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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United Nations Security Council on Thursday condemned an assault by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur, expressing grave concern in a statement “at the heightened risk of large-scale atrocities, including ethnically motivated atrocities.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Caitlin Webber)
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The leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has declared an investigation into what he called violations committed by his soldiers during the capture of el-Fasher.
The announcement by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, came after escalating reports of mass civilian killings following the RSF takeover of the city in the Darfur region on Sunday.
The UN Security Council is expected to hold a meeting on Sudan, which is in its third year of civil war between the army and the paramilitary fighters.
The RSF leader spoke after international outrage about reports of mass killings in el -Fasher, apparently documented by his paramilitary fighters in social media videos.
Hemedti said he was sorry for the disaster that had befallen the people of el-Fasher and admitted there had been violations by his forces, which would be investigated by a committee that has now arrived in the city.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is appalled and deeply shocked by reports that nearly 500 civilians, including patients and their companions, were shot dead, at the last partially functioning hospital in el-Fasher.
The RSF denies widespread allegations that the killings in el-Fasher are ethnically motivated and follow a pattern of the Arab paramilitaries targeting non-Arab populations.
Activists have also stepped up demands for international pressure on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is accused of providing military support to the RSF.
The UAE denies this despite evidence presented in UN reports.
El-Fasher had been the army’s last stronghold in the Darfur region, and was captured by the RSF after an 18-month siege marked by starvation and heavy bombardment.
The capture of el-Fasher effectively splits the country, with the RSF now in control of most of Darfur and much of neighbouring Kordofan and the army holding the capital, Khartoum, central and eastern regions along the Red Sea.
The two warring rivals had been allies – coming to power together in a coup in 2021 – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.
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Fears are mounting of mass killings in the key Sudanese city of el-Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured it from government forces.
In a address on Monday evening, Sudan’s military chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said he had approved the withdrawal of troops in response to the “systematic destruction and killing of civilians”.
The UN said there were credible reports of “summary executions”, while Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab referred to satellite imagery of “piles of bodies executed en masse”.
The RSF has denied accusations of killing civilians and targeting non-Arab ethnic groups, despite evidence presented by the UN and human rights organisations.
The fall of el-Fasher in the Darfur region could mark a significant turning point in Sudan’s civil war, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 12 million people since April 2023.
RSF fighters had been besieging el-Fasher for 18 months, trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians in the city and sparking a hunger crisis.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab told the BBC that since the city was captured, satellite images have shown “piles of bodies executed en masse, or shot by snipers attempting to breach” the city’s perimeter wall.
And in a post on X, the research group’s executive director described his shock at being able to see “apparent pools of blood” via satellite imagery.
“The horror, scale, and velocity of killing happening now [is] unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a quarter century of doing this work,” Nathaniel Raymond said.
Similarly, a UN humanitarian team in Sudan said it was “horrified” by reports of atrocities like “summary executions”, attacks on civilians along escape routes, sexual violence and house-to-house raids.
The Joint Force, an alliance of Darfuri armed groups supporting the military, said 2,000 civilians had been killed since the city fell. There is no independent confirmation of this.
Meanwhile, residents who managed to flee el-Fasher have told the BBC they are fearful and distressed after losing contact with relatives still stuck in the city.
One man said several of his relatives were “massacred”, but he has not been able to contact any surviving members of his family as communication lines have been cut since the RSF took over.
“They were gathered in one place and all killed. Now we have no idea what has happened to those who are still alive,” he said.
On Tuesday, the European Union said it wanted “all warring parties to de-escalate” the conflict, while the African Union condemned “alleged war crimes and ethnically targeted killings of civilians”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the only hospital still functioning, albeit partially, in el-Fasher was attacked on Sunday.
A nurse was reportedly killed in the assault, it added.
UN head Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” over the current situation in the city, and condemned the reported “violations of international humanitarian law”.
On Monday, after confirming the army had withdrawn from el-Fasher, Sudanese military chief Gen Burhan denounced inaction by the international community to end the RSF’s atrocities and vowed to fight “until this land is purified”.
“We can turn the tables every time, and we can return every land desecrated by these traitors to the nation’s fold,” he said.
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Fears of massacre as Sudan paramilitary group takes key city after 18-month siege
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The UN has called for safe passage for trapped civilians out of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher after paramilitary fighters announced they had seized control of the army’s main base there.
Sudan’s military has not acknowledged loss of the site, which would be a significant victory for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the ongoing civil war.
UN chief António Guterres said the latest fighting marked a “terrible escalation” in the conflict, adding that the suffering of civilians was “unbearable”, AFP news agency reports.
El-Fasher is the last army foothold in the vast western region of Darfur, and has been besieged by the RSF and its allies for 18 months.
Heavy fighting has been reported since Saturday after RSF fighters captured the home of the North Darfur governor.
UN Human rights chief Volker Türk warned that the “risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in el-Fasher is mounting by the day”.
The Sudanese Doctors’ Network said the RSF had already carried out ethnically motivated killings of dozens of people in the city and had looted medical facilities and pharmacies.
Imran Abdullah, an adviser to the RSF commander, denied the group’s fighters were targeting civilians.
“On the contrary, they are the sole guarantor and protector of all those fleeing conflict areas, particularly in el-Fashir,” he told BBC Arabic’s Middle East Lifeline radio programme.
Social media videos verified by the BBC now show RSF combatants celebrating the capture of the army’s el-Fasher headquarters.
They claim to have seized full control of the city, but the army’s local allies say fighting continues in some parts.
