Region

WAD MADANI, Sudan — Attacks by Sudanese paramilitaries on Sunday sent hundreds of civilians fleeing a major city in Darfur, residents told AFP as battles against the regular army intensify in the restive western region.

Darfur as well as Sudan's capital Khartoum have borne the brunt of nearly four months of fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by rival generals vying for power.

One resident told AFP hundreds of people have been displaced from Nyala, Sudan's second largest city and capital of South Darfur state, where "rockets are falling on houses".

The war erupted in Khartoum on April 15 between the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

At least 3,900 people have been killed nationwide, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

More than four million people have been uprooted from their homes, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Witnesses said on Sunday that RSF paramilitaries had attacked Nyala with “dozens of military vehicles” and that “hundreds of residents are fleeing intense artillery fire”.

The vast region of Darfur has a bloody history. It is where Sudan’s former strongman Omar Al Bashir in 2003 unleashed Arab tribal militia in a scorched-earth campaign to quash a non-Arab rebellion against perceived inequalities.

It is a stronghold of the RSF which emerged from the notorious Janjaweed militia that had spearheaded Bashir’s deadly onslaught.

Fighting in the latest conflict has concentrated on El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, where the United Nations suspects that crimes against humanity have been committed.

Several sources allege there have been massacres of civilians and ethnically motivated killings in Darfur, attributed to paramilitary forces and allied Arab militias.

Researchers at Yale University in the United States say that at least 27 villages in Darfur have been razed to the ground by the RSF and its allies since April.

“The ferocity and volume of the violence at least equals the genocide in 2003-2004,” Nathaniel Raymond of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health told AFP.

“The RSF and Arab allied militias are moving methodically and quickly without impediment. They chose the time and place and attack to liquidate civilian communities,” he said.

Fighting was also reported on Sunday in Khartoum’s battle-scarred sister city of Omdurman just across the Nile, where one resident reported “artillery fire”.

TEHRAN — A shooting on Sunday at a Shiite Muslim shrine in Iran’s south killed at least one person and wounded eight others, state media reported, revising down a previous toll of four fatalities.

The attack comes less than a year after a similar one on the same holy site, the Shah Cheragh mausoleum in the Fars province capital Shiraz.

“One person has been killed and eight others wounded in the attack,” official news agency IRNA reported, quoting Deputy Fars Governor Esmail Ghezel Sofla.

The wounded “have been transferred to medical centres and are undergoing treatment”, IRNA said.

Earlier, it said four people were killed but has retracted the initial report.

The death toll of one was confirmed by the Fars commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yadollah Bouali, speaking on state TV.

Iranian media outlets have provided different accounts of the attack and varying casualty tolls.

Bouali said that one gunman was behind it and arrested shortly after.

“A terrorist entered the gate of the shrine and opened fire with a battle rifle,” Bouali said.

Fars province Governor Mohamed Hadi Imanieh told state TV the attack occurred around 7:00pm (1530 GMT).

Footage carried by state TV showed ambulances rushing to the site of the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The Shah Cheragh mausoleum is home to the tomb of Ahmad, brother of Imam Reza — the eighth Shiite imam — and is considered the holiest site in southern Iran.

On October 26, a mass shooting at the revered shrine left 13 people dead and 30 wounded, in an attack later claimed by Daesh  group extremists.

Iran hanged two men in public over the October attack, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website reported last month, identifying them as Mohammad Ramez Rashidi and Naeem Hashem Qatali but not revealing their nationalities.

Authorities had previously said the attack involved people from other countries including neighbouring Afghanistan.

The pair were hanged at dawn on July 8 on a street near the shrine in Shiraz, the capital of Fars province, IRNA reported at the time.

Mizan said they had been convicted of “corruption on earth, armed rebellion and acting against national security” as well as “conspiracy against the security of the country”.

According to Mizan, Rashidi had confessed to having collaborated with Daesh to carry out the shooting.

Three other defendants in the case were sentenced to prison for five, 15 and 25 years for being members of Daesh, Fars Chief Justice Kazem Moussavi said.

