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WAD MADANI, Sudan — Sudan's army chief General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan was seen on Thursday outside his headquarters for the first time since fighting erupted more than four months ago with paramilitaries, army videos showed.

Some of the footage filmed before dawn and posted on the army's Facebook page showed Burhan speaking to soldiers, with the caption indicating that he was at the Wadi Seidna air base north of Khartoum.

In separate daytime images posted later, he is seen surrounded by civilians in the capital's twin-city of Omdurman.

AFP could not verify the footage or images but the agency's fact-checking department was able to determine that they had never been posted online before and therefore could very well have been taken on Thursday.

Images of Burhan have rarely been released since fighting erupted on April 15 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Previous images showed Burhan inside the army headquarters in Khartoum, over which both sides have waged fierce battles to control.

The latest footage comes as fighting rages around a key military base in the capital's south.

The army has put out several statements and videos saying it has repelled RSF attacks since Sunday against Al Shajara base but the paramilitaries claim they have taken control of much of it since Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the RSF said 2,500 fighters from a movement led by former rebel leader Malak Agar, recently named by Burhan as his deputy to replace Daglo, had pledged allegiance to the paramilitaries.

The war between the rival generals has killed thousands and devastated infrastructure in already impoverished Sudan, and has been concentrated mostly in Khartoum and the war-scarred Darfur region.

Conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project say that nearly 5,000 people have been killed since then. But the battles have prevented the recovery of the bodies of many others thought to have been killed.

According to United Nations figures, in the four months since the fighting broke out, more than 4.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

GHAJAR — Straddling the frontier between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the picturesque village of Ghajar has become a lightning rod for tensions between the hostile forces on either side.

The latest tit-for-tat exchange saw Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and the chief of Lebanon’s powerful Hizbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, vow to send the other’s country “back to the Stone Age” if the other escalates violence.

On the sleepy streets of Ghajar, home to manicured flower beds and ice cream trucks, an invisible boundary is intended to keep the two sides apart.

“The Blue Line is in the air,” resident Abu Youssef Hussein Tawfiq Khatib told AFP, referring to the United Nations demarcation line drawn when Israeli troops withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000.

“You see that the town is open, there are no borders or anything,” added the 79-year-old, wearing a traditional white headdress near the village mosque.

But weeks earlier, Israelis erected a controversial fence topped with barbed wire on the Lebanese side of the Blue Line.

The move followed cross-border fire in April that was the heaviest since a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. That and other incidents have sparked fears of renewed conflict.

Any miscalculation could have devastating consequences. The month-long 2006 war killed 1,200 people in Lebanon — mostly civilians — and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

With the neighbouring countries still technically at war, Lebanon condemned the Ghajar fence as a unilateral Israeli “annexation” of the northern part of the village.

On July 6, an anti-tank missile was launched from Lebanese territory towards the new barrier, prompting retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces.

‘Atmosphere of alert’ 

Despite the cross-border exchanges, Ghajar resident Nahlah Saeed insisted that right now “here’s safe — Israel’s safe”.

“In the future, I don’t know. I know that I live well, happily,” said Saeed, 63, sitting in the shade outside a house.

According to municipal figures, the village is home to around 3,000 people, who took Israeli citizenship after Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 War and then occupied it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Village spokesman Bilal Khatib said residents had the “right to build a fence around our own homes”.

“The council built the barrier and stopped the soil being swept away, protecting these homes. A second reason was that we had, more than once, wild animals entering the village,” he told AFP in his office.

Under the scorching sun, UN peacekeepers patrol the northern side of the new fence, which is metres high and looks over Lebanese homes in the village of Wazzani.

On both sides of the Blue Line, local officials told AFP about title deeds and pointed to maps which they said prove their ownership of the disputed land.

Wazzani mayor Ahmad Al Mohammed said he has “adapted to the atmosphere of alert”.

“In recent years, there was Israeli bombardment, which took a human, material and livestock toll. But people don’t leave the village, because they must be tied to their source of livelihood,” he told an AFP journalist in south Lebanon.

Lebanese authorities consider the expansion of Ghajar, with its pastel-coloured homes spreading to the north in recent decades, as an infringement on their land.

