Region

BAGHDAD — Iraq unveiled on Sunday a 2,800-year-old stone tablet returned by Italy, as the war-ravaged country works to recover from abroad antiquities looted from its territory.

The tablet — whose text is written in cuneiform, the Babylonian alphabet — bears the insignia of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrian king who ruled the region of Nimrod, in present-day northern Iraq, from 858 to 823BC.

The circumstances surrounding the tablet’s arrival in Italy remain unclear, but the Italian authorities handed it over to Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid during a visit to Bologna over the past week.

“I would like to thank the Italian officials for their efforts and cooperation in bringing back this piece,” Rashid said during a ceremony on Sunday at a Baghdad presidential palace to hand the artefact over to the national museum.

The tablet had arrived in the 1980s in Italy, where it was seized by police, said Laith Majid Hussein, director of Baghdad’s council of antiquities and heritage.

Iraqi Culture Minister Ahmed Fakak Al Badrani said the circumstances behind its discovery were unclear.

“Perhaps [it was found] during archaeological excavations or during work on the Mosul dam,” Iraq’s biggest built in the 1980s, he said.

He underlined the importance of the piece, “whose cuneiform text is complete”.

Modern Iraq’s territory is the cradle of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations, to which humanity owes writing and the first cities.

The country’s antiquities have been the target of looting that increased in the chaos following the US-led invasion of 2003.

“We will continue to work to recover all the archaeological pieces of Iraqi history from abroad,” said the Iraqi president.

“We want to make the national Iraq Museum one of the best museums in the world, and we will work to do so.”

In May, New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg announced the return of two ancient sculptures to Iraq: A limestone Mesopotamian elephant and an alabaster Sumerian bull from the old city of Uruk.

The figurines, stolen during the Gulf War, were smuggled into New York in the late 1990s, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The bull was part of the private collection of Shelby White, a billionaire philanthropist and Met trustee.

TEHRAN — Iran and Saudi Arabia took a further step on Saturday to seal their reconciliation as Riyadh's top diplomat made a landmark visit to the Islamic republic following a seven-year rupture.

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan held talks with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian focusing on regional security, and was also to meet President Ebrahim Raisi.

Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia severed relations with Shiite-led Iran in 2016 after its embassy in Tehran and consulate in the northwestern city of Mashhad were attacked during protests over Riyadh's execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Al Nimr

But the two countries agreed in March to mend ties and reopen their respective embassies, in a Chinese-brokered deal that has shifted regional relations.

On June 6, Iran reopened its embassy and consulate in Saudi Arabia and the kingdom is expected to reopen its diplomatic mission in Tehran "soon", Prince Faisal said.

"I would like to point out the importance of cooperation between our two countries concerning the regional security, especially the security of maritime navigation and waterways," Prince Faisal said at a joint news conference with Amir-Abdollahian.

The Iranian foreign minister told reporters they had discussing ways of bolstering cooperation in the fields of security, economy, tourism and transportation.

But Amir-Abdollahian stressed Iran’s view that “regional security will be ensured by regional actors only” without external interference.

“Our relations are based on a clear foundation of full and mutual respect for independence, sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs,” Prince Faisal added.

The Saudi foreign minister said he would extend an invitation to Raisi “to visit the kingdom soon”.

Prince Faisal was the first Saudi foreign minister to visit Iran since 2006 when the late Saudi top diplomat Prince Saudi Al Faisal made a trip to Tehran.

Since restoring ties, Saudi Arabia has pushed for a peace deal with Iran-backed Houthi rebels and also championed the return last month of key Iran ally Syria to the Arab fold.

Saturday’s meeting between the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers was not the first for the two top diplomats.

Prince Faisal and Amir-Abdollahian had met in Beijing in April, where they both vowed to promote regional security and stability.

The same month, a Saudi delegation visited Iran to discuss reopening its diplomatic missions, Riyadh’s foreign ministry said at the time.

While Iran reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia, the reopening of the Saudi embassy in Tehran has been delayed due to the poor condition of the building which was damaged during the 2016 protests.

