africa
UN agency suspends food aid to Ethiopia’s Tigray amid theft
The United Nations food relief agency has suspended aid deliveries to Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid an internal investigation into the theft of food meant for hungry people, according to four humanitarian workers.
The World Food Program is responsible for delivering food from the U.N. and other partners to Tigray, the center of a devastating two-year civil war that ended with a ceasefire in November.
More than 5 million of the region’s 6 million people rely on aid.
WFP informed its humanitarian partners on April 20 that it was temporarily suspending deliveries of food to Tigray amid reports of food misappropriation, one of the four humanitarian workers told AP. Three other aid workers confirmed this information. They all insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to a journalist on this matter.
Last month, AP reported that the WFP was investigating cases of food misappropriation and diversion in Ethiopia, where a total of 20 million people need humanitarian help due to drought and conflict
A letter sent by the WFP’s Ethiopia director on April 5 asked humanitarian partners to share “any information or cases of food misuse, misappropriation or diversion that you are aware of or that are brought to your attention by your staff, beneficiaries or local authorities.” At the time, two aid workers told AP that the stolen supplies included enough food to feed 100,000 people. The food was discovered missing from a warehouse in the Tigray city of Sheraro. It was not clear who was responsible for the theft.
Tigray’s new interim president, Getachew Reda, said last month he discussed “the growing challenge of diversion & sale of food aid meant for the needy” with senior WFP officials during a visit by the agency to Mekele, the regional capital.
A spokesperson for the WFP in Ethiopia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
UN envoy says Sudan’s warring sides agree to negotiate
Sudan’s warring generals have agreed to send representatives for negotiations, potentially in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations’ top official in the country told The Associated Press on Monday, even as the two sides clashed in the capital despite another three-day extension of a fragile cease-fire.
If the talks come together, they would initially focus on establishing a “stable and reliable” cease-fire monitored by national and international observers, Volker Perthes said, but he warned there were still challenges in holding the negotiations. A string of temporary truces over the past week has eased fighting only in some areas, but in others fierce battles have continued to drive civilians from their homes and push the country into disaster.
Humanitarian groups have been trying to restore the flow of help to a country where nearly a third of the population of 46 million relied on international aid even before the explosion of violence. The U.N. food agency on Monday said it was ending the temporary suspension of its operations in Sudan, put in place after three of its team members were killed in the war-wrecked Darfur region early in the fighting.
The World Food Program will resume food distribution in four provinces — al-Qadaref, Gezira, Kassala and White Nile — working in areas where security permits, said Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a statement. The numbers of those in need of help will “grow significantly as fighting continues,” she said. “To best protect our necessary humanitarian workers and the people of Sudan, the fighting must stop.”
A day earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in a planeload of medical supplies to bring some relief to hospitals overwhelmed by the mayhem.
The United States, conducted its first evacuation of American civilians from Sudan. Watched over by U.S. military drones, a group of Americans made the perilous journey by road from the capital, Khartoum, to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. On Monday, a U.S. Navy fast transport ship took 308 evacuees from Port Sudan to the Saudi port of Jeddah, according to Saudi officials.
Direct talks, if they take place, would be the first major sign of progress since fighting erupted on April 15 between the army and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. For much of the conflict, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have appeared determined to fight to the end.
Their struggle for power has put millions of Sudanese in the middle of gun battles, artillery bombardments and airstrikes. Around 530 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in the conflict, with another 4,500 wounded, the Sudanese Health Ministry said. Tens of thousands have fled Khartoum and other cities, and more than two-thirds of hospitals in areas with active fighting are out of service, with fighters looting the dwindling supplies.
Explosions and gunfire echoed in parts of Khartoum and its neighboring city, Omdurman, on Monday, residents said, hours after the two sides committed to the 72-hour cease-fire extension.
Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate, said the fighting has raged early Monday in different areas in the capital, including the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace, and the international airport. There were also clashes in the upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, he said.
Many hospitals in the capital remained out of service or inaccessible because of the fighting, while others have been occupied by the warring factions, particularly the RSF, he said.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have led an international push to get the generals to stop fighting, then engage in deeper negotiations to resolve the crisis.
Speaking from Port Sudan, the U.N. envoy Perthes said they still face daunting challenges in getting the two sides to abide by a real halt in fighting where violations are prevented. One possibility was to establish a monitoring mechanism that includes Sudanese and foreign observers, “but that has to be negotiated,” he said.
Talks on entrenching the cease-fire could take place in either Saudi Arabia or South Sudan, he said, adding that the former may be easier logistically since it has close ties to both sides.
But even talks in Saudi Arabia has challenges, he said, since each side needs safe passage through territory of the other to reach talks. “That is very difficult in a situation where there is a lack of trust,” he said.
The eruption of fighting capped months of worsening disputes between Burhan and Dagalo as the international community tried to work out a deal for establishing civilian rule.
