Region

KHARTOUM — Air strikes pummelled Khartoum on Saturday, with representatives of Sudan's warring factions meeting in Saudi Arabia for talks to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe" as the fighting entered a fifth week.

A witness in west Khartoum reported army air strikes on paramilitary forces, as brutal urban warfare continued in Sudan's densely-populated capital.

More than 750 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since fighting erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Over half a million people have fled Khartoum alone, according to the UN, with hospitals there having been shelled and rampant looting reported as residents suffer under chronic shortages of food, electricity and medicine.

Representatives of both generals have been in the Saudi city of Jeddah for a week, for talks intended "to protect Sudan from any escalation that will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe", a Saudi diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The diplomat also said Burhan had been invited to attend the Arab League summit planned to take place in Jeddah on May 19 but it was unclear who would be representing Sudan.

"We didn't receive the name of the delegations, but we're really expecting Sudan will be present in the Arab summit," the diplomat said.

'Houses shaking' 

Envoys in Jeddah agreed on Thursday to "affirm our commitment to ensure that civilians are protected".

However the deal, dubbed the Jeddah Declaration, did not amount to a truce and the situation on the ground appeared unchanged as battles raged throughout the week of negotiations and into Saturday.

In the capital's twin city of Omdurman, "houses are shaking from the force of explosions", a witness told AFP Saturday, reporting "clashes using all kinds of weapons".

Thursday's deal commits both sides to let in badly needed humanitarian assistance and also calls for the restoration of electricity, water and other basic services.

Sudan launched on Saturday a call to the international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, and other regional organisations, “to provide humanitarian assistance”, according to a statement from the foreign ministry.

The government committed to “dedicating the port and airports of Port Sudan” on the Red Sea, Dongola airport in the country’s north and Wadi Seidna air base near the capital “to receive aid”.

Civilians and aid groups have repeatedly pleaded for humanitarian corridors to secure vital assistance, as aid agencies have been systematically looted and at least 18 humanitarian workers killed.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed hopes the Jeddah deal would “ensure that the relief operation can scale up swiftly and safely to meet the needs of millions of people in Sudan”, where a third of the population relied on aid even before the current conflict.

Guterres also reiterated “his call for an immediate ceasefire and expanded discussions to achieve a permanent cessation of hostilities”, in a Friday statement.

An RSF statement on Friday said the group had signed the Jeddah agreement despite their “full knowledge from past experience” that the army “will not heed the suffering of our people”.

Hopes for a ceasefire remain dim after multiple truces were violated in past weeks.

US officials have described the talks as difficult, with one saying the two sides were “quite far apart”.

But the Saudi diplomat said there had been “a positive response from both sides” and there was “a good spirit from the two parties”.

The diplomat nonetheless declined to comment on whether the two camps met directly.

On the ground, both sides have continue to exchange gunfire and accusations, each blaming the other for attacking infrastructure and civilians.

“We keep hearing that there will be a truce, but then you go out in the street and there are bullets everywhere,” Sudanese citizen Wahag Gafar told AFP after a gruelling journey to the Egyptian border.

“We know that when they announce a ceasefire, the shooting will still continue,” she said at the Argeen border crossing into Egypt, where over 60,000 have fled the fighting.

Almost 200,000 people have escaped Sudan, in addition to hundreds of thousands who have been displaced inside the country, the UN said Friday.

The exodus has seen Sudanese rush to neighbouring Chad, South Sudan and Ethiopia, where the UN refugee agency warned that its operations were “already significantly underfunded”.

Even before fighting broke out, “none of the UNHCR operations in these countries had funding covering more than 15 per cent of its needs”.

QESHM, Iran — Iranian captain Hassan Rostam has braved the Strait of Hormuz aboard his lenj for four decades, but now watches with despair as the wooden ships are being replaced by cheaper, faster boats.

The sturdy vessels, built by hand, have sailed Gulf waters for centuries, their potbellied silhouette emblematic of regional maritime traditions like the dhows of the Arabian Peninsula.