Communication lines to el-Fasher have been almost completely cut off, while those who managed to flee are enduring harrowing hours filled with fear and uncertainty.
“We’ve witnessed many of our relatives being massacred – they were gathered in one place and all killed. Now we have no idea what has happened to those who are still alive,” one man told the BBC.
Another resident who fled said they were “extremely worried, as we still have no information about what has happened to the people inside el-Fasher – the children, the elderly, the wounded”.
The RSF has been accused of targeting civilians in airstrikes and trapping nearly 250,000 people after encircling the city with an earth wall, leaving many on the brink of starvation.
The city is one of the worst battlegrounds of Sudan’s civil war, leading the UN to call it an “epicentre of suffering”.
The UN’s top humanitarian official Tom Fletcher said he was deeply alarmed at the reports of civilian casualties.
“With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified – shelled, starving, and without access to food, healthcare, or safety,” Fletcher said in a statement.
“Civilians must be allowed safe passage and be able to access aid,” he added.
The US has also called for safe passage and is trying to negotiate a ceasefire.
Taking el-Fasher would be a crucial comeback for the RSF after defeat in Khartoum.
But it is likely a sign that the civil war will continue, not end.
Sudan has been ravaged by conflict since 2023, after top commanders of the RSF and Sudanese army fell out and a vicious power struggle ensued.
More than 150,000 people have died across the country and about 12 million have fled their homes, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises.
The army controls most of the north and the east, with el-Fasher being until now the last major urban centre in Darfur still held by government forces and its allies.
The RSF controls almost all of Darfur and much of the neighbouring Kordofan region.
The group has previously said that it hopes to form a rival government in el-Fasher when it assumes complete control.
Additional reporting by Natasha Booty, Damian Zane, Danai Nesta Kupemba and Peter Mwai
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Hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped amid an escalation of fighting in El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Sunday.
“With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified – shelled, starving, and without access to food, healthcare, or safety,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher.
Fletcher said he was “deeply alarmed by reports of civilian casualties and forced displacement,” calling for “an immediate ceasefire in El Fasher, across Darfur and throughout Sudan.”
“Civilians must be allowed safe passage and be able to access aid. Those fleeing to safer areas must be allowed to do so safely and in dignity. Those who stay – including local responders – must be protected. Attacks on civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations must stop immediately.”
According to UN estimates, around 300,000 people are living in desperate conditions in El Fasher, which has been cut off for more than a year.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has taken El Fasher, the last government-controlled city in the Darfur region, according to its own statements.
The military did not initially comment on this. According to media reports, fighting continues in the capital of North Darfur state. The information could not initially be independently verified.
Sudan’s de facto ruler, Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, has been locked in a bloody power struggle with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo since April 2023. Both sides have been accused of serious human rights violations.
The UN considers the situation to be the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with more than 12 million people displaced and more than 26 million facing starvation – about half the country’s population – are suffering from acute hunger. The regions of Darfur and Kordofan, currently controlled by the RSF, are particularly affected.
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(Reuters) -Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said on Sunday they had captured the army headquarters in the city of al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the Darfur region in the west of the country.
The army did not immediately give a statement on its current position.
The RSF has besieged the city, the capital of North Darfur state, for the past 18 months as it fights the army and allied former rebels and local fighters. It has targeted civilians in frequent drone and artillery strikes, while the siege has spread starvation among the city where 250,000 people remain.
Al-Fashir would be a significant political victory for the RSF and could hasten a physical split of the country by enabling the paramilitary group to consolidate its control over the vast Darfur region, which it has identified as the base for a parallel government established this summer.
Activists have long warned that an RSF takeover of the city would also lead to ethnic attacks, as seen after the capture of the Zamzam camp to the south.
Last week, the RSF said it was facilitating the exit of civilians and surrendered fighters from al-Fashir, but those who have left have reported robberies, sexual assaults, and killings by RSF soldiers on the road.
A U.N.-mandated mission said last month the RSF had committed multiple crimes against humanity in the siege of al-Fashir. The army has also been accused of atrocities.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, Nafisa Eltahir, and Menna Alaa El Din; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.
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There is a place in Sudan where it is almost possible to forget that a devastating civil war is going on.
Wrapped in bright colours and wearing plastic sandals, women in the country’s Jebel Marra mountains set off each morning on donkeys, children in tow, to tend the fields.
In a Mediterranean-like climate and using the fertile soil, they grow peanuts, oranges, apples and strawberries – rare crops for a country now facing one of the world’s worst hunger crises. Before the conflict, Jebel Marra’s organic oranges were particularly prized across the country for their juiciness.
The mountainous area in this part of the western Darfur region is dotted with green peaks, especially now as it is the rainy season.
The rest of Sudan teeters on the edge of disaster.
Across the country, as a result of the two-and-a-half years of fighting that has crippled agriculture, almost 25 million people – half the population – are facing severe food shortages, including more than 600,000 who are experiencing famine, according to the UN.
But in the lush highlands of Jebel Marra, the problem is not growing food – it is getting the produce out.
“We almost sell them for free and sometimes get rid of them on the way [to market], because they get rotten,” says Hafiz Ali, an orange vendor in Golo town, which is in the midst of the mountains in Central Darfur state.
The insecurity and the poor state of the roads make transportation almost impossible.
People in Jebel Marra are trying to carry on with their lives as normal despite the conflict elsewhere in the country [Zeinab Mohammed Salih]
Jebel Marra is the last remaining territory controlled by the Sudan Liberation Army – Abdulwahid (SLA-AW). This armed group has remained neutral in the current war. It has never signed a peace deal with the authorities in Khartoum going back to 2003 and the conflict over Darfur at that time.
