SUDAN WATCH: Chad

Showing posts with label Chad. Show all posts

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Sudan: UN Security Council Meeting 26 Mar 2026. Increased drone attacks spilling across Sudan borders

Dated Thursday 26 March 2026 - excerpts:

Sudan: Meeting under “Any Other Business”

Today (Thursday 26 March) at 4:30 pm, Security Council members will discuss the situation in Sudan under “any other business” following the discussion on the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in closed consultations.

The UK (the penholder on the file) and Denmark, supported by the A3 members (the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC], Liberia, and Somalia), requested the meeting after a 20 March strike on a hospital in East Darfur state reportedly killed around 70 people.

Assistant Secretary-General for Africa in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO) Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher are expected to brief. The UK may propose press elements on the meeting. [...]

In a 24 March press release, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned of a sharp increase this year in the use of drones to conduct airstrikes in the country, highlighting the devastating impact of relatively inexpensive, high-tech weapons in populated areas. It documented over 500 civilian deaths in such strikes between 1 January and 15 March, the majority of which occurred in the Kordofan region.

The press release also highlighted that expanding drone attacks are spilling across Sudan’s borders, raising concerns about further escalation with regional implications. It referred to incidents affecting the border towns of Tina in Sudan and Tiné in Chad following RSF ground offensives.

On 16 March, around 20 people, including civilians, were reportedly killed and 60 others injured during an RSF ground offensive on Tina. On 18 March, a drone strike in Tiné reportedly launched from Sudan killed at least 24 civilians and injured around 70 others.

Chad closed its border with Sudan in late February following fighting in Tiné between the RSF and pro-SAF fighters that resulted in the deaths of five Chadian soldiers.

Following the recent cross-border strike in Tiné, Chadian authorities reportedly reinforced security along the border with Sudan and began the emergency relocation of refugees from border areas. [...]

Regional and international diplomatic efforts on both the humanitarian and political fronts have continued; however, a significant breakthrough remains elusive.

Pekka Haavisto of Finland, who assumed his role as the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Sudan in late February, visited Port Sudan and Khartoum earlier this week. During the visit, he met with, among others, the SAF leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the finance minister and leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) faction Jibril Ibrahim.

In a statement released yesterday (25 March), Haavisto underscored the importance of dialogue and de-escalation as essential steps towards a comprehensive ceasefire, as well as stressed the need to advance civilian protection and to explore confidence-building measures to create conditions for a meaningful political process. Haavisto further indicated that he would continue consultations in the coming weeks with a broad range of stakeholders across the region.

The US has been leading efforts, in coordination with the other Quad members—Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia—to facilitate a humanitarian truce.

In his remarks at the 19 February Council meeting on the situation in Sudan, US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos called for an immediate humanitarian truce, without preconditions, which he argued must guarantee sustained and unhindered humanitarian access across conflict lines and borders.

He also noted that the US has been working with the Secretary-General’s office, DPPA, OCHA, and other UN entities to establish a UN mechanism to support implementation, coordination, and oversight of the truce and related humanitarian access commitments. [...]

On 19 February, the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned three RSF commanders for their involvement in atrocities in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. The UK and the European Union (EU) have also previously designated these same individuals.

On 24 March, the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee also designated four RSF commanders, including the group’s deputy commander Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo.

On 9 March, the US Department of State designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It argued that the group uses violence against civilians to undermine conflict resolution efforts and advance its “violent Islamist ideology”, claiming that the group’s fighters have conducted “mass executions of civilians” and have received support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Read full report here:

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2026/03/sudan-meeting-under-any-other-business-5.php

Ends

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Sudan siege ends in bloodbath despite pleas for mercy. Evidence emerges of atrocities committed by paramilitary RSF after it seized control of El Fasher

Report from The Financial Times
By William Wallis in Cairo
Published Wednesday 29 October 2025 - full copy:

Sudan siege ends in bloodbath despite pleas for mercy

Evidence emerges of atrocities committed by the paramilitary RSF after it seized control of El Fasher

A camp for displaced families who fled from El Fasher to Tawila in North Darfur © Mohammed Jamal/Reuters

The fall of the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has turned into a bloodbath that rights activists and experts have foretold for months, according to local and international organisations monitoring the war.

