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WAD MADANI, SUDAN — In a bustling market in central Sudan, vegetable seller Ahmed al-Obeid dusts off his wooden stall, carefully arranging fresh cucumbers and tomatoes in neat piles as customers cautiously return.

Just weeks ago, this market in the central Sudanese city of Wad Madani lay mostly deserted. Traders had shuttered their shops, gripped by fear of the paramilitaries who controlled the city.

Now, voices ring out again, bargaining over fresh produce as the city tentatively stirs back to life after the army reclaimed it from its rival Rapid Support Forces [RSF] last month.

"We are feeling safe again," said Obeid.

"People are buying and selling like old times," he told AFP, adjusting a pile of onions.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a war between the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the RSF.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this month called it "an unprecedented humanitarian crisis" in Africa, and the United States has sanctioned both Burhan and Daglo for abuses.

Wad Madani, the capital of pre-war breadbasket Al-Jazira state, became a battleground when RSF forces descended on the city in December 2023, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee the city and Al-Jazira.

But today, signs of recovery in the city are palpable, if restrained.

Buildings bear the scars of war. Blackened walls and piles of rubble are constant reminders of the destruction the city has endured.

Storefronts, restaurants and other businesses remain gutted by fire.

At a maternity ward in the city's main hospital, expectant mothers wait with their families while nurses in white scrubs hurry through the corridors, attending to patients.

"Medicine is available. Life is finally back to normal. Things have completely changed, thank God," Rehab Moussa, a patient receiving care, told AFP.

Yet, obstetrics and gynaecology specialist Khalid Mohammed said that although the hospital is slowly recovering, there are still serious shortages in staff, medicine and equipment.

"Our surgical supplies, including sutures, are nearly expired and we really need more anesthesia equipment," Mohammed told AFP between surgeries.

BEIRUT — The US military said Saturday it had killed a senior member of Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch Hurras al-Din, which announced its dissolution last month, in an air strike in the country's northwest.

It is the latest US strike this year against the group in Syria. Along with its Western and Arab allies, the United States has emphasised that Syria must not serve as a base for "terrorist" groups after the toppling of president Bashar al-Assad in December.

On Friday, US Central Command [CENTCOM] forces "conducted a precision air strike in northwest Syria, killing Wasim Tahsin Bayraqdar, a senior leadership facilitator of the terrorist organisation Hurras al-Din," the military said in a statement.

The northwest was the stronghold of interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group before it led the rebel offensive that toppled Assad in December.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said a drone strike on a car killed Bayraqdar.

Last Sunday, CENTCOM said it killed "a senior finance and logistics official" in Hurras al-Din.

That came after CENTCOM last month reported killing another senior Hurras al-Din operative, Muhammad Salah al-Zabir, in an air strike also in the northwest.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said Hurras al-Din was founded in February 2018.

The group did not publicly confirm its allegiance to Al-Qaeda until its dissolution announcement in January.

Hurras al-Din dissolved in line with orders from Sharaa, who has called on all armed group to disband.

The United States designated Hurras al-Din as a "terrorist" organisation in 2019.

KHAN YUNIS, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — Militants on Thursday handed over the bodies of four hostages taken into Gaza during their October 2023 attack, with Hamas saying they include the Bibas family , symbols of Israel's ordeal since the Gaza war began.

This is the first release of dead hostages under a fragile ceasefire under which living hostages have been exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The ceremony to return the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young boys, Kfir and Ariel, and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his capture, took place at a former cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.

Israel has "received the caskets of four fallen hostages", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said, before the military confirmed a convoy with the bodies had entered Israel.

Flag-waving Israelis stood beside the road as a brisk wind blew near Kissufim, southern Israel, waiting for the vehicles to pass following the handover via the Red Cross.

Crowds also gathered in Tel Aviv, AFPTV images showed.

Israel's military said the bodies would "undergo an identification procedure" at the national forensic medicine institute.

Ahead of the handover, Hamas displayed four black coffins on a stage erected on the sandy patch of ground. A banner behind them depicted Netanyahu as a blood-stained vampire. An armed militant stood nearby.