SLA-AW has controlled what locals describe as “liberated areas” for more than two decades.
Now, surrounded by war on all sides, the region is increasingly isolated.
To the west and north, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militias have blocked major roads. To the south, RSF positions are bombed almost every week by the Sudanese army – these attacks are also claiming civilian lives.
The RSF also control areas to the east.
The result is a closed-off environment where farmers and middlemen can no longer reach the national markets in the cities of el-Fasher 130km (82 miles) away, or Tine, on the Chadian border, 275km (170 miles) away.
There are other alternatives but none have the same national reach and all involve treacherous journeys.
Tawila, right on the edge of SLA-AW territory, has become the site of a makeshift market. It is on the road to el-Fasher, which is cut off by an RSF siege, and has become home to tens of thousands who have managed to flee that city.
Because of the difficulty of moving the produce any further, there is an oversupply in the market and as a result prices here have fallen.
There are some here who are looking to buy supplies to try and smuggle produce into el-Fasher – an extremely dangerous and life-threatening trade.
Getting goods this far has always been a challenge and food can sometimes rot on the way.
“To travel about 12km, it takes you a whole day of driving in the mountains and the mud,” says Yousif, a fruit vendor in Tawila. But now, he says, the insecurity makes things even worse.
In Central Darfur, a recent truce between leaders from the Fur ethnic group – dominant here – and Arab nomads has allowed limited trade in some areas.
Markets have reopened in the SLA-AW- controlled town of Nertiti, where Arab women sell sour milk and Fur farmers bring fruit and vegetables. But the arrangement is fragile.
“The market only opens once a week. Travel is still dangerous,” says a trader from Nertiti.
“Armed robberies still happen on the roads, even after the agreement.”
Fruit and crops can now also be sold in the market in RSF-controlled Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur state. But Arab militias allied to the RSF are frequently accused of harassing or attacking civilians in the area, though the groups deny any wrongdoing.
Each Thursday, which is market day, the number of checkpoints between Nertiti and Zalingei increases, sometimes reaching more than two dozen. But as more vehicles are on the road on market days, more people take the opportunity to travel.
The checkpoints, some manned by RSF fighters and others by Arab militia, are sometimes overseen by just one armed man in plainclothes, who demands a fee. Drivers will then often try to negotiate as passengers watch on silently.
There appears to be plenty of pasture for the cattle to graze on [Zeinab Mohammed Salih]
Returning back to the Jebel Marra region, SLA-AW checkpoints guard every road into the mountains, and armed men also demand money.
Bags are searched with contraband, even including skin-bleaching creams, widely used elsewhere in Sudan, are confiscated.
Once inside the SLA-AW controlled area, despite the relative peace, there are clear signs of the conflict elsewhere in the country.
Lorries filled with people fleeing the fighting, particularly around el-Fasher, can be seen on a daily basis.
Many of them find shelter in schools, clinics and other public spaces receiving little to no humanitarian assistance – aid agencies struggle to get through all the checkpoints.
In Golo, the de facto capital of the SLA-AW territory, a woman who had escaped from el-Fasher, described the dire conditions. She is now sheltering in a classroom with 25 other freshly arrived families.
“We have no income. No jobs to do, I used to work as a nurse and I can farm, but the land here belongs to people who work only for themselves. We don’t know what to do,” the woman said.
As she spoke, sick, elderly people lay on the ground and children were screaming from hunger. At least there will be some relief as the food that could not be taken out of Golo will be available.
This is the Jebel Marra region, a strange world surrounded by war. A world of green mountains and waterfalls. A world of bright, juicy fruit. A world of frightened evacuees.
One fruit trader said he had lost hope in both warring parties.
“We’re not part of the war – we just want to sell our oranges.”
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. jury on Friday returned a historic verdict against BNP Paribas, finding the French bank helped Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions.
The federal jury in Manhattan ordered BNP Paribas to pay a combined $20.5 million to three Sudanese plaintiffs who testified about human rights abuses perpetrated under former President Omar al-Bashir’s rule.
Lawyers for the three plaintiffs, who now reside in the U.S., said the verdict opens the door for over 20,000 refugees in the U.S. to seek billions of dollars in damages from the French bank.
“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fueled by U.S. dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” said Bobby DiCello, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
A BNP Paribas spokesman said the verdict should be overturned on appeal, adding that the bank believes it is specific to the three individual plaintiffs and should not have broader application.
“BNP Paribas believes that this result is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict, which is based on a distortion of controlling Swiss law and ignores important evidence the bank was not permitted to introduce,” the spokesman said.
The verdict followed a five-week jury trial conducted by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied a request by BNP Paribas to get the case thrown out ahead of trial.
The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence.
Hellerstein wrote in his decision last year that there were facts showing a relationship between BNP Paribas’ banking services and abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.
The ruling came in a proposed class action lawsuit brought by U.S. residents who had fled non-Arab indigenous black African communities in South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan.
The U.S. government recognized the Sudanese conflict as a genocide in 2004.
BNP Paribas had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97 billion penalty to settle U.S. charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; editing by Diane Craft)
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Warning: This piece contains details that some readers may find distressing
Touma hasn’t eaten in days. She sits silently, her eyes glassy as she stares aimlessly across the hospital ward.
In her arms, motionless and severely malnourished, lies her three-year-old daughter, Masajed.
Touma seems numb to the cries of the other young children around her. “I wish she would cry,” the 25-year-old mother tells us , looking at her daughter. “She hasn’t cried in days.”