“We all saw the enormous tensions,” Perthes said. “But very concretely, we have to say that our efforts to de-escalate did not succeed.” He said he had been warning repeatedly that “any single spark” could cause the power struggle to explode.
Perthes warned of a “major humanitarian crisis” as people were running out of food and fresh water in Khartoum and fighting damaged water systems.
A real cease-fire is vital to getting access to residents who are trapped in their homes or injured, he said. “If we don’t get a stable cease fire, then it means that the humanitarian situation will be even worse.”
He also warned the fighting could pull in other armed factions in a country where multiple groups have fought several civil wars over the past decade. “And that could transform into a broader confrontation between different groups and communities and militias in the country,” he said.
As battle for Sudan continues, civilian deaths top 400
Gunfire and heavy artillery fire persisted Saturday in parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, residents said, despite the extension of a cease-fire between the country’s two top generals, whose battle for power has killed hundreds and sent thousands fleeing for their lives.
The civilian death toll jumped Saturday to 411 people, according to the Sudan Doctors' Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The fighting has wounded another 2,023 civilians so far, the group added. In the city of Genena, the provincial capital of war-ravaged West Darfur, intensified violence has killed 89 people. Fighters have moved into homes and taken over stores and hospitals as they battle in the densely populated streets, the syndicate said.
Khartoum, a city of some 5 million people, has been transformed into a front line in the grinding conflict between Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s military, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, which has dashed once-euphoric hopes of Sudan's democratic transition.
Foreign countries continued to evacuate diplomatic staff and nationals while thousands of Sudanese fled across borders. Britain said it was ending its evacuation flights Saturday, after demand for spots on the planes had declined.
Over 50,000 refugees — mostly women and children — have crossed over the western border to Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the United Nations said, raising fears of wider instability. Ethnic fighting and turmoil has scarred South Sudan and the Central African Republic while Chad's own democratic transition has stalled after a coup.
Those who escape Khartoum face more obstacles on their way to safety. The overland journey to Port Sudan, where ships then evacuate people via the Red Sea, has proven long and risky. Hatim el-Madani, a former journalist, said that paramilitary fighters were refugees at roadblocks out of the capital, demanding they hand over their phones and valuables. stopping
“There's an outlaw, bandit-like nature to the RSF militia,” he said, referring to the Rapid Support Forces. “It indicates they don't have a supply line in place and that could get worse in the coming days.”
Airlifts from the country have also posed challenges, with a Turkish evacuation plane hit by gunfire outside Khartoum on Friday.
On Saturday — despite a cease-fire extended under heavy international pressure by 72 hours early Friday — clashes continued around the presidential palace, headquarters of the state broadcaster and a military base in Khartoum, residents said. The battles sent thick columns of black smoke billowing over the city skyline.
In a few areas near the capital, including in Omdurman, residents reported that some shops were reopening as the scale of fighting dwindled amid the tenuous cease-fire. But in other areas, residents sheltering at home as explosions thundered around them said fighters were going from house to house, terrifying people and stealing whatever they could find.
Now in its third week, the fighting has left swaths of Khartoum without electricity and running water. The Sudanese Health Ministry put the latest overall death toll at 528, with 4,500 wounded.
Those sheltering at home say they're running out of food and basic supplies. Residents on Saturday in the city of Omdurman, west of Khartoum, said they'd been waiting three days to get fuel — complicating their escape plans.
The U.N. relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said that U.N. offices in Khartoum, as well as the cities of Genena and Nyala in Darfur had been attacked and looted. “This is unacceptable — and prohibited under international law,” he said.
Genena's main hospital was also leveled in the fighting, said Sudan’s health ministry.
Over the past 15 days of pummeling each other, the generals have each failed to deal a decisive blow to the other in their struggle for control of Africa’s third largest nation. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in the fighting, with its monopoly on air power, but it has been impossible to confirm its claims of advances.
"Soon, the Sudanese state with its well-grounded institutions will rise as victorious, and attempts to hijack our country will be aborted forever,” the Sudanese military said Saturday.
Both sides in the conflict have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
A unit of Sudan's armed forces, known as the Central Reserve Police, have also been sanctioned by the U.S. for grave human rights violations against Sudan’s pro-democracy protesters.
Accusations of rape, torture and other abuses against demonstrators carried out by the unit first surfaced in 2021, after Burhan and Dagalo joined forces in a military coup that ousted a civilian government. The Sudanese Interior Ministry confirmed the deployment of the widely criticized Central Reserve Police in Khartoum on Saturday, posting photos of the fighters riding with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks.
Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was ousted in the 2021 coup, appealed to the international community from a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, to push for an immediate halt to the conflict. He warned that a full-blown civil war in the strategically located country would have consequences not just in Sudan but for the world.
“God forbid if Sudan is to reach a proper civil war ... it is a huge country and very diverse ... it would be a nightmare for the world,” he said.