On the outskirts of Wazzani, shepherd Imad Al Mohammed rode a horse as he took his flock out to pasture.

“When the Lebanese lands in the vicinity of Ghajar are recovered, the pasture lands will increase and I’ll take the sheep there,” he told the AFP correspondent, pointing across to homes now behind the Israeli fence.

‘Peace before everything’ 

The UN is mediating the fence affair and acts as an intermediary in talks over the Blue Line, at which refreshments must be served separately to the opposing sides by the Italian contingent.

“Despite all the tensions in the area, there is still a commitment from the parties, or no appetite for a conflict,” said Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Under international agreements backed by the two governments, “Israel is obliged to withdraw from the northern part of the village of Ghajar”, Tenenti said.

Lebanon, meanwhile, is obliged to remove a tent that was erected across the Blue Line northeast of Ghajar earlier this year.

An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly, said the “rogue terrorist army” Hizbollah was behind the tent and UN mediation on the matter was underway.

“Nobody wants this to escalate, right, so he [Nasrallah] is also trying to keep it under the threshold. We’re keeping it under the threshold,” the official said.

He cited Israeli forces using non-lethal weapons to push back Hizbollah members who approached the border around 40 kilometres southwest of Ghajar, wounding three fighters.

Standing within view of the valley, Khatib, the elderly Ghajar resident, underlined the importance of “peace before everything”.

“That’s it, and everyone has the rights that belong to them. I take the land that belongs to me, and he takes the land that belongs to him,” he said.

ADRÉ, Chad — After hiding at home for weeks, Sudanese refugees evaded militias in Darfur and fled on foot to neighbouring Chad with children on their backs and safety their destination.

Now at Aura camp in Adre, eastern Chad, bordering Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur, they shelter in tents supplied by international aid groups.

After four months of a bloody power struggle between Sudan’s army and its former ally the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), these refugees are among the nearly 430,000 people — mostly Sudanese women and children — who have managed to cross the border into Chad.

Hawa Mousa, 30, sits on the earthen floor of the tent, her newborn resting in her lap.

She tells AFP of one day in June when the fighting in West Darfur state was raging. Its governor had been assassinated, and the people feared summary execution by Arab militiamen allied to the RSF.

Mousa and her children slipped away in the middle of the night.

“I was still pregnant then,” she said. “I tied my youngest to my back and took the eldest by the hand.”

An ethnic conflict is again stalking Darfur.

In 2003, the then-government of Omar Al Bashir in Khartoum unleashed the feared Janjaweed — forerunners of the RSF — on ethnic minority rebels and civilians suspected of supporting them.

That conflict killed more than 300,000 people and displaced 2.5 million, the United Nations estimates.

The International Criminal Court charged Bashir and others with war crimes but only one suspect, who surrendered, is on trial.

Now, Arab militias are once more hunting civilians simply because they are non-Arab, according to survivors.

Wounded on the way 

A quarter of Sudan’s 48-million population lived in Darfur, an area the size of France, before the fighting erupted on April 15.

Some of the refugees have now become homeless for a second time after suffering a similar fate in the earlier conflict.

With fears that history is repeating itself, the International Criminal Court is again probing alleged war crimes.

Most of the Aura refugees fled from El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state where the United Nations has said more than 1,000 people were killed in a few days, attacks which could amount to crimes against humanity.

But that toll is probably far higher, because even more than elsewhere in Sudan, communication links have been cut and news is slow to emerge.

Bodies have been abandoned and left in the streets of now-deserted communities to decompose in the heat.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other watchdogs have reported beatings, summary executions, looting and homes and businesses burned to the ground.

“We were told of a route out, but despite that four of us were wounded. We wandered barefoot round El Geneina for seven days,” said Souad Ibrahim, 41, speaking through tears as she sat on the sand outside a blue tent.

“We had no water and no food. Even though I was seven months pregnant, I had to carry my four-year-old boy on my back and my girl who is six followed on foot” for the 35-kilometre walk to Adre, she said.

‘Janjaweed 

attacked them’ 

The journey is particularly dangerous for women, who in addition to militia attacks and stray gunfire also fear rape, a violent tactic used for decades in Sudan.