Bashaer Hospital is one of the last functioning hospitals in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, devastated by the civil war which has been raging since April 2023. Many have travelled hours to get here for specialist care.
The malnutrition ward is filled with children who are too weak to fight disease, their mothers by their bedside, helpless.
Cries here can’t be soothed and each one cuts deep.
Touma and her family were forced to flee after fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) reached their home about 200km (125 miles) south-west of Khartoum.
“[The RSF] took everything we owned – our money and our livestock – straight out of our hands,” she says. “We escaped with only our lives.”
With no money or food, Touma’s children began to suffer.
She looks stunned as she recounts their old life. “In the past, our house was full of goodness. We had livestock, milk and dates. But now we have nothing.”
Sudan is currently experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.
According to the UN, three million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The hospitals that are left are overwhelmed.
Bashaer Hospital offers care and basic treatment free of charge.
However, the lifesaving medicines needed by the children in the malnutrition ward must be paid for by their families.
Masajed is a twin, she and her sister Manahil were brought to the hospital together. But the family could only afford antibiotics for one child.
Touma had to make the impossible choice – she chose Manahil.
“I wish they could both recover and grow,” her grief-stricken voice cracks, “and that I could watch them walking and playing together as they did before.
“I just want them both to get better,” Touma says, cradling her dying daughter.
“I am alone. I have nothing. I have only God.”
Survival rates here are low. For the families on this ward the war has taken everything. They have been left with nothing and no means to buy the medicines that would save their children.
As we leave, the doctor says none of the children in this ward will survive.
Across the whole of Khartoum, children’s lives have been rewritten by the civil war.
Reminders of the conflict lie strewn across Khartoum [Liam Weir / BBC]
What began as an eruption of fighting between forces loyal to two generals – army chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – soon engulfed the city.
For two years – until last March when the army retook control – the city was gripped by war as rival fighters clashed.
Khartoum, once a hub of culture and commerce on the banks of the River Nile, became a battlefield. Tanks rolled into neighbourhoods. Fighter jets roared overhead. Civilians were trapped between crossfire, artillery bombardments and drone strikes.
It is in this devastated landscape, amid the silence of destruction, that the fragile voice of a child rises from the rubble.
Twelve-year-old Zaher wheels himself through the wreckage, past burnt-out cars, tanks, broken houses and forgotten bullets.
“I’m coming home,” he sings softly to himself as his wheelchair rolls over broken glass and shrapnel. “I can no longer see my home. Where’s my home?”
His voice, fragile but determined, contains both a lament for what has been lost and a quiet hope that one day, he may finally go home.
In a building now being used as a shelter, Zaher’s mother Habibah tells me about what life was like under RSF control.
“The situation was very difficult,” she says. “We couldn’t switch on our lights at night – it was as if we were thieves. We didn’t light fires. We didn’t move at all at night.”
She sits next to her son in a room lined with single beds.
“At any moment, whether you were sleeping or taking a shower, standing or sitting, you find them [the RSF] breathing down your neck.”
Many fled the capital, but Zaher and his mother had no means to get out. To survive, they sold lentils on the streets.
Then one morning, as they worked side by side, a drone struck.
“I looked at him and he was bleeding. There was blood everywhere,” Habibah says. “I was losing consciousness. I forced myself to stay awake because I knew if I passed out, I would lose him forever.”
Zaher’s legs were badly damaged. After hours of agony, they made it to hospital .
“I kept praying: ‘Please God, take my life instead of his legs,’” she cries.
But doctors could not save his legs. Both had to be amputated just below the knee.
“He would wake up and ask: ‘Why did you let them cut my legs?’” She looks down, her face filled with remorse, “I couldn’t answer.”
Both Habiba and her son weep, tormented by the memory of what happened to them. It is made worse by knowing that prosthetic limbs could give Zaher a chance at his old childhood, but Habiba cannot afford them.
For Zaher, the memory of what happened is too difficult to talk about.
He only shares one simple dream. “I wish I could have prosthetic legs so I can play football with my friends like I used to. That’s all.”
Children in Khartoum have been robbed not only of their childhoods but of safe places to play and be young.
Schools, football pitches and playgrounds are now shattered, with broken reminders of a life stolen by conflict.
“It was very nice here,” says 16-year-old Ahmed looking around a destroyed funfair and playground.
Printed on his grey, tattered T-shirt is a huge smiley face – the word “smile” emblazoned beneath it. But his reality could not be further from that sentiment.
“My brothers and I used to come here. We played all day and laughed so much. But when I came back after the war, I couldn’t believe it was the same place.”
Ahmed now lives and works here clearing the debris left by war, earning $50 (£37) for 30 days of continuous labour.
The money helps support him, his mother, grandmother and one of his brothers.
There were six other brothers but, like so many in Sudan who have missing family members, he has lost contact with them. He looks at his feet as he tells us he doesn’t know where they are or if any are still alive.
The war has ripped families like his apart.
Ahmed’s work reminds him of that nearly daily. “I have found the remains of 15 bodies so far,” he says.
Many of the remains found here have since been buried, but there are still some bones lying around.
Ahmed walks across the park and picks up a human jaw. “It’s terrifying. It makes me shake.”
He shows us another bone and holding it innocently beside his leg, he says: “This is a leg bone, like mine.”
Ahmed says he no longer dares to dream of a future.
“Ever since the war began, I have been certain that I was destined to die. So I stopped thinking about what I would do in the future.”
