Region

GENEVA — The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $4.1 billion to provide desperately needed aid to civilians in war-ravaged Sudan and those who have fled as refugees, warning the conflict had fuelled “epic suffering”.

The brutal conflict that erupted in April last year has caused a humanitarian collapse and left over half of the country’s population — around 25 million people — in need of assistance and protection.

“Ten months of conflict have robbed the people of Sudan of nearly everything — their safety, their homes and their livelihoods,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement. 

The war between Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed thousands, including between 10,000 and 15,000 in a single city in the western Darfur region, according to UN experts.

And the expanding fighting in Sudan has sparked rampant hunger with nearly 18 million people facing acute food insecurity.

The intense hostilities are meanwhile continuing to damage water supply networks and other critical civilian infrastructure, and left nearly three quarters of health facilities in conflict-affected states out of service. 

At the same time, diseases like cholera, measles and malaria are spreading fast.

This coupled with soaring malnutrition rates has created a situation where at least one child dies every two hours in the sprawling Zamzam camp for displaced people in the western Darfur region, the Doctors Without Borders charity warned this week.

Amid widespread reports of gender-based violence, the war has also created one of the world’s largest protection and displacement crises.

Nearly eight million people have fled their homes, including more than 1.5 million who have crossed into neighbouring countries, according to UN figures. 

The UN and its partners said they needed $2.7 billion this year to reach 14.7 million people with desperately-needed aid inside the country.

“The generosity of donors helps us provide food and nutrition, shelter, clean water, and education for children, and to fight the scourge of gender-based violence and care for the survivors,” Griffiths said. 

“But last year’s appeal was less than half funded. This year, we must do better and with a heightened sense of urgency.”

The UN refugee agency UNHCR meanwhile said it needs another $1.4 billion to help nearly 2.7 million people — refugees and members of their host communities — across five of Sudan’s neighbouring countries.

BEIRUT — France's top diplomat warned officials during a Beirut visit on Tuesday that Israel is threatening to wage war on its northern neighbour to return citizens displaced by cross-border fire, Lebanon's foreign minister said.

Hamas ally Hizbollah and Israel have been exchanging daily fire for nearly four months in the wake of the Gaza war, forcing tens of thousands of people out of their homes on both sides of the border.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne "warned us that the Israelis might launch a war, which they say would be to return" displaced citizens to their homes, Abdallah Bou Habib told reporters after meeting his French counterpart.

"We told the French that we do not want a war" with Israel, Bou Habib said, adding that Beirut sought "a border deal with them" facilitated by the United Nations, France and the United States.

Sejourne met caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, army chief Joseph Aoun and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hizbollah ally, as part of his first regional tour since taking office.

In Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz told Sejourne that "time is running out" to reach a diplomatic solution in south Lebanon.

Sejourne is the latest in a succession of Western ministers to visit Beirut amid concerns the Gaza war could spark a wider conflict involving Iranian allies around the Middle East.

A major focus of recent diplomatic efforts has been to reinforce a UN Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah.

Resolution 1701 called for all armed personnel to pull back north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres from the border with Israel, except for Lebanese state security forces and UN peacekeepers.

While Hizbollah has not had a visible military presence in the border area since 2006, the group still holds sway over large parts of the south, where it has built tunnels, hideouts and launched attacks into Israel.

Asked about Lebanon’s demands, Bou Habib said: “Help us recruit about 6,000 to 7,000” soldiers “so they can be deployed in the south”, denying that the move aimed to comply with Israeli calls for Hizbollah’s withdrawal from the border region.

“We really want total peace and for Israel to completely withdraw from all Lebanese land,” he added, in reference to disputed border areas.

Bou Habib is set to meet his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on Wednesday.

At least 226 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hizbollah fighters but also at least 26 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

BEIRUT — The United Nations and rights groups called for increased aid for Syria on Tuesday, one year after a devastating earthquake struck Turkey and the war-torn country, battering its impoverished population.

"Billions of dollars in damage aside, the human toll of this disaster is incalculable. Many people remain displaced to date, waiting for solutions and shelter," two senior UN officials said in a joint statement.

Syria was already reeling from an economic crisis, but "the earthquakes exacerbated the situation further yet", said UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, Muhannad Hadi.

On February 6, 2023, a pre-dawn 7.8-magnitude tremor killed nearly 60,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

According to Damascus, the earthquake killed more than 1,400 people in government-controlled areas of Syria, while more than 4,500 died in areas held by opposition factions in the country's northwest.

"Today, a staggering 16.7 million people require humanitarian assistance. This shocking number comes against the background of a bleak funding outlook and conflicts raging across the globe," the UN officials said.

"This trend must urgently be reversed," they said.

“Our 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan was just over 36 per cent resourced by the year’s end,” they said, pleading for more funds.

The earthquake also damaged medical facilities, especially in the country’s northwest.

“Even before last February, the healthcare system in northwest Syria was struggling, with underfunded medical facilities and limited services,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement.

The earthquake damaged 55 health facilities, leaving them unable to function fully, MSF added.

More than 265,000 people in northwest Syria lost their homes in the quake and 43,000 have yet to return to their houses, with most of them languishing in shelters, according to UN data.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) decried the country’s “catastrophic humanitarian needs” warning that Syria risked “being a forgotten crisis”.

In 2023, the IRC’s Syria aid programme recorded a “62 per cent funding shortfall, and the situation is anticipated to worsen with further aid reductions expected throughout 2024”, IRC added.

“We are urging the international community not to forget about Syria,” said Tanya Evans of the IRC.

Since 2011, Syria has endured a bloody conflict that has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Tuesday it handed its response on a truce deal aimed at halting the war with Israel to key mediators.

"A short while ago, the Hamas movement delivered its response to the framework agreement to the brothers in Qatar and Egypt," a statement said, referring to "a comprehensive and full ceasefire".

The militant group has for more than a week mulled the deal drawn up in its absence at Paris talks, as international pressure mounts to end the four-month war.

Hamas said the proposal was aimed at "ending the aggression against our people, securing relief and shelter, reconstruction, lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and completing the process of a prisoner exchange".

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Doha had received a "positive" response from Hamas to the truce plans.

The premier was speaking alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has embarked on another crisis tour of the Middle East.

Blinken said the Hamas response has already “been shared with the Israelis”.

“I’ll pick up that conversation tomorrow in Israel when I’m there and we will be working as hard as we possibly can to try to get an agreement,” Blinken told reporters in Doha.

The Gaza war erupted on October 7 with a sudden attack by Hamas fighters. 

Israel’s withering military campaign has killed at least 27,585 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Meanwhile, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli forces on Tuesday killed six Palestinian police officers, who witnesses told AFP had been securing the passage of an aid truck.

“Six Palestinian police officers killed as a result of the Israeli occupation targeting their vehicle in the Khirbat Al Adas neighbourhood in Rafah,” a ministry statement said.

Witnesses said the officers had been securing the passage of a flour truck when Israeli aircraft hit their car, ripping the passengers to pieces.

An AFP photographer at the scene saw blood sprayed across part of the crushed vehicle, bearing a police emblem on the hood.

First responders covered a body with blankets and loaded it into a damaged ambulance.

The Israeli forces did not immediately comment on the strike when contacted by AFP.

Palestinian police officers have been brought in to secure aid convoys travelling through Gaza, where desperate residents have clambered aboard trucks in search of vital supplies.

There have been repeated strikes on vehicles and buildings in Rafah, which is crammed with more than half of Gaza’s population.