Region

CAIRO — Sudan's army chief on Tuesday visited Egypt on his first trip abroad since the outbreak of war in April, with the latest violence killing dozens of civilians in battle-scarred Darfur.

As Abdel Fattah Al Burhan headed for talks with key ally Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, medics and witnesses said 39 civilians were killed, most of them women and children, in shelling of Nyala, the South Darfur state capital where fighting between the army and paramilitary forces has intensified.

Burhan swapped his trademark military fatigues for a suit and tie and flew from Port Sudan to El Alamein on Egypt's north coast, where he said his forces faced "rebel groups who have committed war crimes in their attempt to seize power".

Western countries have accused the paramilitaries and allied militias of killings based on ethnicity, and the International Criminal Court has opened a new probe into alleged war crimes.

The army has also been accused of abuses, including a July 8 air strike that killed around two dozen civilians.

In their meeting, Sisi's office said he had "reaffirmed Egypt's firm position in standing by Sudan and supporting its security, stability and territorial integrity".

The war between Burhan and his former deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has raged since April 15, killing thousands and uprooting millions.

For months, the RSF had besieged Burhan inside a military headquarters in Khartoum, but last week the general made his first foray outside the compound.

On Monday he was in Port Sudan where he made a fiery address to his troops, vowing to “put an end to the rebellion”.

His comments came a day after Daglo released a 10-point “vision” to end the war and build “a new state”.

The plan calls for “civilian rule based on democratic norms” and “a single, professional, national military institution”.

Speaking to Egyptian media on Tuesday, Burhan said Sudan’s military is “committed to ending the war” and “does not seek to continue ruling” the country.

“We seek free, fair elections where the Sudanese people can decide what they want.”

Before they turned on each other, Burhan had been backed by Daglo when he became Sudan’s de facto ruler in a 2021 coup that derailed a fragile transition to civilian rule.

The coup upended a transition painstakingly negotiated between military and civilian leaders following the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar Al Bashir.

New Darfur violence 

Fighting in Nyala on Tuesday killed at least 39 civilians when shelling hit their homes, witnesses and a medical source said.

“The entire members of five families were killed in a single day,” said Gouja Ahmed, a rights activist originally from the city.

Images posted online showed dozens of shrouded bodies on the ground as well as men placing the dead in a large grave.

Darfur has long been the site of deadly clashes since a war that erupted in 2003 and saw Bashir’s government unleash the feared Janjaweed — precursors of the RSF — on ethnic minority rebels and civilians.

Since August 11 more than 50,000 people have fled Nyala due to the violence, the United Nations says.

Port Sudan, which has been spared the fighting, is where government officials and the UN have relocated. It is also the site of Sudan’s only functioning airport.

Burhan’s trip follows multiple diplomatic efforts to end the war in Sudan, with a series of US- and Saudi-brokered ceasefires being systematically violated.

In July, Egypt, which shares borders with Sudan and has received more than 285,000 refugees from its neighbour, hosted a crisis meeting attended by African leaders to seek a solution.

Analysts say the international allies of both sides are set to play crucial roles, with Egypt and Turkey firmly on the army’s side and the United Arab Emirates and Russian mercenary group Wagner among those accused of supporting the RSF.

After Egypt, speculation has mounted that Burhan will next travel to Saudi Arabia, which has positioned itself as a mediator also “in opposition to the UAE’s plan” to back the RSF, said Magdi Gizouli, a researcher with the Rift Valley Institute.

Conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project show that nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the more than four-month Sudan conflict.

The United Nations says more than 4.6 million people have been uprooted by the fighting, fleeing inside Sudan as well as to neighbouring countries.

Many of the million people who have fled across borders are living in “increasingly desperate conditions”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said on Tuesday in South Sudan, where more than 230,000 people, including Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees, have sought safety.

BAGHDAD — Iraq has hanged three people convicted for a 2016 Baghdad bombing, claimed by the Daesh group, which killed more than 320 people, the prime minister's office said on Monday.