“I wish they would just fix me, so I could walk home and go to school””, Source: Zaher , Source description: , Image: A head and shoulders image of Zaher talking. One arm of this wheelchair can be seen on the right.
The destruction of schools has put the future of children in even more jeopardy.
Millions are no longer being educated.
But Zaher is one of the lucky few. He and his friends attend school in a makeshift classroom set up by volunteers in an abandoned home.
They call out answers loudly, write on the board, sing songs and there are even a few naughty kids messing around at the back of the class.
Hearing the sound of children learning and laughing, in a country where places to be a kid are so limited, is like nectar.
When we ask what childhood should be like, Zaher’s classmates answer with innocence still intact: “We should be playing, studying, reading.”
But the memory of war is never far away. “We shouldn’t be afraid of the bombs and the bullets,” interrupts Zaher. “We should be brave.”
Their teacher, Miss Amal, has taught for 45 years. She has never seen children so traumatised.
“They’ve been really affected by the war,” she says.
“Their mental health, their vocabulary. They are speaking the language of the militias. Violent curse words, even physical violence. They carry sticks and whips, wanting to hit someone. They have become so anxious.”
The damage extends beyond behaviour.
With most families stripped of income, food shortages are biting.
“Some students come from homes with no bread, no flour, no milk, no oil, nothing at all,” the teacher says.
And yet, amid despair, Sudan’s children cling to fleeting moments of joy.
On a scarred football pitch, Zaher drags himself across the dirt on his knees, determined to play the game he loves most. His friends cheer him on as he kicks the ball.
“My favourite thing to do is football,” he says, smiling for the first time.
When asked which team he supports, the answer is immediate: “Real Madrid.” His favourite player? “Vinícius.”
Playing on his knees is extremely painful and could lead to more infections. But he doesn’t care.
Football and his friendships have saved him. They have brought him joy and an escape from his reality. Yet, he dreams of prosthetic legs.
“I wish they would just fix me, so I could walk home and go to school,” Zaher says.
Additional reporting by Abdelrahman Abutaleb, Abdalrahman Altayeb and Liam Weir
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ROME (Reuters) -Almost 14 million people in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan risk severe hunger due to cuts in global humanitarian aid, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday.
The WFP’s biggest donor, the United States, has slashed its foreign aid under President Donald Trump, and other major nations have also made or announced cuts in development and humanitarian assistance.
“WFP’s funding has never been more challenged. The agency expects to receive 40% less funding for 2025, resulting in a projected budget of $6.4 billion, down from $10 billion in 2024,” the Rome-based agency said.
A WFP report, titled “A Lifeline at Risk”, warned that cuts to its food assistance could push 13.7 million people from “crisis” to “emergency” levels of hunger, one step away from famine in a five-level international hunger scale.
“The gap between what WFP needs to do and what we can afford to do has never been larger. We are at risk of losing decades of progress in the fight against hunger,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain said.
“It’s not just the countries engulfed in major emergencies. Even hard-won gains in the Sahel region, where 500,000 people have been lifted out of aid dependence, could experience severe setbacks without help, and we want to prevent that,” she added.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Gavin Jones)
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The International Criminal Court found a Sudanese militia leader guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur two decades ago, a rare conviction for an institution whose international standing is under threat from U.S. sanctions and sexual assault allegations against its chief prosecutor.
A panel of three judges at the ICC in The Hague convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman of being a commander in the Janjaweed, a feared militia of mostly Arab fighters who terrorized civilians across the Darfur region in 2003 and 2004, in a conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead. Abd-Al-Rahman ordered his fighters to brutalize villages in the region where they engaged in mass rape and killings, the judges said Monday. Abd-Al-Rahman exhorted his soldiers with the phrase “wipe out and sweep away” before they attacked, according to the decision.
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A Sudanese militia leader has been found guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity more than 20 years ago in the Darfur region.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, led the Janjaweed, a government-backed group that terrorised Darfur, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Kushayb is the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the atrocities in Darfur. He had argued it was a case of mistaken identity.
The conflict lasted from 2003 to 2020 and was one of the world’s gravest humanitarian disasters.
Five years after the end of that crisis, Darfur is a key battleground in another civil war, this time between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose origins lie in the Janjaweed.
During Kushayb’s trial, survivors described how their villages were burned down, men and boys slaughtered and women forced into sex slavery.
The militia leader was found guilty on 27 counts, centring on attacks committed between 2003 and 2004.
Judges at the ICC found the Janjaweed’s brutal tactics – including mass executions, sexual violence and torture – were often inflicted by Kushayb and his men.
Ahead of the verdict, a small group of Darfuris waited patiently to enter the court, in the Dutch city of The Hague.
They were in no doubt about the pivotal role Kushayb played in their suffering, with one man saying: “He was the one who gave the orders. He was the one who got the weapons.
“So if you ask me if he was important in Darfur, I will you tell you he was one of the most important ones.”
The Darfur war began after the Arab-dominated government at the time armed the Janjaweed, in an attempt to suppress an uprising by rebels from black African ethnic groups.
The Janjaweed systematically attacked non-Arab villagers accused of supporting the rebels, leading to accusations of genocide.
That same systematic violence is still happening in Darfur as part of the Sudan’s civil war.
Many of the Janjaweed fighters have morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that is currently battling Sudan’s army.
The UK, US and rights groups have accused the RSF of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities in Darfur since the conflict began in 2023.
Kushayb will be sentenced at a later date.
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At least 91 people have been killed in Sudan’s besieged city of el-Fasher in attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over 10 days last month, the United Nations says.