Since Sunday — when militia fighters of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over-ran the military garrison in the city, the last stronghold of the Sudan Armed Forces in the west of the country — evidence has emerged of many atrocities against civilians trapped or trying to flee.

The UN Human Rights Office said it was receiving multiple, alarming reports, including of summary executions committed by the RSF, since the group seized most of El Fasher in the western region of Darfur. The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, is vying for control of all of Sudan.

“Multiple distressing videos received by UN Human Rights show dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, surrounded by RSF fighters,” the UN said.

Jim Risch, Republican chair of the US Senate foreign relations committee, said on X that the RSF should be designated a foreign terrorist organisation.

“The horrors in Darfur’s El Fasher were no accident — they were the RSF’s plan all along,” he said. “The RSF has waged terror and committed unspeakable atrocities, genocide among them, against the Sudanese people . . . America is not safer, secure or more prosperous with the RSF slaughtering thousands.”

The RSF’s capture of El Fasher has potentially far-reaching consequences for Sudan and its two-year civil war.

The conflict has displaced more than 14mn people, according to the UN, provoked famine and claimed more than 150,000 lives.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, is head of the RSF

El Fasher is the largest city in western Sudan and sits at a crossroads of trade routes, giving the RSF greater control of the flow of weapons and supplies into the region through Libya and Chad.

The end of the siege, and the flight of the SAF and allied former rebels on Sunday, potentially frees up RSF militants to take the fight back to areas of the east and centre of Sudan from which they were driven earlier this year.

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military leader and Hemedti’s rival, on Monday said the army had withdrawn as a result of the “systematic destruction they endured” in the city.

The killings that have ensued, despite repeated warnings based on previous massacres committed by the RSF, marks a new low for decades-long international efforts to protect civilians from war crimes.

In videos posted online in the past two days, fighters from the RSF, which grew out of the Janjaweed militia that wreaked havoc on Darfur’s Black tribes in the early part of the century, shout racial slurs and revel in pursuing rake-thin men, women and children fleeing across the scrub outside the city.

Satellite image shows objects on the ground near what are likely to be RSF vehicles in El Fasher on Monday © AP

Dozens of captured men, bound and lying in rows along the ground, are denigrated and then executed in footage allegedly posted from RSF accounts.

Among those captured was Muammar Ibrahim, a freelance journalist who has chronicled the fate of civilians trapped in the city during a nearly 19-month siege. Inhabitants depended on dwindling supplies of animal feed and were under constant drone and artillery bombardment.

Many advocacy groups have been demanding the release of the Al Jazeera contributor.

Among those killed on Sunday, according to Sudanese activists in touch with the city and surrounding camps for the displaced, was Siham Hassan, a prominent campaigner for social justice. She was once Sudan’s youngest MP and was running a community kitchen.

Nathaniel Redmond, director of the Yale school of public health, said on Tuesday that the “horror, scale and velocity of killing” in El Fasher had left pools of blood visible from satellites.

Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab — which has been tracking the siege using satellite imagery, open-source online information and testimony from eyewitnesses — said it had found “multiple credible reports of mass killings across social media and open sources” in recent days.

Satellite imagery showing bodies on the ground and “vehicles in tactical formations consistent with house-to-house clearance operations” in a neighbourhood with thousands of civilians also supported allegations that the RSF had carried out mass killings, Yale’s HRL said.

“The world must act immediately to put the maximum amount of pressure on the RSF and its backers, specifically the [United Arab Emirates], to end the killing now,” it said, adding that the RSF’s actions “may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide”.

Sudanese refugees from Zamzam camp outside El Fasher receive food at an emergency kitchen while being relocated to a transit camp near the Chad border in Tine, eastern Chad, in May © Getty Images

“The nations of the world might be able to say that they could not have stopped it, but they cannot reasonably say that they did not know,” Yale’s HRL said.