But these days, “there are fewer and fewer” of them, said Rostam, 62, who has spent his life travelling the waterway between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

With a lean body and weathered face, he gazes at the calm seas that are criss-crossed by huge tankers taking Gulf oil to the world’s markets, and naval vessels patrolling the strategic waterway.

But the island of Qeshm off Bandar Abbas is also home to the much older tradition of building wooden boats, around 30 of which were resting at low tide in the coastal village of Guran.

This small port has long housed several shipyards specialising in their maintenance and repair. But that morning, fewer than two dozen workers were there, barefoot in the mud.

A half-built lenj hull propped on beams will not be finished for lack of money, as its owner plans to dismantle it and use the boards for other projects.

“Today, a new lenj is very expensive” because “the wood comes from abroad” and construction is done entirely by hand, said Ali Pouzan, who supervises the Guran site.

Each lenj is unique and the ships vary in size, with the craft “transmitted from generation to generation”, he said.

UNESCO back in 2011 recognised the lenj as intangible cultural heritage requiring “urgent safeguarding”.

As modern alternatives have taken the wind out of its sails, “the philosophy, the ritual context and the traditional knowledge linked to navigation in the Persian Gulf... are gradually fading”, the UN body warned.

Open-air museum 

In their golden age, the rustic lenjes were used to transport cereals, dates, dried fish, spices, wood and textiles across the Gulf and as far as the coasts of East Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

But commercial shipping has been taken over by engine-powered boats made of fibreglass or steel, navigating the turquoise waters where huge oil tankers now roam.

Lenj vessels were also used for fishing, as well as the lucrative pearling tradition, which has nearly disappeared altogether.

Younes, a 42-year-old Guran resident, has been repairing lenjes in his native village for more than 20 years.

“It’s a painful job,” he said in the baking heat, as he used an old technique called “kalfat koobi” to waterproof a vessel with strips of cotton soaked in sesame and coconut oil.

Recognising the demise of shipbuilding in Guran, Pouzan is betting on tourism instead, a promising sector on Qeshm as the island attracts a growing number of visitors.

“We have restored several boats to adapt them to sea trips,” he said.

An old ship was being repurposed into a cafe, and there are plans to transform the scenic port, with coloured lenj hulls lying in the sand, into an open-air museum.

Near mangroves on the beach, Pouzan plans to build lenj-inspired huts for tourists. Each will bear the name of the most famous destinations the ships once reached — from Zanzibar and Mombasa to Kolkata.

GENEVA — The UN rights chief Thursday called on the international community to exert all possible pressure on the fighting sides in Sudan to resolve the conflict and end "the wanton violence".

The fighting has plunged "this much-suffering country into catastrophe", United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

Addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Sudan, he urged "all states with influence in the region to encourage, by all possible means, the resolution of this crisis".

His comments came as fighting continued in the Sudanese capital, pushing ever more people to undertake dangerous journeys to safety across the country's borders.

More than 750 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in the fighting that began on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

"I condemn the use of violence by individuals who have no regard for the lives and fundamental rights of millions of their own compatriots," Turk said.

He also slammed "this wanton violence, in which both sides have trampled international humanitarian law, notably the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution".

Thursday's urgent council session in Geneva, requested by Britain, Germany, Norway and the United States, with the support of dozens of other countries, was expected to wrap up later with a vote on a draft text calling for an immediate halt to the violence.

German ambassador Katharina Stasch said the UN's top rights body had had no choice but to host the special session.

"The Human Rights Council cannot stay silent when human rights are at stake," she said, insisting that "respect for human rights is a prerequisite for lasting, stable peace".

The draft text being discussed condemns "all reported violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, including reported acts of sexual and gender-based violence, committed since the start of hostilities by all parties to the conflict across the country."