The bombing was one of the world's deadliest after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

At least 323 people were killed in the car bombing that sparked raging fires in Baghdad's Karrada shopping area early on July 3, 2016 as it teemed with people ahead of the Eid Al Fitr festival ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani, during a meeting with victims' families, informed them "the rightful punishment of death sentence was carried out against three key criminals found guilty of their involvement in the terrorist bombing", his office said in a statement.

It was one of the deadliest attacks to ever hit Iraq.

Police Major General Talib Khalil Rahi said at the time that the bomber's minibus had been loaded with plastic explosives and ammonium nitrate.

The initial blast killed a limited number of people, but flames spread and trapped people inside shopping centres which lacked emergency exits, Rahi told a news conference a few days later.

The raging fires made it difficult to identify the dead.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ghabban resigned in the wake of the blast.

Daesh had overrun large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but by the time of the Karrada blast Iraqi forces had regained significant territory from the terrorists, who hit back against civilians in response.

Iraq’s government declared victory against the terrorists in late 2017 after a military campaign backed by a United States-led military coalition

In October 2021 Iraq announced the arrest outside the country of the person it said was the main suspect behind the Karrada blast. Then-prime minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi said Ghazwan Alzawbaee was “the primary culprit” in that attack “and many others”.

The statement from Sudani’s office did not name those executed or say when they were sentenced. It said the executions were carried out Sunday night and Monday morning.

The United Nations estimated in a report in March that Daesh still has “5,000 to 7,000 members and supporters” across Iraq and neighbouring Syria, “roughly half of whom are fighters”.

Daesh cells continue to target security forces and civilians in both countries but the UN report said Daesh had been much depleted by “sustained counter-terrorism operations” on both sides of the border.

TEHRAN — Iran on Monday warned Iraq that it would take action if Baghdad does not honour its commitment by mid-September Iranian Kurdish rebel groups on its territory.

“According to a deal reached between the Iranian and Iraqi governments, the Iraqi government has pledged to disarm armed terrorist groups in Iraq by September 19,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told a news conference.

“The September 19 deadline will under no circumstances be extended,” Kanani said.

“After this deadline, if Iraq fails to meet its commitments, the Iranian government will assume its responsibility, in order to ensure the country’s security.”

Kanani said that Baghdad had agreed to evacuate the groups from their bases and “transfer them to camps provided by the Iraqi government” under the deal.

The autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish factions, which Iran accuses of serving Western or Israeli interests.

In March Iran and Iraq signed a deal to protect their common border, and the following month Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi acknowledged the “security” agreement saying “the security of Iraq and its borders is very important to us”.

Iran has launched in the past years numerous attacks on Kurdish opposition groups exiled for decades in northern Iraq.

Tehran uses the words “separatist groups” to describe Kurdish factions opposed to the Iranian government, and considers them to be “terrorist” organisations.

In May, Iran summoned the Iraqi ambassador over the presence of members of these factions at an official ceremony in the Kurdish region.

Tehran accuses the factions of importing arms into the Islamic republic from Iraq and of fomenting last year’s protests that erupted after the death in custody of Iranian-Kurd Mahsa Amini.

Iraq has since late last year deployed forces at the shared border between the two countries in a bid to calm tensions.

In mid-July the Iraqi interior ministry announced the deployment of a brigade in coordination with Kurdish authorities, the state-owned Iraq News Agency said at the time.

Baghdad allocated some $7 million for the construction of new border posts to prevent illicit movement across the border, it added.

DAMASCUS — Israeli air strikes on Aleppo airport in northern Syria caused the grounding of flights on Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, citing a military source.

During more than 12 years of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hizbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

“At about 4:30 am [1:30 GMT] this morning, the Israeli enemy undertook an aerial aggression from the direction of the Mediterranean west of Latakia, targeting Aleppo International Airport,” the source said, adding the attack damaged the runway.

Israel rarely comments on strikes it carries out in Syria, but has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-foe Iran to expand its presence in the country.

An Israeli army spokesperson on Monday told AFP: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media.”

Syrian transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil said the damage centred on the only functioning runway, adding that “maintenance teams will start repair work today to return the airport to service as quickly as possible”.