The main assailant — who Iranian media had identified as Hamed Badakhshan, a man in his 30s — died of injuries sustained during his arrest, authorities said.

In November, Tehran said 26 “takfiri terrorists” from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan had been arrested in connection with the attack.

In Shiite-dominated Iran, the term takfiri generally refers to extremists or proponents of radical Sunni Islam.

Last year’s attack occurred as Iran was gripped by nationwide protests following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested for an alleged breach of strict dress rules for women.

HODEIDA, Yemen — The United Nations said on Friday it had successfully transferred more than 1 million barrels of oil from a dilapidated Yemeni tanker, removing the imminent risk of a spill.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "welcomes the news that the ship-to-ship transfer of oil from the FSO Safer to the Yemen replacement vessel has been safely concluded today, avoiding what could have been a monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe", a statement said.

The milestone means that "the core aspect" of a years-long effort to address the threat posed by the Safer, often referred to as a "ticking time bomb", is now finished, said UN Development Programme head Achim Steiner.

"That removes the imminent and immediate threat that had become the focus of attention across the whole world: A tanker that could break apart or explode in the Red Sea," Steiner told AFP.

Yemeni doctor Main Ahmed, 49, told AFP Friday's news was like "a weight lifted off our shoulders" for residents of the port city of Hodeida.

"I was always thinking about the risks of just going for a walk, especially since I live near the coast," he said.

Yet, the saga is not over.

The UN has previously warned that even with its cargo removed, the Safer "will pose a residual environmental threat, holding viscous oil residue and remaining at risk of breaking apart".

The project's next phase, stripping and cleaning the Safer's tanks and preparing it for towing and scrapping, is expected to take "anywhere between two to three weeks", Steiner said.

The Safer, a floating storage and offloading facility, has been moored around 50 kilometres from Hodeida since the 1980s.

It has not been serviced since war broke out more than eight years ago between Yemen's Houthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and the waters where the Safer is positioned, and a Saudi-led coalition backing the internationally recognised government based in the southern port city of Aden.

The ageing vessel, with its corroding hull, was carrying 1.14 million barrels of Marib light crude, four times as much oil as was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.

'Absence of accountability' 

Now its oil has been pumped to a new, smaller tanker known as the Yemen that the UN purchased in March.

As the operation began on July 25, experts warned that success was far from certain given scorching summer temperatures, ageing pipes and naval mines lurking in surrounding waters.

The UN had even arranged for a plane to be on standby "within a 90-minute flight radius" so it could "deploy chemicals from the air" in response to a spill, Steiner said.

All told, the UN has priced the operation at $143 million, a fraction of the estimated $20 billion clean-up costs in the event of a spill, to say nothing of billions lost to shipping disruptions through the Bab Al Mandab strait to the Suez Canal.

The UN is still roughly $20 million short, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the international community and the private sector Friday to step up with funds needed to "finish the job and address all remaining environmental threats".

Greenpeace said oil giants that previously used the Safer "and are the likely owners of some of the transferred oil" needed to contribute to the project's next stages.

"It is imperative to address the absence of accountability exhibited by the oil industry that has recorded staggering profits, but hasn't yet shown any sense of responsibility," a Greenpeace statement said.

Next steps unclear 

Officials are still trying to sort out where the oil might go next.

A long-term agreement between Yemen's warring parties on "future maintenance and management" is needed, Steiner said.

One possibility is a follow-up project in which UN experts would train staff of the Yemeni oil and gas company SEPOC in "how to safeguard the vessel", he said.

However, authorities in Sanaa and Aden have appointed rival executive general managers of SEPOC, underscoring how Yemen's conflict could continue to pose complications.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the fighting or from indirect causes such as lack of food or water, in what the UN calls one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Clashes between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition have reduced sharply since a UN-brokered truce began in April last year, even though it lapsed in October.

David Gressly, the UN resident coordinator in Yemen, said on Friday that while the Safer crisis was separate from talks on ending the war, the fact that opposing factions cooperated on the oil transfer "does create a bit of hope that there is a way forward".

