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PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Pro-democracy activists in Sudan on Thursday said around 25 people drowned in the Nile while trying to flee fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces in the southeast.

"Around 25 citizens, most of them women and children, have died in a boat sinking" while crossing the Blue Nile river in the south-eastern state of Sennar, a local resistance committee said in a statement.

The committee is one of hundreds across Sudan that used to organise pro-democracy protests and have coordinated frontline aid since the war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began last year.

"Entire families perished" in the accident, they said, while fleeing the RSF's recent advance through Sennar.

On Saturday, the RSF announced they had captured a military base in Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, where over half-a-million people had sought shelter from the war.

Witnesses also reported the RSF sweeping through neighbouring villages, pushing residents to flee in small wooden boats across the Nile.

At least 55,000 people fled Sinja within a three-day period, the United Nations said on Monday.

Local authorities in neighbouring Gedaref state estimated on Thursday that some 120,000 displaced people had arrived this week. The state’s health minister Ahmed al-Amin Adam said 90,000 had been officially registered.

Over 10 million people are currently displaced across Sudan, in what the UN calls the world’s worst displacement crisis.

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict in the country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, with some estimates putting the death toll as high as 150,000, according to the United States envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello.

It has also torn the country apart into competing zones of control. The RSF holds much of the capital and the agricultural heartland to its south, nearly all of Darfur, and swathes of the southern Kordofan states.

In El Fasher in North Darfur — the only state capital in the Darfur region that the RSF has not captured — a paramilitary attack on a market on Wednesday “killed 15 civilians and injured 29 others,” health ministry official Ibrahim Khater told AFP Thursday.

Since fighting in the city began in early May, at least 278 people have been killed, according to French charity Doctors without Borders (MSF).

But the real toll is likely much higher, with most of those wounded unable to reach health facilities amid an ongoing siege and heavy street battles.

The hospitals in El Fasher — nearly all of which have shut down — have themselves been attacked at least nine times since May, according to MSF.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilian infrastructure and indiscriminately shelling homes, markets and hospitals.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hizbollah said an Israeli air strike killed a senior commander in south Lebanon on Wednesday, the Iran-backed movement's second such loss in recent weeks.

Hizbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza, but an uptick in bellicose rhetoric from both sides in recent weeks has raised fears of all-out war.

"A Hizbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon was killed" in an "Israeli strike on a car in Tyre", a source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Hizbollah said that "commander Mohammed Naameh Nasser", also known as "Hajj Abu Naameh" had been killed, and also announced the death of a second fighter.

Another source close to the group, also requesting anonymity, confirmed Nasser was killed in the strike in Tyre, and said he was the third senior Hizbollah commander to be killed in almost nine months of hostilities.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said “an enemy drone targeted a car” in Tyre, a coastal city around 20 kilometres from the border.

The first source said Nasser had the same rank as Taleb Abdallah, a commander killed in an Israeli strike last month who was described by a Lebanese military source at the time as the “most important” Hizbollah commander killed to date.

That strike prompted Hizbollah to intensify its attacks on Israeli targets, firing barrages of rockets across the border in the days that followed.

In January, a security source said an Israeli strike killed Wissam Hassan Tawil, another top commander from the group.

‘Prevent a conflagration’

Hizbollah announced a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Wednesday, while the NNA reported Israeli attacks in other parts of south Lebanon.

The commander’s death followed a relative easing of cross-border exchanges over the past week, after threats on both sides had intensified.

Fears the violence, so far largely restricted to the border area, could turn into all-out war have sparked a flurry of diplomatic efforts to lower tensions.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent a “conflagration” between Israel and Hizbollah.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has made repeated visits to Lebanon in recent months, was due in Paris on Wednesday where he was due to meet with Macron’s Lebanon envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Iran warned on Saturday that “all resistance fronts” would confront Israel if it attacks Lebanon.

Last week, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said his country did not want war in Lebanon but could send it back to the “Stone Age” if diplomacy failed.

Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned in June that “no place” in Israel would be spared in the event of all-out war, and threatened nearby Cyprus if it opened its airports to Israel.

The cross-border violence has killed at least 495 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe in the territory's south.

Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City's Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, said AFP reporters.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that "this will not happen".

Military chief Herzi Halevi meanwhile said Israel is engaged in "a long campaign" to destroy Hamas over the October 7 surprise attack and to bring home the hostages held by Palestinian militants.

The United Nations warned that the almost nine-months-old war had "unleashed a maelstrom of human misery" and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into "an abyss of suffering".

Ten days after Netanyahu said the war's "intense phase" was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down air strikes and artillery fire on fighters in the Shujaiya district.