Pending the completion of the work, Saudi diplomats will be working from a luxury hotel in Tehran, according to media reports.

After the landmark deal with the Saudi kingdom, Iran has moved to cementing or restoring ties with neighbouring Arab countries.

In April, Iran named an ambassador to the United Arab Emirates nearly eight years after his predecessor left.

The move came after Iran welcomed an Emirati ambassador last September ending a six-year absence after the UAE had cut the level of its diplomatic representation in 2016.

Iran has also said it would welcome restoring diplomatic ties with Bahrain to end a seven-year rupture.

And at the end of May, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he would welcome a resumption of relations with Egypt which have been cut since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

SANAA — The first commercial flight from Yemen's rebel-held capital to Saudi Arabia since 2016 took off carrying Hajj pilgrims on Saturday, in the latest sign of easing tensions after years of war.

A Yemenia Airways plane carrying 277 travellers departed at around 8 pm (17:00 GMT), an official told AFP, seven years after Sanaa's international airport was blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

"Hopefully, the blockade will end and the airport will remain open. We are very happy and relieved, and I cannot describe the feeling," said Mohammad Askar, one of the travellers.

The flight is the first since Sanaa’s airport was closed by the coalition blockade in August 2016, more than a year into the Saudi-led military campaign to dislodge the Houthis.

Air traffic was largely halted by the blockade, but there have been exemptions for aid flights that are a lifeline for the population.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the fighting in Yemen or from indirect causes such as lack of food or water, in what the United Nations calls one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.

But despite coalition bombing raids and ground clashes, the Houthis, who seized control of Sanaa in 2014, ousting the internationally recognised government, rule over large swathes of the country.

Two more flights will depart on Monday and Tuesday, officials said. The Houthis’ Works Minister Ghaleb Mutlaq said about 200 flights would be needed to accommodate the 24,000 people that he said wanted to travel.

“We consider what is happening today as a good gesture, so that airports, especially Sanaa airport, will be opened to Yemeni travellers,” Najeeb Al Aji, the Houthis’ minister of guidance, Hajj and umrah, told journalists.

‘Uptick in rhetoric’ 

Fighting in Yemen sharply declined after a UN-brokered truce came into effect in April last year, and full-scale hostilities did not resume even when the ceasefire lapsed in October.

Among the terms of the truce was a resumption in international flights from Sanaa. The first commercial flight in six years took off for Jordan’s capital Amman in May last year.

Peace efforts have accelerated since March when Saudi Arabia, seeking to calm the region as it tries to revamp its oil-reliant economy and attract investment, announced a surprise rapprochement with its powerful rival Iran, seven years after they broke off ties.

After Iran reopened its embassy in Riyadh earlier this month, on Saturday Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister visited Tehran, where he held talks with his opposite number.

A Saudi delegation flew to Sanaa in April, the same week as a major prisoner swap that freed nearly 900 detainees in a confidence-building measure.

However, the Saudi and Houthi negotiators failed to agree on a new truce and later Saudi ambassador Mohammed al-Jaber, while stressing both sides were “serious” about the process, told AFP that the next steps were unclear.

“We are all aware that the road to peace is going to be long and difficult,” UN special envoy Hans Grundberg said at a forum in The Hague this week, noting “an uptick in public rhetoric threatening large-scale escalation”.

KHARTOUM — Air strikes killed or wounded more than two dozen civilians in Khartoum on Saturday, a citizens' group said, as medics reported hundreds of wounded fleeing Sudan's western Darfur region in worsening violence of a two-month war.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) claimed to have shot down a Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) fighter plane. A military source, not authorised to speak to the press, told AFP anonymously that a plane did go down but blamed a "malfunction".

The SAF, commanded by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has since April 15 been battling the RSF, headed by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, after the two fell out in a power struggle.

Witnesses say air strikes have intensified in the capital over the past few days.

On Saturday, warplanes again struck residential districts of Khartoum, killing "17 civilians, including five children," according to a citizens' support committee.