In particular, the text calls for strengthening the mandate of an existing special rapporteur on the rights situation in Sudan to include "detailed monitoring and documentation... on all allegations of human rights violations and abuses since October 25, 2021, including those arising directly from the current conflict."

And it calls for the expert to assist the UN rights chief in drafting "a comprehensive report" on the rights situation in Sudan, to be presented during the main annual rights council session in March next year.

MOSUL, Iraq — Iraqi officials on Thursday said Mosul’s once-celebrated museum had entered the final stages of restorations ahead of a planned 2026 reopening after being closed to the public for 20 years.

The museum closed its doors in 2003, amid the chaos following the US-led invasion of Iraq, and was later ransacked by Daesh group terrorists after they seized the city in 2014.

“We are celebrating today, in the city of two springs, the launch of the Mosul Museum’s rehabilitation project,” the director of Iraq’s antiquities authority, Laith Majid, said at a press conference.

“This museum, an icon of museums in Iraq, was targeted by a blind barbarian assault,” Majid said, referring to the destruction by Daesh.

The militants used sledgehammers and power tools to deface ancient statues and pre-Islamic treasures housed in the museum, releasing an infamous video showing the destruction in 2015.

A gaping hole remains in the floor of the museum’s famed Assyrian gallery, caused by a bomb explosion.

“Part of this cavity will be preserved, as a witness throughout history to what has been perpetrated,” said Khair Al Din Ahmed Nasser, head of antiquities in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.

A new display was inaugurated, showcasing the museum’s history, collection and current restoration plans, as part of efforts supported by France’s Louvre Museum, the Smithsonian Institute and the World Monument Fund.

It comes within the “second and final phase” of the “total reconstruction and rehabilitation of the museum building” and should be completed within two or three years, said Nasser.

Among the pieces defaced by Daesh and under restoration at the museum are treasures from the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud, including a winged lion, two imposing “lamassu” — winged bulls with human heads — and the throne base of the ninth century BC King Ashurnasirpal II.

“Out of five works, there are three that are extremely advanced,” said Barbara Couturaud from the Louvre.

The artefacts are being revived with financing from the International Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Areas.

“The pieces have been identified... now they have to be assembled. These are sculptures that weigh several tonnes, requiring extremely complicated handling,” she said, adding she hoped they would be ready for the planned full reopening in summer 2026.

KHARTOUM — Fighting raged in the Sudanese capital and a city to the south on Wednesday, residents said, pushing more people to undertake dangerous journeys to safety across the country's borders.

Those unable to escape grapple with shortages of food and other essentials, surviving only thanks to Sudanese charity networks among friends and neighbours, as talks to secure the safe delivery of aid yield no noticeable progress.

"We were woken by explosions and heavy artillery fire," one resident of Khartoum's sister city of Omdurman told AFP as smoke drifted over the capital.

During the night, two huge blasts were heard across greater Khartoum, residents of multiple districts said, in the fourth week of battles between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

More than 750 people have been killed in the fighting which has wounded more than 5,000, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

In El Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital, about 350 kilometres southwest of Khartoum, residents on Wednesday also reported fighting and explosions.

More than 700,000 people are now internally displaced by battles that began on April 15, and another 150,000 have fled the country, UN agencies said this week.

An average of 1,000 are registered every day by the International Organisation for Migration at the dusty, sun-scorched Ethiopian border town of Metema.

Checkpoints 

Every person interviewed by AFP in Metema spoke of the terror leading up to their departure — days spent holed up at home in a city gripped by gunfire and bombings, followed by a 550 kilometre journey haunted by fear of armed robbery en route.

Ethiopian waiter Mohamed Ali, who moved to Khartoum seven years ago, said he left everything behind to flee.

“At each checkpoint, [armed men] searched us... and took whatever they found, including our money and any belongings we had,” he told AFP.

The United States and Saudi Arabia said the army and RSF would hold “pre-negotiation talks” in the Saudi city of Jeddah from last Saturday, but there has been no announcement of progress there.

