiday allowed for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners by air and land.
For many Sudanese, the departure of foreigners and closure of embassies is a terrifying sign that international powers expect a worsening of the fighting that has already pushed the population into disaster.
Also Read: Why Sudan's conflict matters to the rest of the world
Many Sudanese have desperately sought ways to escape the chaos, fearing that the rival camps will escalate their all-out battle for power once evacuations are completed.
In Khartoum, bus stations were packed Tuesday morning with people who had spent the night there in hopes of getting on a departing bus. Drivers increased prices, sometimes tenfold, for routes to Port Sudan or the border crossing with Egypt.
Late Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he had helped broker a new 72-hour cease-fire. The truce would be an extension of the nominal three-day holiday cease-fire.
The Sudanese military, commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, said Tuesday they would observe the cease-fire. In separate announcements, they said Saudi Arabia played a role in the negotiations.
Also Read: Which countries are evacuating citizens from Sudan?
“This cease-fire aims to establish humanitarian corridors, allowing citizens and residents to access essential resources, healthcare, and safe zones, while also evacuating diplomatic missions,” the RSF said in a statement.
The army announcement used similar language, adding that it will abide by the truce “on the condition that the rebels commit to stopping all hostilities.”
But fighting continued, including in Omdurman, a city across the Nile River from Khartoum. Omdurman resident Amin Ishaq said there were clashes early Tuesday around the state television headquarters and around military bases just outside Omdurman.
“They did not stop fighting,” he said. “They stop only when they run out of ammunition.”
“Sounds of gunfire, explosions and flying warplanes are still heard across Khartoum,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, a senior figure in the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, a group that monitors casualties. “They don’t respect cease-fires.”
Also Read: Diplomats flee Sudan fighting as citizens struggle to escape
Atiya said he suspected the main purpose of declaring a new case-fire was to allow for more foreigners to be evacuated.
Sudan was once a symbol of hope because of its fitful efforts to transition from decades of autocratic rule to democracy. Now it faces a bleak future. Even before April 15, one-third of the population of 46 million relied on humanitarian assistance. Most of those providing aid have suspended operations.
In the past 11 days, Sudanese have faced a harrowing search for safety in the constantly shifting battle of explosions, gunfire and armed fighters looting shops and homes. Many have been huddling in their homes for days. Food and fuel are leaping in price and harder to find, electricity and internet are cut off in much of the country, and hospitals are near collapse.
Those who can afford it were making the 15-hour drive to the Egyptian border or to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Those without means to get abroad streamed out to relatively calmer provinces along the Nile, north and south of Khartoum.
Also Read: Sudan conflict: 91 including Bangladeshis evacuated
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “catastrophic conflagration” that could engulf the whole region. He urged the 15 members of the Security Council to “exert maximum leverage” on both sides in order to “pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss.”
More than 420 people, including at least 291 civilians, have been killed and over 3,700 wounded since the fighting began. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in Khartoum but the RSF still controls many districts in the capital and Omdurman, and has several large strongholds around the country.
Meanwhile, airlifts of foreigners continued.
Britain said Tuesday that it will run evacuation flights for U.K. nationals from an airfield outside Khartoum. However, those trying to get on a flight will have to make their own way to the airfield, said British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
The situation is “dangerous, volatile and unpredictable,” Cleverly told Sky News. “We cannot predict how the situation on the ground will develop."
Officials have said there are as many as 4,000 British citizens in Sudan, 2,000 of whom have registered for potential evacuation. The Foreign Office said priority would be given to families with children, the sick and the elderly.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that France has evacuated 538 people, including 209 French nationals. The large-scale French rescue operation and the inclusion of citizens from three dozen other countries stood in contrast to limited evacuation efforts by the U.S. and Britain.
The British government, which evacuated its diplomats from Sudan over the weekend, has come under growing criticism for its failure to airlift civilians, as some European countries have done.
The U.S. said Monday that it has begun facilitating the departure of private U.S. citizens after swooping in to extract diplomats on Sunday. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. has placed intelligence and reconnaissance assets over the evacuation route from Khartoum to Port Sudan but does not have any U.S. troops on the ground.
Germany said one of its rescue planes flew another mission early Tuesday, bringing the total of people evacuated to nearly 500.