Residents had earlier reported air strikes around the city's southern Yarmouk district — home to a weapons manufacturing and arms depot complex where the RSF claimed "full control" in early June.

The citizen's committee added that 11 other civilians were wounded but AFP was not immediately able to independently confirm the committee's figures.

In a video published Friday on the army's Facebook page, deputy army chief Yasser Atta warned civilians to keep away from houses where the RSF are located because the army "will attack them at any time."

Since battles began, the death toll across the country has topped 2,000, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project said.

Hundreds of kilometres west of Khartoum, up to 1,100 have been killed in the West Darfur state capital El Geneina alone, according to the US State Department.

Medics said Saturday they were overwhelmed by the hundreds of wounded fleeing Sudan's Darfur region, which has become an increasing focus of global concern.

The dead have included West Darfur Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, killed after he criticised the paramilitaries in a Wednesday television interview. The RSF denied responsibility.

“We are overwhelmed in the operating theatre. We urgently need more beds and more staff,” said Seybou Diarra, a physician and project coordinator in Adre, Chad, for the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity.

“As violence rages in West Darfur, wounded people are coming in waves” to the hospital in Adre, just over the border about 20 kilometres west of El Geneina, the MSF statement said.

More than 600 patients, most with gunshot wounds, arrived at the facility over a three-day period — more than half of them on Friday, it said.

Claire Nicolet, MSF’s head of emergency programmes, cited “reports of intensifying and large-scale attacks this week”.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least 149,000 people have fled from Darfur into Chad.

They are among the roughly 2.2 million people uprooted nationwide by the fighting which has forced more than 528,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, IOM said.

On Thursday, the State Department attributed the atrocities in Darfur “primarily” to the RSF and said the violence and alleged rights violations are an “ominous reminder” of the region’s previous genocide.

A years-long war in Darfur began in 2003 with a rebel uprising that prompted then-strongman Omar al-Bashir to unleash the Janjaweed militia, whose actions led to international charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The RSF have their origins in the Janjaweed.

Along with Darfur, Khartoum has seen the heaviest fighting.

On Saturday, residents of Khartoum reported gunfire from “various types of weapons”, while witnesses also reported rocket and heavy artillery fire in the northern suburbs.

A record 25 million people — more than half the population — are in need of aid and protection, according to the United Nations, which says it has received only a fraction of the necessary funding.

Saudi Arabia has announced an international pledging conference for Monday in Geneva.

TAEZ, Yemen — Every day at dawn, 14-year-old Salim Mohammad leaves home to fetch water, trekking through his city in southwestern Yemen to join the queues at the nearest public dispenser.

He and his three siblings walk at least 1.6 kilometres and wait, sometimes for hours, hoping to fill their jerry cans and make it back in time for school.

“My arms and my back hurt from the load I carry every day,” Mohammad told AFP from the family’s makeshift apartment, a former grocery store, in the city of Taez.

“We wake up in the early morning and leave home with our father, sometimes even at night, to collect water,” he said.

The teenager’s plight is common in Yemen, which had ranked among the world’s most water-stressed countries even before conflict broke out in 2015 between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition supporting the ousted government.

The dire mix of war and climate change has only aggravated the country’s water woes.

Fighting has ravaged critical infrastructure while rising temperatures and varying precipitation have further hit supply, experts and aid groups say.

Yemen’s groundwater is being depleted at twice the rate it is being replenished, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

At the current rates, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country could completely run out of groundwater within 20 years, the FAO says

“We wake up every morning and race after water,” said Mohammad’s mother, Umm Mujahid.

“Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t... it’s a competition,” the 35-year-old said, as her children filled containers at the public tank, one of several around the city.

‘Tragic consequence’ 

The family fled fighting in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah to move to Taez, a government holdout that has been surrounded and besieged by the Houthis for years.

Yemen’s third-biggest city suffers from some of the worst shortages in a country where about 14.5 million people — nearly half of the population — do not have access to safe drinking water, according to the FAO.