“Human Rights Watch documented 78 victims, or survivors, of rape between April 24 and June 26” in El Geneina and on the road to Chad, HRW said.

It said the attackers would target women who were of Massalit ethnicity, the non-Arab majority in El Geneina.

Fleeing the awful prospect of rape in their home town also exposed women to other dangers outside El Geneina.

“My wife and children left before me to head for Chad,” Adam Haroun told AFP, having now rejoined his family.

“Janjaweed attacked them on the way when they were in a wadi and a bullet hit my wife in the leg,” the 39-year-old said.

“Now an aid group is looking after her in a clinic.”

Haroun and his family are now safe in Chad across the border from Darfur, but others have not been able to escape.

The fighting is now concentrated around Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state and Sudan’s second-largest city.

From Nyala, the nearest safe haven is across the border in South Sudan. And that’s a distance of 200 kilometres.

RIYADH — Fierce storms closed schools Wednesday in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca region, home to Islam’s holiest site, the Grand Mosque, which was lashed by heavy rains and wind overnight, witnesses said.

As pilgrims tried to circumambulate the Kaaba, the giant black cube towards which all Muslims pray, a bolt of lightning struck the iconic Fairmont Mecca Clock Royal Tower hotel, illuminating the night sky late Tuesday.

The storm brought gale force winds exceeding 80 kilometres per hour, Hussein Al Qahtani, spokesman for the National Centre for Meteorology, told AFP.

The conditions were similar to a 2015 storm that felled a crane at the Grand Mosque, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds more, Qahtani said.

No casualties were reported in Tuesday’s storm.

Mecca resident Abu Mayyada told AFP he was out buying cigarettes and petrol when “everything went black in front of me” as the worst of the storm hit.

“Suddenly I lost control over the vehicle. I couldn’t see anything so I started listening to the Koran on the radio. I didn’t understand what was happening,” he said.

The Mecca neighbourhood of Al Kakkiyah recorded 45 millimetres of rain within 24 hours, the meteorology centre shared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Footage shared with AFP by Mecca residents showed pilgrims outside the Grand Mosque who were toppled over by the wind, which also sent crowd barriers sliding across the rain-slicked floor.

“The scene was very scary,” said Mecca resident Mohammed, who was grocery shopping at the height of the storm.

“Everything happened within a few minutes, when it started raining in a crazy way.”

Another resident, Yusuf, said August usually brought strong winds to Mecca but that Tuesday’s storm was “the worst” he could remember.

Flash flooding had mostly dissipated by Wednesday morning, said the residents, who gave only their first names for fear of reprisals.

Nevertheless the Mecca regional government said on X that schools would be closed in parts of Mecca, with classes conducted on an e-learning platform, “in the interest of everyone’s safety”.

The meteorology centre warned of further storms on Wednesday bringing rain, wind and thunder to the Mecca region and elsewhere in western Saudi Arabia.

CAIRO — Starvation has killed at least 498 children and “likely hundreds more” in Sudan four months into a war between rival generals, Save the Children said on Tuesday.

The conflict between the army under General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo broke out on April 15.

Around 5,000 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, and more than four million have been uprooted.

“At least 498 children in Sudan and likely hundreds more have died from hunger, including two dozen babies in a state orphanage,” Save the Children said in a statement.

The British charity said it had been forced to close 57 of its nutrition facilities since the war began and that stocks were running “critically low” in the 108 it still operates.

“Never did we think we would see children dying from hunger in such numbers, but this is now the reality in Sudan,” said Save the Children’s Sudan country director, Arif Noor.

“Seriously ill children are arriving in the arms of desperate mothers and fathers at nutrition centres across the country and our staff have few options on how to treat them.

“We are seeing children dying from entirely preventable hunger.”

In a statement last week, the heads of 20 international humanitarian organisations warned that “more than six million Sudanese people are one step away from famine”.

The violence continued on Tuesday, mainly in Khartoum and Darfur, a vast western region that is home to a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million population.

The fighting in Darfur is concentrated in Nyala, Sudan’s second city, where the United Nations says at least 60 people have been killed, 250 wounded and 50,000 since August 11.