Martin Griffiths, the top UN aid official, has left Jeddah after he “proposed a declaration of commitments for the two parties to guarantee the safe passage of humanitarian relief,” a UN spokesman in New York said on Tuesday.

Several aid workers have been killed in the fighting and humanitarian facilities ransacked.

Cindy McCain, World Food Programme executive director, said nearly 25 per cent of the agency’s food has been looted.

But aid continues to flow into Sudan. Two Saudi Arabian aircraft loaded with humanitarian material landed in Port Sudan on Tuesday, an AFP journalist said.

On Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, a military plane prepared another delivery of aid for Port Sudan.

“It’s clear that because of the needs on the ground, we’re going to proceed with humanitarian operations whether there’s a ceasefire or not,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Tuesday.

“But in order to make sure that safe passage is guaranteed, we want the parties to adhere to a declaration of commitments.”

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — A year after an Israeli bullet killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, her West Bank office remains almost untouched, but mourners' flowers have piled up in an adjacent room.

The Ramallah street where the news bureau is located has been renamed after her, and a new museum will soon honour her work and that of other reporters covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Fellow journalists say they still have not accepted the loss of Abu Akleh, 51, whose many years of fearless reporting had made her a household name across the Arab world.

Camera operator Majdi Bannoura, who was with her the day she died, said "despite the passing of a year since her death, I still don't believe that she is gone.

"Sometimes I feel that I'm living in a dream."

Walid Al Omari, the Qatari news channel's bureau chief for Jerusalem and Ramallah, said "Shireen's colleagues and I are unable to separate anything from Shireen's influence.

"So, we have kept the office as it was," he added, his voice breaking.

Abu Akleh died on May 11, 2022 while covering an Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank.

The army would later admit one of its soldiers likely shot the reporter, who was wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest marked "Press", having mistaken her for a militant.

Her killing prompted a global storm of outrage and calls for an international investigation.

The anger flared further when Israeli forces attacked mourners and pallbearers at her funeral in East Jerusalem.

Large murals have since been painted in honour of the journalist, including on the concrete wall Israel has built as part of its separation barrier with the West Bank.

Al Jazeera took her case to the International Criminal Court in December.

“We continue to work and to press for the prosecutor and the court to act and take a stand on this case,” Omari said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists this week noted the Israeli military had taken no accountability for the killings of at least 20 journalists, 18 of whom were Palestinian, in the past two decades.

“The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the failure of the military’s investigative process to hold anyone accountable is not an isolated case,” said CPJ Director Robert Mahoney.

He charged that the system “seems fashioned to evade responsibility”.

In response to the CPJ report, the Israeli army said it “regrets any harm to civilians during operational activity” and that it considers “the professional work of journalists to be of great importance”.

It added that the Israeli army “does not intentionally target noncombatants, and live fire in combat is only used after all other options have been exhausted”.

Rodney Dixon, a lawyer appointed by Al Jazeera to take up Abu Akleh’s case, has argued there was an attempt by Israel “to completely cover up” the circumstances of her death.

He described Abu Akleh’s killing as part of a “systematic and large-scale campaign” against Al Jazeera, noting Israel’s bombing of the channel’s office in Gaza in 2021.

‘A huge void’ 

In the year since her death, Abu Akleh has been memorialised by Palestinians, and the road where the office is located is now named Shireen Abu Akleh Street.

The cornerstone of a Shireen Abu Akleh Museum for Media will be laid during a ceremony in Ramallah on Thursday, one of a string of commemorative events.

Her brother Anton Abu Akleh said his family were still waiting for justice, speaking at a cultural event on Wednesday in Ramallah.

“During this past year we have gone through several stages, experiences and challenges as we try to obtain Shireen’s rights, and achieve justice for her,” he told the audience.

Bureau chief Omari said his slain star reporter “was not just a great journalist for Al Jazeera.

“She was a team on her own. It has left a huge void.”