The attacks took place during intensified fighting between the RSF and Sudan’s army around the city, the largest urban centre in the Darfur region that remains under the control of the military and its allies, known as the Joint Forces.
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been under siege for more than a year by the RSF, which launched a renewed offensive on the city in recent weeks, raising fears of potential atrocities.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday that the city’s Daraja Oula neighbourhood was repeatedly attacked and subjected to RSF artillery shelling, drone strikes and ground incursions from September 19 to 29.
He called for urgent action to prevent “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities in el-Fasher.”
He said “atrocities are not inevitable”, adding that “they can be averted if all actors take concrete action to uphold international law, demand respect for civilian life and property, and prevent the continued commission of atrocity crimes”.
Since the army recaptured Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, in March, the focus of the fighting has shifted to el-Fasher.
In recent weeks, the RSF has tightened its nearly 500-day siege of the city, one of the longest in modern urban warfare, and has stepped up the tempo and intensity of its attacks, including the frequent use of drones, according to the Sudanese army and residents of the city.
More than 260,000 people are believed to still be trapped in the city without access to sufficient food, water or medical supplies.
“What little food remains is beyond the reach of most. Two kilos [4.4lb] of millet sell for $100, a kilo of sugar or flour for $80 while the average monthly salary, when salaries were still paid, was $70,” Sarra Majdoub, a former UN expert on the country wrote in a recent opinion article for The Guardian.
At least six people were killed and 10 were wounded in artillery and drone attacks on the city on Wednesday, a medical worker in el-Fasher told the AFP news agency.
Last month, at least 78 people were killed in a drone attack on al-Safiyah Mosque during dawn prayers that was blamed on the RSF.
Satellite images and analysis conducted by the Yale Humanitarian Lab, which has been monitoring the Sudan war, indicated that the munition used was likely an RSF suicide drone because there was “no visible ground scarring or crater inside the mosque, indicating that the munition detonated on impact with the mosque roof”.
Civilians inside the city are mostly concentrated in its north near the Sudanese army’s main position but haven’t been able to flee as the RSF surrounds the city.
Last week, the army said it had managed to carry out an airdrop of supplies to its soldiers in the city, a sign of the measures required to work around siege.
“The cruelty of the situation is compounded by continued arbitrary RSF restrictions on bringing food and essential supplies into the city and credible reports of civilians tortured and killed by RSF fighters for doing so,” Turk said.
Civilians who have tried to flee often have to make life-threatening journeys to nearby camps for displaced people because the RSF has almost completely surrounded the city, extending a 68km-long (42-mile-long) berm it has dug at its perimeter.
Human rights organisations have reported violations and killings by the RSF of people who have tried to leave el-Fasher.
Mukesh Kapila, professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, told Al Jazeera that the situation in the city was “extremely dire” and residents trapped there were facing “an extremely difficult calculation”.
“The routes out of el-Fasher are very few, and the situation in the surrounding refugee camps, where famine has been declared in some, is not necessarily much better,” he said.
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A Sudanese father who had lost contact with his wife for 18 months has been reunited with his family after recognising them in an Al Jazeera news report.
Shamoun Idris lived with his wife, Fatma Ali, and their children in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, until the city became a battleground between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in August 2023, a few months after the war in Sudan started.
As the war intensified and shelling increased near their home, the couple decided that Fatma would try to escape Khartoum with their children. Shamoun would stay behind and protect the house as RSF forces advanced, looting homes and attacking civilians.
“I decided that they should leave,” Shamoun told Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who reported on the initial story featuring Fatma and their children. “I stayed behind to guard the house. We thought the war would end soon and they would be able to return.”
But soon after, and with the violence in the capital increasing, Idris was also forced to flee. In the process, both Shamoun and Fatma lost their phones and were unable to contact each other, with no knowledge of where the other was.
The couple became two of the 7,700 Sudanese people searching for missing relatives, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“I kept telling the children he was somewhere, just unable to reach us, but, in fact, I was completely at a loss, and I was wondering what really happened to him. I couldn’t focus on the children or on him being missing,” said Fatma.
Fatma and the children eventually reached Sennar, south of Khartoum, where they sheltered in a school.
Meanwhile, Shamoun searched for them in vain, until he eventually saw an Al Jazeera news report from February about missing relatives.
In the report was his wife, Fatma.
“I said, ‘Man, this is my family!’ I said, ‘I swear, it’s my family.’ It was such a huge surprise,” Shamoun said.
As Fatma listened to her husband tell the story of their recent reunion, she began to cry, overwhelmed with the emotion of Shamoun’s absence.
She said her hope now is for the family to rebuild their lives. “I hope we can go back and return to our previous life. I knew my children would be OK as long as I was with them, but for their father to be gone, that was a real problem.”
“Our children went to school and were very happy. Not one of our children was out of school; they even went to private schools, not public ones,” she said. “Now, it’s been more than two years since they saw the inside of a classroom, except as somewhere to shelter.”
Since being reunited, Shamound has found a small plot of land in Sennar, where he has built a little shack for the family.
It has no door to keep out rain, wind or sun, but thousands of other displaced people in Sudan do not have any shelter at all.
For now, Shamoun and Fatma are grateful for the little privacy and freedom it provides, and for being together.
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An aid worker supporting rescue efforts after the devastating Sudan landslide which reportedly killed hundreds of people has told the BBC that it had caused a “mountain to collapse”, leaving just one known survivor so far.
“We have so far managed to recover nine bodies,” said Abdul Hafeez Ali, head of the Coordinating Council of the Tawila and Jebel Marra Emergency Room.