The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.

The Israeli forces — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been impacted by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the order covers 117 square kilometres, or “about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October”.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 per cent of Gaza’s population.

She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.

“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”

Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, said the World Health Organisation.

Wafaa Elwan, a Palestinian mother of seven who now lives in a tent city by the sea, said: “We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us.”

She said her five-year-old son, much of whose body was covered in rashes and welts, “can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body”.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The Israeli forces said on Wednesday that “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip”.

The Gaza civil defence agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.

Another strike killed three people in a car at Al Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir Al Balah area, said an AFP reporter.

Air strikes also hit homes in Rafah, according to Gaza’s government media office.

The New York Times has quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.

Netanyahu, who heads a government including hardline right-wing parties, strongly rejected this on Tuesday and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism”.

“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.

BEIRUT — Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah group said it launched dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed a civilian in the country's south.

Israel and Hizbollah, an ally of Hamas, have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian fighter group's October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

Hizbollah fighters launched "dozens of Katyusha rockets" at army barracks in northern Israel "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks... and the killing of a civilian", the Lebanese group said in a statement.

The Israeli army identified “approximately 15 projectiles... crossing from Lebanon, and 10 were successfully intercepted” without causing casualties, it said in a statement.

The army also said it struck a “Hizbollah military structure” in the area of the border village of Yarin.

Earlier Tuesday, Lebanese state media, an official and a minister said an Israeli strike killed a civilian in the country’s south.

“The strike that targeted Bustan killed a civilian,” said Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, after earlier reporting Israeli warplanes had struck the village.

Bustan Mayor Adnan Ahmed told AFP the strike killed Muhieddin Abu Dallah, a farmer in his 50s, and damaged his house and agricultural machinery.

In a post on social media platform X, Agriculture Minister Abbas Al Hajj Hassan described Abu Dallah as “a Lebanese farmer who resisted the occupation by remaining steadfast on his land, and sacrificed his life”.

The violence between Hezbollah and Israel has killed 493 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to authorities.

Fears had mounted that the cross-border clashes could turn into a full-blown conflict until the past week, when the fighting dropped in intensity.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces carried out deadly strikes on Tuesday on southern Gaza and battled fighters after the army again ordered Palestinians to leave areas near the besieged territory's border with Israel and Egypt.

Witnesses reported intense bombing and shelling around Khan Yunis, southern Gaza's main city from which Israeli forces withdrew in early April after a devastating months-long battle.

A hospital source in the city said shelling killed eight people and wounded more than 30 others.

The bombardment came after a rocket barrage at southern Israel claimed by the fighter group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas.

This was followed by an order to evacuate most areas east of the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, including the towns of Al Qarara and Bani Suhaila.

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees estimated on Tuesday that a quarter of a million people had been impacted since Israel's army issued a new evacuation order for parts of southern Gaza a day earlier.

"We've seen people moving, families moving, people starting to pack up their belongings and try to leave this area," UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told reporters in Geneva via video-link from Gaza.

The agency "estimates that around 250,000 people have been impacted by these orders", she said, adding: "We expect these numbers to grow."

The 250,000 number was UNRWA's estimate for the people in the area of new evacuation orders in eastern Khan Yunis, Wateridge told AFP.

“We expect that almost all of these people will move from this area,” she said, adding that the agency hoped to get a better idea later Tuesday of the numbers who have physically left.

Bani Suhaila resident Ahmad Najjar said the Israeli order has spurred “fear and extreme anxiety”, and “there is a large displacement of residents”.

Six consecutive days of intense battles followed a similar evacuation order issued last week for the Gaza City district of Shujaiya.

An AFP correspondent reported artillery shelling in the northern area on Tuesday, and witnesses said gun battles raged on.

The military said its forces were operating in Shujaiya, central Gaza and Rafah, where aircraft carried out strikes and troops “ambushed an armed terrorist squad” in a car and killed them.

Over the past day, the Israeli air force “struck approximately 30 terror targets” across Gaza, said a military statement.

In Shujaiya, Palestinian militants “were eliminated and dozens of terrorist infrastructure sites above and below ground were dismantled, including tunnel shafts”, it added.

‘Downshift’

In central Gaza, witnesses said strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp where the Palestinian Red Crescent reported at least one dead, a child.

Other parts of the Gaza Strip were reeling from continued fighting nearly nine months into the war, sparked by Hamas October 7 attack on Israel.

Months of on-and-off talks towards a truce and hostage release deal have meanwhile made little progress, even after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently declared that the “intense phase” of the war was winding down.

“We’ve heard the Israelis talk about a significant downshift in their operations in Gaza,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.

