AFP Asia Business

At least 56 killed as fighting grips Sudan’s capital

Artillery shelling and air strikes killed at least 56 people across greater Khartoum on Saturday, according to a medical source and activists, the latest bloodshed in Sudan’s devastating war.Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023 that has intensified this month with the army fighting to take back control of the capital.RSF shelling killed 54 and injured 158 people at a busy market in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, overwhelming the city’s Al-Nao Hospital, according to a medical source and the health ministry.”The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that’s why the victims and the wounded are so many,” one survivor told AFP.The RSF denied carrying out the attack, which French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said caused “utter carnage” at the hospital.Across the Nile in Khartoum proper, two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area, said the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating emergency care across Sudan.Although the RSF has used drones in attacks, including on Saturday, the fighter jets of the regular armed forces maintain a monopoly on air strikes.Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.In addition to killing tens of thousands of people, the war has uprooted more than 12 million and decimated Sudan’s fragile infrastructure, forcing most health facilities out of service.- Metres from hospital -MSF’s general secretary Chris Lockyear was at the Al-Nao Hospital Saturday, where he said “the morgue is full of dead bodies”.”I can see the lives of men, women and children torn apart, with injured people lying in every possible space in the emergency room as medics do what they can,” he said in a statement.A volunteer at the hospital told AFP it faced dire shortages of “shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded”.Al-Nao, one of the last medical facilities operating in Omdurman, has been repeatedly attacked.According to the Sudanese doctors’ union, one shell fell “just metres away” from the hospital.The union said most of the victims were women and children, and called on nurses and doctors in the area to head to the hospital to relieve a “severe shortage of medical staff”.The fighting in the capital comes weeks after the army launched an offensive across central Sudan, reclaiming Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani before setting its sights on Khartoum.The RSF has since remained in control of the road between Wad Madani and Khartoum, but on Saturday an army-allied militia claimed control of the towns of Tamboul, Rufaa, Al-Hasaheisa and Al-Hilaliya, some 125 kilometres (77 miles) southeast of the capital.The group, the Sudan Shield Forces, is led by Abu Aqla Kaykal, who defected from the RSF last year and has been accused of atrocities against civilians both during his tenure with the RSF and now on the army’s side.Sudan remains effectively split, with the RSF in control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and swathes of the south, and the army controlling the country’s east and north.- Counter-offensive -After months of stalemate in greater Khartoum, the army has broken RSF sieges on several bases in the capital, including its headquarters, pushing the paramilitary increasingly into the city’s outskirts.Witnesses said Saturday’s bombardment of Omdurman came from the city’s western outskirts, where the RSF remains in control.It came a day after RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed to retake the capital.”We expelled them (from Khartoum) before, and we will expel them again,” he told troops in a rare video address.Greater Khartoum has been a key battleground in nearly 22 months of fighting between the army and the RSF, and has been reduced to a shell of its former self.An investigation by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that 26,000 people were killed in the capital alone between April 2023 and June 2024.Entire neighbourhoods have been taken over by fighters while at least 3.6 million civilians have fled, according to the United Nations.Those unable or unwilling to leave have reported frequent artillery fire on residential areas, and widespread hunger in besieged neighbourhoods blockaded by opposing forces.At least 106,000 people are estimated to be suffering from famine in Khartoum, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, with a further 3.2 million experiencing crisis levels of hunger.Nationwide, famine has been declared in five areas — most of them in Darfur — and is expected to take hold of five more by May.

Netanyahu appoints Major General Eyal Zamir as Israel’s new army chief

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named retired Major General Eyal Zamir as Israel’s new armed forces chief Saturday after his predecessor resigned last month taking responsibility for failing to stop Hamas’s October 2023 attack.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have agreed this evening on the appointment of Major General (Res.) Eyal Zamir as the next chief of staff of the (Israeli military),” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. Zamir replaces Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, who resigned on January 21, two days after a fragile ceasefire took effect in Gaza which has now seen the release of 18 hostages by Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad.Zamir, 59, has been serving as defence ministry director general since 2023 and, according to Israeli media, he retired from the military after losing out on the top job to Halevi.Zamir had served as the deputy chief of staff until 2021 and prior to that was head of the army’s Southern Command, which is responsible for Gaza.As head of Southern Command, Zamir led efforts to “thwart offensive terror tunnels penetrating from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory,” according to the defence ministry.Halevi said in his resignation letter that he was stepping down “due to my acknowledgement of responsibility for the (military’s) failure on October 7, (2023)”, but added that he was leaving at a time of “significant successes”.Shortly after Halevi’s announcement, the wartime head of Southern Command, Major General Yaron Finkelman, too resigned over the military’s failings in 2023. 

Egypt’s Sisi tells Trump world ‘counting on’ him for Middle East peace

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told his US counterpart Donald Trump on Saturday that the world was relying on him “to reach a permanent and historic peace agreement” to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.Saturday’s phone call was the first between the two leaders since Trump repeatedly floated a plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan and Egypt, which Sisi and other Arab leaders have strongly rejected.A statement from Sisi’s office said he and Trump had extended mutual invitations for state visits during the call and stressed the importance of continued “coordination and cooperation”.Sisi also noted that “the international community is counting on President Trump’s ability to reach a permanent and historic peace agreement that ends the conflict that has existed in the region for decades”, the statement said.The White House said that Sisi had “expressed his confidence that President Trump’s leadership could usher in a golden age of Middle East peace.””The two leaders also discussed Egypt’s important role in the release of hostages from Gaza,” said the US read-out of the call that did not mention any proposal to relocate Palestinians.Trump last month suggested a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip, saying last Saturday he would “like Egypt to take people”, as well as Jordan.At the time, he said he would speak to Sisi the following day, but Egypt later denied the call had taken place.Both Egypt and Jordan have rejected the plan.- ‘An injustice’ -On Wednesday, Sisi called the proposal “an injustice that we cannot take part in”, and said he was “determined to work with President Trump, who seeks to achieve the desired peace based on the two-state solution”.Trump, however, insisted again on Thursday that Egypt and Jordan “will do it”, adding: “We do a lot for them.”Egypt is a key US ally in the region, and was the only country besides Israel to receive an exemption from Trump’s foreign aid freeze last month.Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Egypt has played a delicate balancing act — maintaining its mediator role in the conflict while positioning itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause.”If I were to ask this of the Egyptian people, all of them would take to the streets to say ‘no’,” Sisi said on Wednesday of the proposed plan.At a meeting in Cairo on Saturday, top diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar also rejected any forcible displacement of Palestinians, according to a joint statement.On Friday, state-linked media in Egypt broadcast footage of people protesting near Egypt’s border with Gaza against Palestinian displacement.The read-out from Sisi’s office on Saturday did not mention the proposal, but said the call “witnessed a positive dialogue” between the presidents on the implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, brokered by Egypt, the US and Qatar.