Despite the pullout, U.S. and European officials insisted they were still engaged in trying to secure an end to the fighting. But so far the conflict has shown how little leverage they have with Burhan and Dagalo who appear determined to fight to the end.
The U.S. and EU have been dealing with the generals for years, trying to push them into ceding power to a democratic, civilian government. A pro-democracy uprising led to the 2019 ouster of former strongman Omar al-Bashir. But in 2021, Burhan and Dagalo joined forces to seize power in a coup.
Why Sudan's conflict matters to the rest of the world
Fighting in Sudan between forces loyal to two top generals has put that nation at risk of collapse and could have consequences far beyond its borders.
Both sides have tens of thousands of fighters, foreign backers, mineral riches and other resources that could insulate them from sanctions. It’s a recipe for the kind of prolonged conflict that has devastated other countries in the Middle East and Africa, from Lebanon and Syria to Libya and Ethiopia.
The fighting, which began as Sudan attempted to transition to democracy, already has killed hundreds of people and left millions trapped in urban areas, sheltering from gunfire, explosions and looters.
A look at what is happening and the impact it could have outside Sudan.
WHO IS FIGHTING?
Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, head of the armed forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces that grew out of Darfur’s notorious Janjaweed militias, are each seeking to seize control of Sudan. It comes two years after they jointly carried out a military coup and derailed a transition to democracy that had begun after protesters in 2019 helped force the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir. In recent months, negotiations were underway for a return to the democratic transition.
The victor of the latest fighting is likely to be Sudan's next president, with the loser facing exile, arrest or death. A long-running civil war or partition of the Arab and African country into rival fiefdoms are also possible.
Alex De Waal, a Sudan expert at Tufts University, wrote in a memo to colleagues this week that the conflict should be seen as “the first round of a civil war.”
“Unless it is swiftly ended, the conflict will become a multi-level game with regional and some international actors pursuing their interests, using money, arms supplies and possibly their own troops or proxies,” he wrote.
WHAT DOES THE FIGHING MEAN FOR SUDAN'S NEIGHBORS?
Sudan is Africa's third-largest country by area and straddles the Nile River. It uneasily shares its waters with regional heavyweights Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt relies on the Nile to support its population of over 100 million, and Ethiopia is working on a massive upstream dam that has alarmed both Cairo and Khartoum.
Egypt has close ties to Sudan’s military, which it sees as an ally against Ethiopia. Cairo has reached out to both sides in Sudan to press for a cease-fire but is unlikely to stand by if the military faces defeat.
Sudan borders five additional countries: Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Eritrea and South Sudan, which seceded in 2011 and took 75% of Khartoum's oil resources with it. Nearly all are mired in their own internal conflicts, with various rebel groups operating along the porous borders.
“What happens in Sudan will not stay in Sudan,” said Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group. “Chad and South Sudan look most immediately at risk of potential spillover. But the longer (the fighting) drags on the more likely it is we see major external intervention.”
WHAT EXTERNAL POWERS ARE INTERESTED IN SUDAN?
Arab Gulf countries have looked to the Horn of Africa in recent years as they have sought to project power across the region.
The United Arab Emirates, a rising military power that has expanded its presence across the Middle East and East Africa, has close ties to the Rapid Support Forces, which sent thousands of fighters to aid the UAE and Saudi Arabia in their war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Russia, meanwhile, has long harbored plans to build a naval base capable of hosting up to 300 troops and four ships in Port Sudan, on a crucial Red Sea trading route for energy shipments to Europe.
The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit with close ties to the Kremlin, has made inroads across Africa in recent years and has been operating in Sudan since 2017. The United State and the European Union have imposed sanctions on two Wagner-linked gold mining firms in Sudan accused of smuggling.
WHAT ROLE DO WESTERN COUNTRIES PLAY?
Sudan became an international pariah when it hosted Osama bin Laden and other militants in the 1990s, when al-Bashir had empowered a hard-line Islamist government.
Its isolation deepened over the conflict in the western Darfur region in the 2000s, when Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused of carrying out atrocities while suppressing a local rebellion. The International Criminal Court eventually charged al-Bashir with genocide.