Heavy rainfall led to Sunday’s disaster, which killed at least 370 people according to a UN estimate, and “destroy[ed] the village” of Tarseen in the western Darfur region, Mr Ali added.
The armed group in control of the area has said that 1,000 people died and has appealed for urgent assistance.
Another man told the BBC’s Sudan lifeline programme that many members of his family were still unaccounted for.
“So far, I’ve confirmed the deaths of two relatives: one of my uncles and his grandson. The rest of my family members are still missing,” said Ahmed Abdel Majeed, who lives in Uganda but is originally from Tarseen and keeps in touch with locals from around the affected area.
“The bodies are still buried under the rubble,” he added, stating that rescue teams were struggling to find them due to “massive blocks of stone and mud covering the area”.
An initial estimate of deaths provided by the group which controls the Marra Mountains area, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), stated that 1,000 people could have been killed.
The UN’s deputy humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan, Antoine Gérard, said it was difficult to ascertain the exact death toll because the area is hard to reach.
In an interview with the BBC’s Newsday radio programme SLM/A leader Abdel Wahid Mohamed al-Nur stood by his group’s estimate of the number of people killed, saying many had fled the country’s civil war to go to the relatively peaceful area.
The SLM/A has remained neutral in the conflict which has devastated much of the country over the past two years.
“People on the ground have confirmed [the death toll]. We have a civil authority there and they estimate above 1,000 people are dead or at least they are under the mud,” said Mr Nur.
He also called for emergency aid like medical supplies and food as well as urgent rescue efforts.
Speaking to the AFP news agency on Wednesday morning, an SLM/A spokesperson said 100 bodies had been recovered.
The aid worker Mr Ali said carrying out his work has been hard because of the conditions.
“Unfortunately, due to limited resources, we have not been able to carry out full-scale rescue operations. Although a support team has already arrived in Sudan, ongoing heavy rains and extremely rough terrain have made access to the affected area very difficult. Despite these challenges, the search for the missing continues.”
Mr Majeed added that communicating with those in the affected area has been challenging: “I try to stay in contact with the rescue teams, but communication is difficult. There are no working networks in the area because the solar-powered systems have gone down.”
He said that two villages had been affected by Sunday’s landslide.
[Getty Images/BBC]
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President Donald Trump has projected himself as a peacemaker since returning to the White House in January, touting his efforts to end global conflicts.
In meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders Monday, Trump repeated that he has been instrumental in stopping multiple wars but didn’t specify which.
“I’ve done six wars, I’ve ended six wars, Trump said in the Oval Office with Zelenskyy. He later added: “If you look at the six deals I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”
He raised that figure Tuesday, telling “Fox & Friends” that “we ended seven wars.”
But although Trump helped mediate relations among many of these nations, experts say his impact isn’t as clear cut as he claims.
Here’s a closer look at the conflicts.
Trump is credited with ending the 12-day war.
Israel launched attacks on the heart of Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership in June, saying it wanted to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon — which Tehran has denied it was trying to do.
Trump negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran just after directing American warplanes to strike Iran’s Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. He publicly harangued both countries into maintaining the ceasefire.
Evelyn Farkas, executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, said Trump should get credit for ending the war.
“There’s always a chance it could flare up again if Iran restarts its nuclear weapons program, but nonetheless, they were engaged in a hot war with one another,” she said. “And it didn’t have any real end in sight before President Trump got involved and gave them an ultimatum.”
Lawrence Haas, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council who is an expert on Israel-Iran tensions, agreed the U.S. was instrumental in securing the ceasefire. But he characterized it as a “temporary respite” from the ongoing “day-to-day cold war” between the two foes that often involves flare-ups.
This could be described as tensions at best, and peace efforts — which don’t directly involve the U.S. — have stalled.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River has caused friction between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan since the power-generating project was announced more than a decade ago. In July, Ethiopia declared the project complete, with an inauguration set for September.
Egypt and Sudan oppose the dam. Although the vast majority of the water that flows down the Nile originates in Ethiopia, Egyptian agriculture relies on the river almost entirely. Sudan, meanwhile, fears flooding and wants to protect its own power-generating dams.
During his first term, Trump tried to broker a deal between Ethiopia and Egypt but couldn’t get them to agree. He suspended aid to Ethiopia over the dispute. In July, he posted on Truth Social that he helped the “fight over the massive dam (and) there is peace at least for now.” However, the disagreement persists, and negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have stalled.
“It would be a gross overstatement to say that these countries are at war,” said Haas. “I mean, they’re just not.”
The April killing of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir pushed India and Pakistan closer to war than they had been in years, but a ceasefire was reached.
Trump has claimed that the U.S. brokered the ceasefire, which he said came about in part because he offered trade concessions. Pakistan thanked Trump, recommending him for the Nobel Peace Prize. But India has denied Trump’s claims, saying there was no conversation between the U.S. and India on trade in regards to the ceasefire.
Although India has downplayed the Trump administration’s role in the ceasefire, Haas and Farkas believe the U.S. deserves some credit for helping stop the fighting.
“I think that President Trump played a constructive role from all accounts, but it may not have been decisive. And again, I’m not sure whether you would define that as a full-blown war,” Farkas said.
The White House lists the conflict between these countries as one Trump resolved, but there has been no threat of a war between the two neighbors during Trump’s second term, nor any significant contribution from Trump this year to improve their relations.
Kosovo is a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008. Tensions have persisted ever since, but never to the point of war, mostly because NATO-led peacekeepers have been deployed in Kosovo, which has been recognized by more than 100 countries.