“It remains to be seen.”

The latest order to leave parts of southern Gaza follows an evacuation of Rafah nearly two months ago which had signalled the start of a long-feared Israeli ground offensive.

The fighting since then has again uprooted many Palestinians and led to the closure of a key aid crossing.

The United Nations and relief agencies have voiced alarm over the dire humanitarian crisis and the threat of starvation the war and Israeli siege have brought for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 37,900 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israeli occupation authorities on Monday released Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital — the territory’s largest medical complex — along with dozens of other detainees returned to Gaza for treatment.

Speaking after his release, Abu Salmiya said he had suffered “severe torture” during his detention.

“Several inmates died in interrogation centres and were deprived of food and medicine,” he said.

‘Try peace’

Israel has accused Hamas of using Al-Shifa and other hospitals as a cover for military operations, claims Gaza militants have rejected.

Netanyahu, who has faced growing anger from protesters over his handling of the conflict as well as pressure from hardline coalition partners, criticised the release which he said had been made without his knowledge.

The Israeli premier said Abu Salmiya belongs “in prison” because Israeli hostages were “murdered and held” in the now ravaged hospital he runs.

Successive Israeli raids have reduced large parts of Al Shifa to rubble.

The director’s return to Gaza was “a serious mistake and a moral failure”, Netanyahu said.

According to Abu Salmiya, Israel brought no charges against him during his seven-month detention.

DEIR EL BALAH, Palestinian Territories — The head of the Gaza Strip's biggest hospital said on Monday after being freed from more than seven months of detention that he had been "tortured" by Israel.

Al Shifa Hospital Director Mohammed Abu Salmiya was among more than 50 Palestinians released and returned to Gaza for treatment, according to an Israeli minister and a medical source in the besieged territory.

Salmiya said he was put through "severe torture" during his detention, which left him with a broken thumb.

"Prisoners are subjected to all kinds of torture," he told a press conference. "Several inmates died in interrogation centres and were deprived of food and medicine."

"For two months no prisoner ate more than a loaf of bread a day," said Salmiya.

"Detainees were subjected to physical and psychological humiliation."

The medical chief said no charge had ever been made against him.

Israeli forces detained Salmiya during one of a number of raids on Al Shifa.

The hospital has largely been reduced to rubble by successive raids since Israel launched its assault on Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Salmiya and the other freed detainees crossed back into Gaza from Israel just east of Khan Yunis, a medical source at the Al Aqsa hospital in Deir Al Balah told AFP.

Five detainees were admitted to Al Aqsa hospital and the others were sent to hospitals in Khan Yunis, the source added.

An AFP correspondent at Deir Al Balah saw some detainees in emotional reunions with their families.

Israel’s military said it was “checking” reports about the release.

However, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir confirmed the operation when he posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Salmiya’s release “with dozens of other terrorists is security abandonment”.

Israel’s military has accused Hamas of using hospitals in the Gaza Strip as a cover for military operations. It has raided Al Shifa and other hospitals, and says it has found tunnels and other infrastructure.

The militant group, which has run the territory since 2007, denies the allegations.

The Gaza European hospital in Khan Yunis said the head of its orthopaedic unit, Bassam Miqdad, was also among those freed on Monday.

In May, Palestinian rights groups said a senior Al Shifa surgeon had died in an Israeli jail after being detained. The Israeli army said it was unaware of the death.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

NUR SHAMS, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian officials said an Israeli strike on Sunday in the occupied West Bank killed a man identified by a group as one of its commanders, with the Israeli military confirming it had targeted a "wanted terrorist".

Palestinian official news agency Wafa said the strike was carried out with a drone that hit a house in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the town of Tulkarm in northern West Bank.

The Ramallah-based health ministry said a Palestinian man was killed and five other people were wounded "following a strike by the [Israeli] occupation".

Wafa identified the slain man as Saeed Izzat Jaber, 24.

Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad later said "the martyred leader" was one of its commanders, adding that he had previously "survived several assassination attempts".

Jaber's killing "will strengthen our resistance" against Israel, the group said.

The Israeli forces said in a statement that its forces had struck an apartment used by "wanted terrorists" in the Tulkarm area.

"Saeed Jaber, a terrorist operative responsible for directing terror activities... was in the residence," it said.

The military accused Jaber of direct involvement in several "shooting and explosives attacks against civilians and Israeli forces" in that area of the West Bank, saying he was also "linked" to the June 22 shooting death of an Israeli man near the city of Qalqilya.

The targeted apartment "served as a hub for terrorist activities, including preparing explosive devices and providing shelter to wanted terrorists", the statement said.