The U.S. removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after the government in Khartoum agreed to forge ties with Israel in 2020.
But billions of dollars in loans and aid were put on hold after the 2021 military coup. That, along with the war in Ukraine and global inflation, sent the economy into free-fall.
CAN EXTERNAL POWERS DO ANYTHING TO STOP THE FIGHTING?
Sudan’s economic woes would seem to provide an opening for Western nations to use economic sanctions to pressure both sides to stand down.
But in Sudan, as in other resource-rich African nations, armed groups have long enriched themselves through the shadowy trade in rare minerals and other natural resources.
Dagalo, a one-time camel herder from Darfur, has vast livestock holdings and gold mining operations. He’s also believed to have been well-paid by Gulf countries for the RSF’s service in Yemen battling Iran-aligned rebels.
The military controls much of the economy, and can also count on businessmen in Khartoum and along the banks of the Nile who grew rich during al-Bashir’s long rule and who view the RSF as crude warriors from the hinterlands.
“Control over political funds will be no less decisive than the battlefield,” De Waal said. “(The military) will want to take control of gold mines and smuggling routes. The RSF will want to interrupt major transport arteries including the road from Port Sudan to Khartoum.”
Meanwhile, the sheer number of would-be mediators — including the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, Egypt, Gulf countries, the African Union and the eight-nation eastern Africa bloc known as IGAD — could render any peace efforts more complicated than the war itself.
“The external mediators risk becoming a traffic jam with no policeman," De Waal said.
39 bodies dug up in cult investigation of pastor in Kenya
Thirty-nine bodies have been found so far on land owned by a pastor in coastal Kenya who was arrested for telling his followers to fast to death.
Malindi sub-county police chief John Kemboi said that more shallow graves have yet to be dug up on the land belonging to pastor Paul Makenzi, who was arrested on April 14 over links to cultism.
The total death toll is 43, because a further four people died after they and others were discovered starving at the Good News International Church last week.
Police have asked a court to allow them to hold Makenzi longer as investigations into the deaths of his followers continue.
A tipoff from members of the public led police to raid the pastor’s property in Malindi, where they found 15 emaciated people, including the four who later died. The followers said they were starving on the pastor's instructions in order to meet Jesus.
Police had been told there were dozens of shallow graves spread across Makenzi’s farm and digging started on Friday.
Makenzi has been on hunger strike for the past four days while in police custody.
The pastor has been arrested twice before, in 2019 and in March of this year, in relation to the deaths of children. Each time, he was released on bond, and both cases are still proceeding through the court.
Local politicians have urged the court not to release him this time, decrying the spread of cults in the Malindi area.
Cults are common in Kenya, which has a largely religious society.
Diplomats flee Sudan fighting as citizens struggle to escape
Foreign governments evacuated diplomats, staff and others from Sudan on Sunday as rival generals battled for a ninth day with no sign of a truce that had been declared for a major Muslim holiday.
While world powers like the U.S. and Britain airlifted their diplomats from the capital of Khartoum, Sudanese desperately sought to flee the chaos. Many risked dangerous roads to cross the northern border into Egypt.
“My family -- my mother, my siblings and my nephews -- are on the road from Sudan to Cairo through Aswan,” prominent Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Abual-Ala wrote on Facebook.
Fighting raged in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum, residents said, despite a hoped-for cease-fire to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
“We did not see such a truce,” Amin al-Tayed said from his home near state TV headquarters in Omdurman, adding that heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rocked the city.
Over 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed and over 3,700 wounded in fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
The RSF said the armed forces unleashed airstrikes on the upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, north of Khartoum. There was no immediate army comment.
The ongoing violence has affected operations at the main international airport, destroying civilian planes and damaging at least one runway, and thick, black smoke rose above it. Other airports also have been knocked out of operation.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted he had spoken with the rival commanders, urging an immediate cease-fire to protect civilians and the evacuation of EU citizens.
In other fighting, a senior military official said it repelled an RSF attack on Kober Prison in Khartoum where Sudan’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, and former officials in his movement have been held since his 2019 ouster. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said a number of prisoners fled but al-Bashir and other high-profile inmates were in a “highly secure” area, adding that “a few prisoners” were killed or wounded.