The country’s piped water network reaches less than 30 per cent of Yemenis, forcing millions to rely on private companies or unsafe wells, said Ralph Wehbe of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“Children are particularly vulnerable,” said Wehbe, the deputy head of the ICRC’s delegation in Yemen.

With water in such short supply, many parents need the help of their children in obtaining it.

“They are forced to spend hours collecting water for their families... instead of going to school,” he told AFP from Sanaa.

“This is a tragic consequence of the water crisis.”

And the scarcity of water can have extreme repercussions.

Last month, a video circulating on social media purported to show a girl stabbed to death by her neighbour in the capital Sanaa over access to a water tank. AFP could not independently verify the footage.

In April 2022, local media reported a deadly accident in Taez when a water truck ran over women and children waiting to collect water.

The search for water has become part of daily life in the city, where young boys and girls can often be seen lugging containers nearly half their height, and once filled, very heavy for a child to carry back home.

‘Not a drop’ 

Samir Abdulwahid, the director of Taez’s water authority, said the city is currently fed by 21 water wells as opposed to 90 before the war, blaming the Houthi siege.

“Water availability in Taez is around 0.7 litres per person per day,” he said.

“Many areas in Taez, around 60 per cent of the city, have not received a drop of water since the start of the war.”

Children are bearing the brunt of the crisis, Abdulwahid said.

“The children are not going to school,” he told AFP. “They are forced to go to distribution points instead to get their share of water.”

The University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative ranks Yemen as one of the region’s most climate-vulnerable countries.

Rising sea levels and flash floods make groundwater salty and introduce pollution including sewage, according to Maha Al-Salehi, a researcher with Yemeni environmental consultancy firm Holm Akhdar.

“The water crisis in Yemen does not only include diminishing availability, but also poor quality, accessibility and affordability,” she told AFP.

“This doesn’t only put Yemenis on the ground in extreme water insecurity but also food insecurity as the majority of the water goes to agriculture.”

Even if Yemen’s conflict is resolved, water shortages will persist, Wehbe said.

“The issue of water scarcity is going to continue even if Yemen were to return to peace tomorrow,” he said.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's devastating war raged on into a third month on Thursday as the reported death toll topped 2,000 and after a provincial governor was killed in the remote Darfur region.

Since April 15, the regular army headed by Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has been locked in fighting with paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The fighting has driven 2.2 million people from their homes, including 528,000 who have fled to neighbouring countries, says the International Organisation for Migration.

"In our worst expectations, we didn't see this war dragging on for this long," said Mohamad Al Hassan Othman, among more than one million civilians who have fled heavy fighting in the capital Khartoum.

Everything in "our life has changed", he told AFP. "We don't know whether we'll be back home or need to start a new life."

The death toll has risen above 2,000, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project's latest figures which cover fighting until June 9.

In long-troubled West Darfur state, the violence claimed the life of Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, hours after he made remarks critical of the paramilitaries in a telephone interview with a Saudi TV channel.

The United Nations said “compelling eyewitness accounts attribute this act to Arab militias and the RSF”, while the Darfur Lawyers Association condemned the act of “barbarism, brutality and cruelty”.

Burhan accused his paramilitary foes of the “treacherous attack”. The RSF denied responsibility and said it condemned Abakar’s “assassination in cold blood”.

Sudan analyst Kholood Khair of the Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory said the “heinous assassination” was meant “to silence his highlighting of genocide... in Darfur”.

‘Completely devastated’ 

US and Saudi mediation efforts are at a standstill after the collapse of multiple ceasefires in the face of flagrant violations by both sides.

The East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has attempted to restart discussions, announcing this week that Kenya would chair a quartet including Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan tasked with resolving the crisis.

In a statement on Thursday, the foreign ministry, loyal to Burhan, “objected to Kenya’s chairmanship”, alleging that Nairobi had “adopted the positions of the RSF militia, sheltered its people and offered them various forms of support”.