The RSF said it was committed to “protecting civilians in El Fasher”, and had deployed specialised teams to clear landmines and “secure the streets and public spaces”.

It described the “liberation” of El Fasher as “a milestone in the Sudanese people’s struggle against oppression and terrorism”.

The parallel government launched under Hemedti in Darfur said it condemned any violations and would establish committees to investigate the veracity of videos of atrocities circulating online.

Western officials, including the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper and Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s adviser on Arab and African affairs, urged the militia to open up the area to humanitarian access and to “protect civilians”. But these entreaties from afar have had little obvious effect on the fighters on the ground.

Critics of the west’s ineffectual response to the Sudanese civil war said that only severe pressure on the UAE, which has allegedly backed the RSF with weapons supplies and trade in gold but denies involvement, could prevent further atrocities in El Fasher.

“It is beyond an open secret that the United Arab Emirates is arming and supporting the RSF,” said Protection Approaches, a UK-based charity that campaigns against identity-based violence.

“The single most effective action that could bring pause to the massacre in El Fasher is for the right call from Abu Dhabi to be placed to RSF leadership,” it added.

View original: https://www.ft.com/content/19d7f37b-cffe-4bf1-a64c-a88535ae017c#comments-anchor

End

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Sudan: ICC believes war crimes & crimes against humanity are taking place now in Darfur. 5 killed in aid convoy attack. Fighting intensifies in Kordofan

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.

Deputy prosecutor Shameem Khan, who is not related, said the ICC has closely tracked reports in recent weeks of the dire situation in North Darfur, whose capital El Fasher is besieged by RSF and their affiliates.

The RSF, which controls the capitals of all other states in Darfur, has also attacked famine-hit Zamzam and other camps for displaced Sudanese in North Darfur.

“On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear, we have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur,” Khan told the council.

This conclusion, she said, is based on documentary, testimonial and digital evidence collected by ICC investigators during the past six months, including at refugee camps in neighboring Chad. Over 7,000 items of evidence have been collected to date, she said.

Khan emphasized to the council and to victims that the ICC considers the situation in Darfur “of the utmost importance” and will not be deterred until justice is delivered to the perpetrators.

Khan said those in Darfur now “inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population” should know that while they may feel a sense of impunity, Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb is currently on trial and the ICC hopes it will be the first of many.

“However, we also have a duty of confidentiality to the court,” Khan said. “I am not able to share more details of the nature of our progress or of specific outcomes hoped for. I can only assure you that the progress we have made is concrete, positive and significant.”

Read more in this report from The Associated Press
BY EDITH M. LEDERER
Dated 11 July 2025; 12:22 AM BST - full copy:

ICC believes war crimes and crimes against humanity are taking place now in Sudan’s Darfur region

The United Nations flag flies on a stormy day at the U.N. during the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

This June 2023 photo provided by the World Food Program shows internally displaced persons at the Wad Almajzoub farm camp in Wad Medani, Gezira state, Sudan. (Ala Kheir/U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs via AP)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The International Criminal Court believes war crimes and crimes against humanity are continuing to take place in Sudan’s vast western Darfur region where civil war has raged for more than two years, the tribunal’s deputy prosecutor said Thursday.

Nazhat Shameem Khan told the U.N. Security Council that the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state,” with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.

“People are being deprived of water and food,” she said. “Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized. Abductions for ransom or to bolster the ranks of armed groups have become common practice.”

“And yet we should not be under any illusion,” Shameem Khan warned the U.N.’s most powerful body. “Things can still get worse.”

Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including Darfur. Some 40,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million displaced, including to other countries, according to U.N. agencies.

The Biden administration, just before it left office in January, determined that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide.

Karim Khan has stepped down temporarily as the ICC chief prosecutor pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, which he categorically denies.

The RSF, which controls the capitals of all other states in Darfur, has also attacked famine-hit Zamzam and other camps for displaced Sudanese in North Darfur.

Khan emphasized to the council and to victims that the ICC considers the situation in Darfur “of the utmost importance” and will not be deterred until justice is delivered to the perpetrators.

Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias, against populations that identify as Central or East African. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.