The RSF claimed the military removed al-Bashir and other prisoners from the facility, although the statement could not be independently confirmed.
The Arqin border crossing with Egypt was crowded with about 30 passenger buses of at least 55 people each, said Suliman al-Kouni, an Egyptian student who fled northward from Khartoum with dozens of other students.
“We traveled 15 hours on land at our own risk,” al-Kouni told The Associated Press by phone. “But many of our friends are still trapped in Sudan.”
Sudan experienced a “near-total collapse” of internet and phone service Sunday, according to the monitoring service NetBlocks.
“It’s possible that infrastructure has been damaged or sabotaged,” said Netblocks director Alp Toker. “This will have a major effect on residents’ ability to stay safe and will impact the evacuation programs that are ongoing.”
After a week of battles that hindered rescues, U.S. special forces swiftly evacuated 70 U.S. Embassy staffers from Khartoum to Ethiopia early Sunday. Although American officials said it was too dangerous for a government-coordinated evacuation of thousands of private citizens, other countries scrambled to remove their citizens as well as their diplomats.
France and Italy said they would accommodate all their citizens who want to leave, as well as those of other countries who could not otherwise join an evacuation operation.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister were given security guarantees by both sides for the evacuation, according to Defense and Foreign Ministry officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly. Two French flights took off Sunday from Khartoum to Djibouti, carrying about 200 people from various countries, and more were planned Monday, according to another French military official speaking anonymously under the same rules.
An Italian air force C-130 that left Khartoum with evacuees landed Sunday night at an air base in Djibouti, the Defense Ministry said. Another plane, carrying Italy's ambassador and military personnel involved in the evacuation, was expected in Djibouti later in the night.
About 100 people were flown out of Khartoum by Spanish military aircraft — more than 30 Spaniards and the rest from Portugal, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina, the foreign ministry said.
Officials in Jordan said four planes landed at Amman military airport carrying 343 Jordanian evacuees from Port Sudan.
Other flights from Sudan were organized by Germany, Greece and the Netherlands.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted that U.K. armed forces evacuated British diplomatic staff and dependents “amid a significant escalation in violence and threats.”
Overland travel through contested areas was possible but dangerous. Khartoum is about 840 kilometers (520 miles) from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia said it evacuated 157 people, including 91 Saudi nationals and citizens of other countries. Saudi state TV showed a large convoy of cars and buses from Khartoum to Port Sudan, where a navy ship took them to the Saudi port of Jeddah.
Fighters attacked a U.S. Embassy convoy last week, and stormed the home of the EU ambassador. Violence wounded an Egyptian Embassy employee in Sudan, according to Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zaid.
Egypt, which said it had over 10,000 citizens in Sudan, urged those in cities other than Khartoum to head to consular offices in Port Sudan and Wadi Halfa in the north for evacuation, the state-run MENA news agency reported.
The power struggle between the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has dealt a harsh blow to Sudan's hopes for a democratic transition. The rival generals came to power after a pro-democracy uprising led to the ouster of the former strongman, al-Bashir. In 2021, the generals joined forces to seize power in a coup.
The current violence came after Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
Both generals, each craving international legitimacy, have accused the other of obstructing the evacuations. The Sudanese military alleged the RSF opened fire on a French convoy, wounding a French national. The RSF countered it came under attack by warplanes as French citizens and diplomats left the embassy for Omdurman, saying the military’s strikes “endangered the lives of French nationals.”
Hospitals have struggled as violence rages. Many wounded are stranded by the fighting, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate that monitors casualties, suggesting the death toll is probably higher than what is known.
The Italian medical group Emergency said 46 of its staff refused to leave, working in hospitals in Khartoum, Nyala and Port Sudan.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere, U.N. agencies said, but millions are sheltering in their homes amid explosions, gunfire and looting without adequate electricity, food or water.
In the western region of Darfur, up to 20,000 people left for neighboring Chad. War is not new to Darfur, where ethnically motivated violence has killed up to 300,000 people since 2003. But Sudan is not used to such heavy fighting in its capital, which "has become a ghost city,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya of the Doctors’ Syndicate.