But the generals have so far rejected attempts at a compromise, and regional mediators have been unable to travel to Khartoum because of the chaotic fighting.
Still, African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki said he would help initiate a “Sudanese-led” political process and try to send peacekeepers to the country.
“I’m ready myself to go there, even by road," Faki said. “We ask the two generals to create the conditions for us to go to Khartoum.”
Heavy clashes rock Sudan’s capital despite truce extension
Heavy explosions and gunfire rocked Sudan’s capital, Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman early Friday, residents said, despite the extension of a fragile truce between the county’s two top generals whose power struggle has killed hundreds.
Turkey also said one of its evacuation aircrafts was hit Friday by gunfire outside Khartoum with no causalities.
The escalation came hours after both sides accepted a 72-hour extension of the truce, apparently to allow foreign governments complete the evacuation of their citizens from the chaos-stricken African nation.
Multiple short truces have not stopped the fighting, but they created enough of a lull for tens of thousands of Sudanese to flee to safer areas and for foreign nations to evacuate thousands of their citizens by land, air and sea.
Residents reported fierce clashes in Khartoum’s upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, where the military earlier had used warplanes to bomb its rivals, the Rapid Support Forces, in the area.Clashes were also reported around the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace and the area close to the Khartoum international airport. All these areas are flashpoints since the war between the military and the RSF erupted on April 15.
“Heavy explosions and constant gunfire are heard across Kafouri streets,” said Abdalla, a Kafouri resident who asked to be identified only by his first name for his safety.
In Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, a protest group reported “constant explosions” in the district of Karari early Friday. It called residents in the area to remain vigilant.
The RSF has claimed that the army’s aircraft bombed its positions in Omdurman and Jabal Awliya, south of Khartoum. The military, meanwhile, accused the paramilitary force of beginning the attack. It was not possible to verify either claim.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said “light weapons were fired” at a C-130 aircraft heading to Wadi Sayidna airbase, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) north of Khartoum, to evacuate Turkish civilians. The plane landed safely, the ministry said in a tweet, and no personnel were injured.
The Sudanese military blamed the RSF for firing at the Turkish aircraft, a claim the paramilitary force denied.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the French military evacuated dozens of employees with the U.N. and other international aid agencies Thursday night from al-Fasher, a city in Sudan’s western Darfur region, to Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
U.N. envoy Volker Perthes remained in Sudan along with a “small” U.N. team, according to the U.N. mission in the African country.
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 Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. In 2021, the generals joined forces to seize power in a coup that ousted a western-backed join military-civilian administration.
The fighting has further plunged the country, especially its capital, into chaos, with tens of thousands seeking safety elsewhere. Many headed to the northern borders with Egypt, or to the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Those who remain in the capital have been living in rapidly deteriorating conditions, mostly trapped inside their homes for days amid the clashes. Food, water and other services have become scarce, and electricity is cut off across much of Khartoum and other cities.
The health care system is near to collapse with dozens of hospitals became out of service because of attacks, lack of staff or power. Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations and evacuated most if its employees out of the country.
At least 512 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in Sudan since April 15, with another 4,200 wounded, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry. The Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties, has recorded at least 303 civilians killed and 1,848 wounded.
The fighting also resulted in widespread looting and destruction in the capital and elsewhere across the county. Major open-air markets, businesses and houses were stormed and looted by groups of armed men, with many blamed elements of the RSF.
The Umma Party, the largest political entity in Sudan, meanwhile said in a statement that RSF elements stormed the house of the party's leader, Mubarak al-Fadel in Amarat, one of Khartoum’s most prestigious neighborhoods.
The party said al-Fadel and his family were not at home when the storming took place on April 21, the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The party said the paramilitary force damaged the house and looted the family’s gold before leaving the second day.
There was no comment from the RSF, but the paramilitary force has repeatedly sought to distance itself from looting and robbery, saying they were armed men disguised in RSF uniforms.
In the Darfur city of Genena, the situation remained volatile Friday, a day after armed fighters rampaged through the city, battling each other, killing dozens and looting shops and homes.
“The fighting stopped but the situation is shaky,” said Dr. Salah Tour, a board member of the Doctors’ Syndicate in the West Darfur province, of which Genena is the capital.
He said residents took advantage of the relative clam Friday morning and began collecting dead bodies from the streets for burial and assessing destructions and damage at their properties. The Sudanese Red Crescent also helped in collecting the bodies, he said.
Fighters in RSF uniforms attacked several neighborhoods across Genena on Thursday, driving many families from their homes. The violence spiraled as tribal fighters joining the fray in the city of around half a million people near the border with Chad.
Tour said the city suffers from “extremely dire shortage” of food, water, and other services amid a dayslong power outage. Health care workers were also struggling to reopen hospitals to treat wounded people, he said.
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.