The army said its commander there had been killed on Monday.

Trucks carrying aid have been unable to gain access to Nyala, while the only hospital still operating in the South Darfur capital says it has been overwhelmed with wounded.

The war spread this month to the North Darfur state capital of El Fasher, with at least 27 localities burned down by the RSF and allied Arab militias, according to the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.

“No one is stopping them. The RSF are moving freely while the army is turtled in its bases,” Nathaniel Raymond, who heads the Lab, told AFP.

ZABABDEH, Palestine — Israeli occupation troops killed a Palestinian teenager near the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence surged in the occupied territory.

Meanwhile, in the southern West Bank, troops made two arrests in the deadly on Monday shooting of a settler near the city of Hebron.

"Othman Mohammed Abu Khurog, 17, died after he was shot in the head by the occupation [Israeli forces]," the Palestinian health ministry said.

Abu Khurog was killed when clashes erupted in the small town of Zababdeh, southeast of Jenin, which Israeli forces had entered to make an arrest, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Abu Khurog's death comes amid rising violence in the West Bank.

On Monday, Israeli settler Batsheva Nigri was shot dead from a passing vehicle while travelling in a car near Hebron with her daughter and a man.

Two Palestinian residents of Hebron suspected of taking part in the shooting were arrested on Tuesday as troops pressed a manhunt for the woman's killers, closing off roads in the area, the army said.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called her killing a "heroic act" and a "normal response" to the persistent expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law but, not counting occupied East Jerusalem, around 490,000 Israelis live in such communities alongside nearly three million Palestinians.

With the latest death, at least 219 Palestinians have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far this year.

BEIRUT — Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets again Monday in Syria's southern city of Sweida, local media and an activist reported, as dire living conditions stoke discontent in regime-held areas.

Days of rare protests have erupted in the south after the government lifted fuel subsidies last week, dealing a blow to Syrians already struggling with the heavy toll that 12 years of war have exacted on the economy.

Local news outlet Suwayda24 posted videos showing hundreds of people gathered in the city on Monday, holding banners and chanting anti-government slogans.

"We've had enough, the Syrian people are suffocating," one activist in Sweida said on condition of anonymity for security reasons, adding that hundreds had gathered to protest in the city.

Soaring inflation, the rising cost of living, instability and poverty have plagued the country, pushing desperate Syrians to take to the streets, the activist said.

Security forces have not cracked down on demonstrators so far, he noted.

"My only hope is that this movement will spread to other provinces and that our voices will be heard," he told AFP.

Syria's war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions since it broke out in 2011 following Assad's repression of peaceful pro-democracy protests.

It spiralled into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and extremists.

Sunday saw a strike over deteriorating living conditions and price hikes across Sweida province, he heartland of the country's Druze minority, which has been mostly spared the worst of the civil conflict.

'Quasi-mafia' 

One senior Druze religious leader has expressed support for demonstrators and chastised the government.

Footage on Monday showed protesters carrying local Druze sheikhs on their shoulders.

In December, one protester and a policeman were killed when security forces cracked down on a demonstration in Sweida against deteriorating living conditions.

On Saturday, dozens demonstrated in southern Syria’s Daraa province.

An activist said there were further protests on Sunday evening in the province, the cradle of Syria’s uprising.

Daraa returned to Damascus’ control in 2018 under a Russia-backed ceasefire deal, and has since been wracked by violence and dire living conditions.

Some residents also gathered in recent days in Jaramana, a suburb of the capital Damascus, to protest against recurrent power cuts, a witness told AFP.

The conflict has ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry, the Syrian pound has lost most of its value against the dollar, and most of the population has been pushed into poverty.

Jihad Yazigi, editor of economic publication The Syria Report, said the fuel price hike came after years of punishing inflation, high unemployment and “generally an exhaustion of the population from the consequences of the war”, among other factors.

Resentment against Assad and his family “runs deep and the regime, which operates as a quasi-mafia, is simply incapable of offering long-term solutions”, he told AFP.

“The key will be to watch what happens in loyalist areas and in Damascus. That’s where it really matters,” he said.