During his first term, Trump negotiated a wide-ranging deal between Serbia and Kosovo, but much of what was agreed on was never carried out.
Trump has played a key role in peace efforts between the African neighbors, but he’s hardly alone and the conflict is far from over.
Eastern Congo, rich in minerals, has been battered by fighting with more than 100 armed groups. The most potent is the M23 rebel group backed by neighboring Rwanda, which claims it is protecting its territorial interests and that some of those who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide fled to Congo and are working with the Congolese army.
The Trump administration’s efforts paid off in June, when the Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers signed a peace deal at the White House. The M23, however, wasn’t directly involved in the U.S.-facilitated negotiations and said it couldn’t abide by the terms of an agreement that didn’t involve it.
The final step to peace was meant to be a separate Qatar-facilitated deal between Congo and M23 that would bring about a permanent ceasefire. But with the fighting still raging, Monday’s deadline for the Qatar-led deal was missed and there have been no public signs of major talks between Congo and M23 on the final terms.
Trump this month hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House, where they signed a deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict between the two nations. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the signed document a “significant milestone,” and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hailed Trump for performing “a miracle.”
The two countries signed agreements intended to reopen key transportation routes and reaffirm Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s commitment to signing a peace treaty. The treaty’s text was initialed by the countries’ foreign ministers at that meeting, which indicates preliminary approval. But the two countries have yet to sign and ratify the deal.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter conflict over territory since the early 1990s, when ethnic Armenian forces took control of the Karabakh province, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, and nearby territories. In 2020, Azerbaijan’s military recaptured broad swaths of territory. Russia brokered a truce and deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to the region.
In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a lightning blitz to retake remaining portions. The two countries have worked toward normalizing ties and signing a peace treaty ever since.
Officials from Thailand and Cambodia credit Trump with pushing the Asian neighbors to agree to a ceasefire in this summer’s brief border conflict.
Cambodia and Thailand have clashed in the past over their shared border. The latest fighting began in July after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers. Tensions had been growing since May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a confrontation that created a diplomatic rift and roiled Thai politics.
Both countries agreed in late July to an unconditional ceasefire during a meeting in Malaysia. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pressed for the pact, but there was little headway until Trump intervened. Trump said on social media that he warned the Thai and Cambodian leaders that the U.S. would not move forward with trade agreements if the hostilities continued. Both countries faced economic difficulties and neither had reached tariff deals with the U.S., though most of their Southeast Asian neighbors had.
According to Ken Lohatepanont, a political analyst and University of Michigan doctoral candidate, “President Trump’s decision to condition a successful conclusion to these talks on a ceasefire likely played a significant role in ensuring that both sides came to the negotiating table when they did.” ___ Associated Press reporters Jon Gambrell, Grant Peck, Dasha Litvinova, Fay Abuelgasim, Rajesh Roy, and Dusan Stojanovic contributed.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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In 2017, a Polish environmental group put a GPS tracker on a stork to monitor its migration. The…
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Rapper Macklemore said he’s canceled an upcoming concert in Dubai because of the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan. He cited the UAE’s reported support for the paramilitary force that has been at war with government troops there.
The rapper’s announcement reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, United Nations experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.
A civil war has raged in Sudan for more than a year, after simmering tensions between the country’s military and paramilitary leaders boiled over, and fighting broke out in the capital, Khartoum, before spreading to other regions, including Darfur. Estimates suggest over 18,800 people have been killed since then, while over 10 million have fled their homes and hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
The International Rescue Committee, an aid agency, issued a “crisis alert” earlier this summer for the war-torn country, warning that a risk of famine was looming while the lack of political solutions left Sudan on the brink of a “catastrophe of historic scale.” CBS News spoke to several humanitarian groups at the time that said two million people could die of hunger-related causes if the situation in Sudan did not improve, and no additional humanitarian aid entered the country.
At a contentious U.N. Security Council meeting in June, Sudan’s embattled government directly accused the UAE of arming the RSF, and an Emirati diplomat angrily told his counterpart to stop “grandstanding.” The UAE has been a part of ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.
The Emirati Foreign Ministry offered no immediate comment on Macklemore’s public statement Sunday, nor did the city-state’s Dubai Media Office. Organizers last week announced the show had been canceled and refunds would be issued, without offering an explanation for the cancellation.
Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP
In a post Saturday on Instagram, Macklemore said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis.” The Grammy winner said he decided to cancel the planned show in Dubai, which was scheduled for October, and would not perform in the country “until the UAE stops arming and funding RSF,” referring to the paramilitary faction in Sudan called the Rapid Support Forces.
“I know that this will probably jeopardize my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” his post continued. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”
Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part over his recent, public support of Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. He recently has begun performing a song called “Hind’s Hall,” in honor of a young girl named Hind Rajab killed in Gaza in a shooting Palestinians have blamed on Israeli forces opening fire on a civilian car.
“I know that this will probably jeopardize my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”
He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I do ask the question to my peers scheduled to play in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”
The RSF was formed out of the Janjaweed fighters under then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates, the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa and other tourist destinations, long has tried to draw A-list performers in the city-state at a brand-new arena and other venues. However, performers in the past have acknowledged the difficulties in performing in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled federation of seven sheikhdoms in which speech is tightly controlled.
That includes American comedian Dave Chappelle, who drew attention in May in Abu Dhabi when he referred to the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” while also joking about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.
Macklemore, a 41-year-old rapper born Benjamin Hammond Haggerty in Kent, Washington, won Grammy awards in 2014 for his breakout song, “Thrift Shop.”
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