Flights were diverted to Damascus and Latakia airports, he told AFP.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the strikes also targeted weapons depots at the adjacent Nayrab military airport.

Israeli strikes have repeatedly caused the grounding of flights at the airports in Aleppo and the capital Damascus, both of which are controlled by the government.

‘Cowardly’ 

Syria’s foreign ministry condemned Monday’s strikes, calling them “cowardly”.

It accused Israel of “threatening freedom of aircraft movement” and “the safety of international civil aviation”, in a statement carried by SANA.

In early May, Israeli strikes on the Aleppo area killed four Syrian officers and three Iran-backed fighters and forced a halt to flights, according to the Britain-based Observatory.

Israel strikes put the airport out of service twice in March.

Three people were killed during a March 7 strike, while another air raid two weeks later destroyed a suspected arms depot used by Iran-backed militias at Aleppo airport, the war monitor reported.

Monday’s strikes come a week after two fighters backing the Syrian government were killed in Israeli aerial assaults on sites near Damascus, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria.

Syria’s war has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry since it began in 2011.

The war pulled in foreign powers and jihadists, and while the front lines have mostly quietened in recent years, large parts of the country’s north remain outside government control.

With Iranian as well as Russian support, President Bashar Assad’s government has clawed back much of the territory it had lost to rebels early in the conflict.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The foreign ministers of Israel and Libya met last week, Israel's foreign ministry said on Sunday of what is reported to be the first such diplomatic initiative between the two countries.

The unprecedented talks between Eli Cohen and his Libyan counterpart in the Tripoli-based administration, Najla Al Mangoush, took place at a meeting in Rome hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

"I spoke with the foreign minister about the great potential for the two countries from their relations," Cohen said in a statement from the foreign ministry.

The two discussed "the importance of preserving the heritage of Libyan Jews, which includes renovating synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in the country", Cohen was quoted as saying in the statement.

There was no immediate confirmation of the meeting either from Rome or from the authorities of the internationally recognised Libyan government.

Like several other North African countries, Libya has a rich Jewish heritage.

But during decades of rule by former Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, who was a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, thousands of Jews were expelled from Libya and many synagogues were destroyed.

Qadhafi was overthrown and killed in 2011 by a NATO-backed uprising that plunged the country into more than a decade of chaos and lawlessness.

DUBAI — Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday killed 10 Yemen army soldiers from a southern separatist faction in a "surprise attack" after more than a year of relative calm, military sources said.

Twelve others were wounded in the attack by the Houthis in the border area between the southern provinces of Lahj and Al Bayda, the sources told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Four Houthi fighters were also killed and several were wounded, the sources said. There was no immediate comment from the rebels.

The attack targeted a site manned by the separatists, who aspire to create an independent state in southern Yemen such as the one that existed until 1990, the military sources said.

A flare-up of violence has rocked southern Yemen in recent months, with several fighters loyal to the secessionist Southern Transitional Council and soldiers killed in attacks attributed to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

AQAP is considered by the United States to be the extremist group's most dangerous offshoot.

Yemen has been gripped by conflict since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, triggering a Saudi-led military intervention in support of the beleaguered government the following year.

The fighting calmed markedly after a UN-brokered ceasefire that came into effect in April 2022 and has largely held even after the agreement lapsed last October.

Sunday's attack came as the UN special envoy in Yemen, Hans Grundberg, held talks with Ali Asghar Khaji, an adviser to Iran's foreign minister.

“They discussed the progress of UN-led mediation & ways to strengthen concerted regional & international support to resume an inclusive political process under UN auspices,” Grundberg’s office said on X, formerly Twitter.

A China-brokered agreement earlier this year that has seen regional power brokers Iran and Saudi Arabia mend ties after a seven-year rupture also sparked hope for Yemen, but peace talks between the warring parties have stalled.

According to the United Nations, the conflict in Yemen has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.

It has also precipitated one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with two thirds of the population currently in need of humanitarian aid.

The World Food Programme last week warned that more than four million Yemenis will receive less food assistance as a result of funding shortages, compounding the crisis.

Many of the millions at risk are women and children already suffering from some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, it said.