Each casket bore a small photo of each of the deceased. White mock-up missiles placed near the coffins carried the message: "They were killed by USA bombs," a reference to Israel's top military supplier.

A militant, his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf, sat on the stage to complete documents with a Red Cross official before the coffins were loaded into Red Cross vehicles.

Tahani Fayad, 40, was among the hundreds of people gathered to witness the ceremony which he called "a confirmation of the victory of the Palestinian people and proof that the occupation will not defeat us".

Armed men in military fatigues and wearing Hamas headbands were ubiquitous, standing near the stage for the carefully choreographed ceremony, as in previous hostage transfers.

During their October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family's abduction from their home near the Gaza border.

Ariel was then aged four and Kfir just nine months old.

Yarden Bibas, the boys' father and Shiri's husband, was abducted separately and released in a previous hostage-prisoner swap on February 1.

PORT SUDAN, SUDAN —Two days of fighting between Sudanese rivals have forced an estimated 10,000 families to flee a famine-hit displacement camp in the Darfur region, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces [RSF] last week stormed Zamzam camp, home to at least half a million people, triggering clashes with the Sudanese army and allied militias, witnesses told AFP.

The International Organisation for Migration said the violence since February 11 had displaced 10,000 families from Zamzam, just south of North Darfur state capital El-Fasher.

The agency cautioned that its data covers only the first two days of the reported attack as its collection capacity had been reduced due to funding constraints.

Beyond the camp, a further "1,544 households were displaced from various villages" near El-Fasher, the IOM said.

El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast western region of Darfur that the RSF has not captured in its nearly two-year war with the Sudanese army.

With the military on the verge of retaking the capital Khartoum following a multi-front offensive on central Sudan, the paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher in a bid to consolidate their hold on Darfur.

But the RSF has not managed to take the city, its attacks successively repelled by the army-aligned Joint Forces but sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.

Before the most recent attacks, there were already 1.7 million people displaced in North Darfur alone, with two million facing extreme food insecurity, according to the UN.

Established in 2004, Zamzam has received waves of displaced Sudanese during the current war, which began in April 2023.

Some aid officials told AFP the camp's population has swelled to around one million during the war.

Famine was first declared in Zamzam in August, and has since taken hold of two other displacement camps around El-Fasher.

According to a UN-backed assessment, famine is projected to spread to five more areas of the state including the capital El-Fasher by May.

Across Sudan, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted over 12 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

GENEVA — The World Health Organisation said Wednesday that mass polio vaccination would resume in Gaza on Saturday, targeting nearly 600,000 children, after the virus was again detected in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

The United Nations health agency said no more polio cases had been reported since a 10-month-old child was paralysed in Gaza last August.

But it said that poliovirus had been found again in wastewater samples taken in the Gaza Strip in December and January, "signalling ongoing circulation in the environment, putting children at risk".

"The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region." 

A new campaign would therefore take place from February 22 to 26, with the aim of reaching more than 591,000 children with oral polio vaccines, it said.

The aim was to reach all children under 10, including those previously missed, "to close immunity gaps and end the outbreak", it said, adding that another vaccination round was planned for April.

Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious and potentially fatal.

It can cause deformities and paralysis and mainly affects children under the age of five.

After the August case was reported, brief localised pauses in Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza were agreed to allow for two vaccination rounds in the territory in September and October. 

Those rounds reached more than 95 percent of the children targeted, WHO said.

But it warned that some areas in the north, including Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, were inaccessible for the second vaccination round.

As a result around 7,000 children had not received their necessary second dose.

The ceasefire in effect since January 19 "means health workers have considerably better access now", WHO said.

The agency stressed that "pockets of individuals with low or no immunity provide the virus an opportunity to continue spreading and potentially cause disease". 

"The current environment in Gaza, including overcrowding in shelters and severely damaged water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure, which facilitates fecal-oral transmission, create ideal conditions for further spread of poliovirus," it warned.

It warned that the movement of people after the current ceasefire could help spread the virus.

WHO stressed that there are no risks to vaccinating a child more than once. 

"Each dose gives additional protection which is needed during an active polio outbreak."