TUNIS — Tunisia and Libya announced Thursday they had agreed to share responsibility for providing shelter for hundreds of migrants stranded at their border, many of them for over a month.

The migrants, primarily from sub-Saharan African countries, had been driven to the desert area of Ras Jedir by Tunisian authorities and left there to fend for themselves, according to witnesses, rights groups and UN agencies.

Aid groups said three groups of about 300 migrants in total remain stranded there.

A spokesman for Tunisia's interior ministry, Faker Bouzghaya, said during a joint meeting with Libyan authorities in Tunis that "we have agreed to share the groups of migrants who are at the border".

"Tunisia will take charge of a group of 76 men, 42 women and eight children," Bouzghaya told AFP.

He said the groups were transferred on Wednesday to reception centres in the cities of Tatouine and Medenine and provided with health and psychological care, with the help of the Tunisian Red Crescent.

Under the agreement, Libya will take charge of the remaining 150 migrants, humanitarian sources said.

The Libyan interior ministry earlier on Thursday announced the bilateral agreement to “put an end to the crisis of irregular migrants stranded in the border area”.

Racial tensions had flared in Tunisia’s second city of Sfax after the July 3 killing of a Tunisian man following an altercation with migrants.

Up to 1,200 black Africans were “expelled, or forcibly transferred by Tunisian security forces” to desert border regions with Libya and Algeria, Human Rights Watch said.

Humanitarian officials have reported at least 25 deaths of migrants abandoned in the Tunisian-Libyan border area since last month.

Mediterranean Sea crossing attempts from Tunisia had multiplied in March and April following a incendiary speech by President Kais Saied who had alleged that “hordes” of irregular migrants were causing crime and posing a demographic threat to the mainly Arab country.

Xenophobic attacks targeting black African migrants and students have increased across the country since Saied’s February remarks, and many migrants have lost jobs and housing.

The two North African countries are major gateways for migrants and asylum seekers attempting perilous voyages in often rickety boats in the hopes of a better life in Europe.

At least 11 migrants died in a shipwreck off the coast of Sfax, local court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi said on Monday, adding that another 44 were missing and only two were rescued.

The distance between Sfax and Italy’s Lampedusa island is only about 130 kilometres.

But the United Nations has described the central Mediterranean migration route as the world’s deadliest, claiming hundreds of lives each year.

More than 1,800 people have died attempting the route so far this year, according to figures released Friday by the International Organisation for Migration.

BEIRUT — The Lebanese army said on Thursday it had seized munitions from a Hizbollah truck that overturned near Beirut, leading to deadly clashes between Christian residents and members of the powerful Shiite Muslim group.

The violence erupted on Wednesday evening after the accident in Kahale, a town in the mountains east of the Lebanese capital, on the road linking it to the Bekaa Valley bordering Syria.

Kahale Mayor Abboud Abi Khalil told AFP that residents had surrounded the truck demanding to know what was inside, before Hizbollah members escorting it opened fire and killed one of them. 

Iran-backed Hizbollah said one of its members was shot and later died of his wounds.

The army confirmed in a statement on Thursday that two people had been killed and said ammunition had been seized from the truck.

"The cargo of the truck has been transported to a military centre, and an investigation has been opened by the competent judicial authorities," it added.

The army said its troops had removed the truck at dawn and reopened the Beirut-Damascus road which Kahale residents had blocked in protest.

Hizbollah is the only Lebanese faction that kept its weapons after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. It is considered a "terrorist" organisation by many Western governments.

A funeral is due to be held on Thursday for Ahmad Ali Kassas, the Hizbollah member who was killed in the Kahale clashes.

Hizbollah supporters posted pictures on social media showing Kassas dressed in military fatigues in Syria, a country at war where Hezbollah has been fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad.

In August 2021, angry residents of a mainly Druze village in southern Lebanon stopped a truck carrying a rocket launcher used by Hizbollah in an attack on Israel, accusing the Shiite movement of endangering civilian lives.