Khalid Omar, a spokesman for the pro-democracy bloc that seeks to restore civilian rule, urged both generals to resolve their differences. “There is an opportunity to stop this war and put the county on the right path,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is a war fueled by groups from the deposed regime who want it to continue.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Washington did not have a “deep relationship" with either side in the conflict because Sudan was under “the brutal dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir” for 30 years.
“These two warring factions have started what may well be a fight to the finish,” Coons told CBS' “Face the Nation.”
Sudan army: Rescue of foreign citizens, diplomats expected
The Sudanese army said Saturday it was coordinating efforts to evacuate American, British, Chinese and French citizens and diplomats from Sudan on military aircraft, as the bloody fighting that has engulfed the vast African nation entered its second week.
The military said that its chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, had spoken to leaders of several countries who have requested safe evacuations of their citizens and diplomats from Sudan. The prospect has vexed officials as most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out of the capital, Khartoum, has proven intensely dangerous.
Burhan “agreed to provide the necessary assistance to secure such evacuations for various countries,” the military said.
Questions have swirled over how the mass rescues of foreign citizens would unfold, with Sudan’s main international airport closed and millions of people sheltering indoors. As battles between the Sudanese army led by Burhan and a rival powerful paramilitary group rage in and around Khartoum, including in residential areas, foreign countries have struggled to repatriate their citizens — some of whom are running short on food and basic supplies while hunkered down.
Burhan said that some diplomats from Saudi Arabia had already been transferred by land to Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport on the Red Sea, and airlifted back to the kingdom. He said that Jordan’s diplomats would soon be evacuated in the same way. The port is in Sudan’s far east, some 840 kilometers (520 miles) from Khartoum.
The Pentagon said earlier this week it was moving additional troops and equipment to a Naval base in the tiny Gulf of Aden nation of Djibouti to prepare for the evacuation of U.S. Embassy personnel. But the White House said Friday it had no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of an estimated 16,000 American citizens trapped in Sudan.
Burhan told Saudi-owned TV station Al-Hadath on Saturday that Khartoum’s airport would not handle any evacuations because of the ongoing fighting. He claimed that the military had regained control over all the other airports in the country, except for one in the southwestern city of Nyala.
“We share the international community’s concern about foreign nationals,” he said. “Living conditions are deteriorating.”
Even as the warring sides said Friday they’d agreed to a cease-fire for the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, explosions and gunfire rang out across Khartoum on Saturday. Two cease-fire attempts earlier this week also rapidly collapsed. The turmoil has dealt a perhaps fatal blow to hopes for the country’s transition to a civilian-led democracy and raised concerns the chaos could draw in its neighbors, including Chad, Egypt and Libya.
“People need to realize that the war has been continuous since day one. It has not stopped for one moment,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, secretary of the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The clashes have killed over 400 people so far, according to the World Health Organization. The bombardments, gunbattles and sniper fire in densely populated areas have hit civilian infrastructure, including many hospitals.
The international airport near the center of the capital has come under heavy shelling as the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, has tried to take control of the compound. In an apparent effort to oust the RSF fighters, the Sudanese army has pounded the airport with airstrikes, gutting at least one runway and leaving wrecked planes scattered on the tarmac. The full extent of damage at the airfield remains unclear.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia and Jordan both announced that they had started arranging for the repatriation of their citizens stuck in Sudan. Officials did not elaborate on how the plans would unfold. Jordan said it was “taking into account the security conditions on the ground” and was coordinating its efforts with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The conflict has opened a dangerous new chapter in Sudan’s history, thrusting the country into uncertainty.
“No one can predict when and how this war will end,” Burhan told Al-Hadath. “I am currently in the command center and will only leave it in a coffin.”
The current explosion of violence came after Burhan and the chief of the RSF, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
The rival generals rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of popular uprisings that led to the ouster of Sudan’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019. Two years later, they joined forces to seize power in a coup that ousted the civilian leaders.
Both the military and RSF have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of atrocities in crushing a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Many Sudanese — trapped in their homes as food supplies dwindle — fear that despite the generals’ repeated promises, the violence will only escalate as tens of thousands of foreign citizens prepare to escape Sudan.
“We are sure both sides of fighting are more careful about foreign lives than the lives of Sudanese citizens,” Atiya said.