The office of Kenyan President William Ruto — who has met both RSF and army senior officials in recent weeks — had released a draft communique of the IGAD meeting that said quartet leaders would “arrange [a] face-to-face meeting between [Burhan and Daglo]... in one of the regional capitals”.

A Sudanese official told AFP on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media, that Burhan “will not sit at the same table” as Daglo, as fighting shows no signs of abating.

A record 25 million people — more than half the population — are in need of aid, according to the UN, which says it has received only a fraction of needed funding.

Saudi Arabia has announced an international pledging conference for next week.

“We have nothing left,” said another person living in the capital, Ahmed Taha. “The entire country has been completely devastated... Every inch of Sudan is a disaster area.”

Many of the displaced have lost loved ones as well as “all their belongings and livelihoods”, said Anja Wolz of aid group Doctors Without Borders.

Darfur, one of the war’s main battlegrounds, was already scarred by a two-decade conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead and more than 2 million displaced.

Daglo’s RSF have their origins in the Janjaweed militias which former strongman Omar Al Bashir unleashed on ethnic minorities in the region in 2003, drawing charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Homes and markets have been burnt to the ground, hospitals and aid facilities looted and more than 149,000 people sent fleeing into neighbouring Chad.

The Umma Party, one of Sudan’s main civilian groups, said El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, had been turned into a “disaster zone”, and urged international organisations to provide help.

SAADNAYEL, Lebanon — Syrian refugees languishing in camps in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley for years say their hopes for the future are evaporating as their host country loses patience and international support dwindles.

Ibrahim Al Korbaw is only 48, but the hardships of war and poverty have aged the white-bearded man beyond his years.

In front of his tent in Saadnayel, he and his children are hard at work under the midday sun, separating and peeling fragrant cloves of garlic.

Korbaw fled Syria’s Raqa almost a decade ago after the Daesh group took over, turning the city into its de facto Syria capital.

He and five of six children — all under 12 — now earn just around $20 a week between them peeling garlic, a meagre supplement to United Nations aid that he said barely covers the necessities.

Aid groups have warned that crucial support for Syrians at home and abroad has dwindled, as the international community meets in Brussels this week for a pledging conference.

One of the boys recently begged Korbaw to stop working because his hands were bruised, “but I told him ‘keep going... we must put bread on the table’”, Korbaw told AFP.

Lebanese authorities say the country hosts around two million Syrians, while more than 800,000 are registered with the UN — the highest number of refugees per capita in the world.

‘No home’ 

But amid a crushing economic crisis that has pushed most of Lebanon into poverty, anti-Syrian sentiment has soared, the government has called for refugees to leave and security forces have deported dozens to Syria this year alone.

Korbaw says he cannot go back to his destroyed house in Raqa, and that he fears arrest and deportation — especially after Lebanese authorities began a crackdown on Syrians in April.

“I would rather die in front of my children” in Lebanon, he said, crouched over the garlic, beads of sweat trickling down his face.

“At least they would know for sure that I’m dead,” he added, alluding to the tens of thousands whose fates are unknown in Syria.

Other refugees living in agricultural lands in eastern Lebanon told AFP that no matter how dire their situation, they could not return to Syria because their homes were gone, they feared forced conscription and regime reprisals, or had no means to support their family there.

Korbaw’s sister Souad, 34, said she lost all hope of living a normal life after fleeing the horrors of Daesh terrorists only to lose her 12-year-old son in Lebanon while he was at work.

He died in a tractor accident harvesting potatoes this year, after he and his five siblings were forced to drop out of school to help put food on the table.

“I feel like all the doors are shut for us... like I will never again live a decent life,” she said from her shelter.

“I feel like I will live out the rest of my life in this tent, voiceless.”

‘Watching my 

children die’ 

When her husband managed to return to Syria to bury their son, he found the family house looted and destroyed by shelling.

“In Syria, we have no home, no security, no livelihood,” she said.

Since 2011, more than 500,000 people have been killed in Syria after the government’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters plunged the country into a complex war that drew in foreign powers and terrorists.