According to Wafa, the Israeli forces had fired three projectiles from a drone at a house in the camp.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its crews were treating two people wounded from "shrapnel following a strike on a house in the Nur Shams camp".

The organisation added that rescuers were initially unable to enter the targeted building "due to fire".

An AFP correspondent later saw Nur Shams residents searching through the rubble, while blocks of concrete slabs lay scattered as a portion of the house was ripped off by the strike.

Even before the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, the West Bank saw a surge of violence which has since escalated to levels unseen in about two decades, with frequent military raids and attacks by Israeli settlers.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

At least 554 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli forces or settlers since the Gaza war began, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same period have killed at least 15 Israelis including soldiers, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

WASHINGTON — Aid groups are warning that Sudan's "man-made famine" could be even worse than feared, with the most catastrophic death toll the world has seen in decades, without more global pressure on warring generals.

A UN-backed study said on Thursday that 755,000 people are on the brink of starvation in Sudan, a death toll not seen since the 1980s when famine in Ethiopia shocked the world.

Barrett Alexander, the director of programmes in Sudan for Mercy Corps, said even that figure could be an underestimate as the conflict has displaced farmers in the country's agricultural areas, raising fears for the next harvest.

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a little bit higher than that number," he said of the projection by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC.

"We're seeing a man-made likely famine happen in front of our eyes that's primarily conflict-induced," Alexander, who is based in Port Sudan, told AFP on a visit to Washington.

The IPC said that nearly 26 million people — half of Sudan's population — were facing acute food insecurity with the 755,000 in catastrophic conditions, including around the capital Khartoum and Darfur, the scene of a scorched-earth military campaign two decades ago.

Fighting erupted in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces after a plan to integrate them failed, with the warring generals seizing territory.

Alexander said that both sides have imposed cumbersome levels of bureaucracy, including requiring permits of aid workers.

"Getting across the frontlines is nearly impossible," he said.

Eating grass

Eatizaz Yousif, Sudan country director for the International Rescue Committee, said there have already been accounts of people resorting to eating grass in South Kordofan state.

"Definitely we will be seeing very soon people dying from a lack of food in different parts of the country," said Yousif, who was also in Washington.

She said that the belligerents have looted food warehouses and harassed or killed humanitarian workers.

“It’s definitely a man-made hunger crisis because we don’t have a problem with the level of grain at this time,” she said.

The United States has been seeking to bring the warring sides back to the negotiating table but has seen little interest, with diplomats saying both sides believe they can win on the battlefield.

The two sides “must negotiate an immediate ceasefire to facilitate predictable and sustained humanitarian access to all Sudanese and remain at the negotiating table to end this conflict”, Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development, said in a statement.

Regional players have increasingly been involved in Sudan, with the United Arab Emirates accused of funneling military support to the Rapid Support Forces, whose fighters helped the wealthy Gulf country in Yemen.

The paramilitaries have also allegedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, while Egypt, Turkey and reportedly Iran have backed the army.

With multiple conflicts in the world, donors have provided only 17 percent of the $2.7 billion sought by the United Nations to help Sudan.

“Compare Sudan with crises like Gaza and Ukraine — maybe they are more important in the geopolitical arena,” Yousif said.

“If you see the number of displaced and the number of humans suffering, Sudan should be on the top of humanitarian attention,” she said.

WASHINGTON — American forces destroyed seven drones and a control station vehicle in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen over the past 24 hours, the US military said on Friday.

The strikes were carried out because the drones and the vehicle "presented an imminent threat to US coalition forces and merchant vessels in the region," the US Central Command said in a statement on social media platform X.

The Iran-backed Houthis have been targeting vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023 in attacks they say are in solidarity with Palestinians during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree claimed responsibility for attacks on four vessels, including a "direct hit" on the Delonix tanker in the Red Sea after an operation involving a number of ballistic missiles.

However, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said five missiles were fired on Friday in “close proximity” to this vessel, which it said reported no damage.

The Delonix was located around 277 kilometres northwest of the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida when it was attacked, according to UKMTO, which is run by Britain’s Royal Navy.

The Houthis also claimed attacks on the Waler oil tanker and Johannes Maersk container ship in the Mediterranean Sea and the Ioannis bulk carrier in the Red Sea.

The United States in December announced a maritime security initiative to protect Red Sea shipping from Houthi attacks, which have forced commercial vessels to divert from the route that normally carries 12 percent of global trade.

CENTCOM said its strike on Friday was carried out “to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure”.

“This continued malign and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Huthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”

The attacks have sent insurance costs spiraling for vessels transiting the Red Sea and prompted many shipping firms to take the far longer passage around the southern tip of Africa instead.