Madaniya Al Khalaf, 35, told AFP she can no longer afford diapers for her six-month-old baby, and uses a plastic bag and cloth instead after losing meagre UN aid due to budget cuts.

The mother of four said she has had to beg for money from camp dwellers and have her young children rummage through garbage for plastic and metal to sell to make ends meet.

In a nearby camp, Ghofran Al Jassem, 30, originally from northwest Syria’s Idlib region, said her four children had “no future” in Lebanon and were not attending school because the family could not afford the bus fares.

Her two boys were born with a heart condition, but she said they had to skip medical tests and borrow money for treatments after she was “cut off from UN aid since November” due to funding shortages. Her husband is only employed in low-paid seasonal work.

Her eldest son, who is seven, could die unless he undergoes a costly heart transplant, she said.

“I’m watching my children die right in front of me,” Jassem told AFP, breaking into tears.

“If I stay, I may lose them,” she said. “But if I return to Syria I will lose both my children and my husband — because there is no health care... and my husband will be forcibly conscripted.”

Without hope either way, “I may as well stay.”

KHARTOUM — Army warplanes bombed the Sudanese city of El Obeid on Wednesday, as the country prepared to mark two months since a power struggle between rival generals plunged the country into devastating conflict.

Since April 15, the regular army headed by Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo have been locked in urban combat that has left whole neighbourhoods of the capital Khartoum unrecognisable.

The fighting quickly spread to the provinces, particularly the flashpoint western region of Darfur, and has now killed at least 1,800 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).

On Wednesday, the regular army carried out "air strikes for the first time in El Obeid," the capital of North Kordofan state, 350 kilometres south of the capital, which has been "surrounded by the RSF since the war began", witnesses told AFP.

Nationwide, some 2.2 million people have fled their homes, more than 1 million of them escaping Khartoum, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Of those, more than 528,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, according to the UN agency.

Those that remain have run out of "food, water and medicine", Khartoum resident Ahmed Taha told AFP.

“We have nothing left. The entire country has been completely devastated. Everywhere you look, you’ll see where bombs have fallen and bullets have struck. Every inch of Sudan is a disaster area.”

US and Saudi mediation efforts are at a standstill after the collapse of multiple ceasefires in the face of flagrant violations by both sides.

“We think we’ve given them every shot,” a senior US State Department official said on Tuesday.

Aid agencies have pleaded for the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow assistance in and fleeing civilians out but to no avail.

Entire districts of Khartoum no longer have running water, mains electricity is only available for a few hours a week and most hospitals in combat zones are not functioning.

A record 25 million people — more than half the population — are in need of aid, according to the UN.

“We have been suffering and suffering and suffering the scourge of this war for two months,” said Khartoum resident Soha Abdulrahman.

‘Crimes against humanity’ 

The conflict’s other main battleground Darfur — home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population — was already scarred by a two-decade war that left hundreds of thousands dead and more than 2 million displaced.

Amid what activists have called a total communications “blackout” in large parts of the region, hundreds of civilians have been killed in the current fighting.

Homes and markets have been burnt to the ground, hospitals and aid facilities looted and more than 149,000 sent fleeing into neighbouring Chad.

The head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes, said on Tuesday there was “an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities, allegedly committed by Arab militias and some armed men” in RSF uniform.

If these reports are verified they “could amount to crimes against humanity”, he said.

Daglo’s RSF have their origins in the Janjaweed militias which ousted strongman Omar Bashir unleashed on ethnic minorities in the region in 2003, drawing charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The paramilitaries remain highly mobile and adept at the sort of urban combat that has gripped Khartoum and Darfur’s cities but the regular army has so far enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the skies.

However, an army official said on Wednesday that the RSF had begun using “drones”, which an RSF source said they had obtained “from commandeered army centres”.

Both sources spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

According to a military analyst from the region who requested anonymity for his safety, the RSF “might have obtained them from the Yarmouk” weapons manufacturing and arms depot complex, which they overran just days after the collapse of US and Saudi-brokered ceasefire talks.