Sudan: SAF chief urges to restore membership in AU

RESTORING Sudan's membership in the African Union is good news. Africa is the world's second largest continent and contains over 50 countries. 

Report from Xinhua China View
By Editor: Huaxia
Dated Monday, 04 March 2024, 02:56:15 - here is a copy in full:

Sudan's army chief urges for restoring membership in AU

KHARTOUM, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, chairman of Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council, stressed on Sunday Sudan's confidence in the African Union (AU), calling for the restoration of Sudan's full membership in the regional organization.

Al-Burhan made the remarks when he received the delegation of the AU High-Level Panel on the Resolution of the Conflict in Sudan, led by Mohamed Ibn Chambas, in Port Sudan, the capital city of the Red Sea state, the sovereign council said in a statement.

"Al-Burhan expressed Sudan's confidence in the African Union and the solutions it could offer, provided that Sudan deals with the organization as a full member," the statement said.

Al-Burhan further stressed that the basis of the solution lies in the withdrawal of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from the cities and villages they occupied.

For his part, Ibn Chambas stressed the need to stop the conflict and achieve stability for Sudan and its people, according to the statement.

He pointed to the AU high-level panel's keenness and endeavor to find solutions to the crisis, noting that the panel listened to all Sudanese political forces.

On Jan. 17, the AU announced the formation of a High-Level Panel on the Resolution of the Conflict in Sudan. The panel consists of three African figures, including Ibn Chambas as chairman, besides Speciosa Wandira-Kazibwe, former vice president of the Republic of Uganda, and Francisco Madeira, former special representative of the chairperson of the Commission to Somalia, as members.

The AU had frozen Sudan's membership after Al-Burhan declared a state of emergency on Oct. 25, 2021, and dissolved the Sovereign Council and the transitional government which was headed by the then Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

Sudan has been witnessing deadly clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF since April 15, 2023. More than 13,000 people have been killed since the fighting broke out, according to recent estimates released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

Source: http://www.chinaview.cn/africa/20240304/db8052893099462796fae829cb34545b/c.html

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VIDEO: Sky's Yousra Elbagir visits Omdurman, Sudan

HERE is footage posted to X by Sky News (@SkyNews) February 13, 2024. It shows Sky's reporter @YousraElbagir treading through debris in an empty street with ruins on each side in Omdurman where Sudan's largest street market was destroyed. She reached the city in a battered armoured vehicle. 

Omdurman in Khartoum State is Sudan's most populous city. It is approximately 11 kilometres, a 15 minutes drive, from the country's capital Khartoum. Gunshots can be heard in the background of the video. 

Since fighting broke out last April, Port Sudan is for now the capital of Sudan. Port Sudan is a city and port on the Red Sea in eastern Sudan, and the capital of Red Sea State. Port Sudan is Sudan's main seaport and the source of 90% of the country's international trade. Read more at Wikipedia.

Sky's @YousraElbagir is in Omdurman, Sudan's most populous city.

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Defence Forces has destroyed the nation's largest street market - but the area isn't totally secure yet.https://t.co/OXBz6WA89g pic.twitter.com/FsVbCsI8iy

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 13, 2024

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Article by Africa correspondent @YousraElbagir 
Tuesday, 13 Feb 2024, 03:30, UK - here is a copy in full excluding photos:

Destruction of Sudan's most iconic street market is a massacre of memory and communal life

Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir gives her personal reflections on what has happened to Sudan's famous street market through this year's conflict.

Souq Omdurman was the beating heart of our mother city. It was a traders' paradise, a meeting point and a lifeline.

A market where more than money exchanged hands. Agreements, ideas and jokes were yelled across its avenues and as visitors passed through, they were either beckoned into the shops or scoffed at for interrupting the banter.

Every trip was an excursion.

My friends and I went for the silver, antique records and leather. Our mothers went for spices, kitchenware and gold. Their mothers went for that and more, and their mothers before them too.

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers went for different goods in a different era but at the same market with the same streets at the same iconic spot.

"All our memories are in Souq Omdurman. Our entire childhood was in Souq Omdurman - then we got older and bought our wedding things from there too," my mother tells me on the phone from Cairo.

She lost her home in Khartoum overnight and now, the home of her founding moments.

After standing for more than a century, the market has been desecrated and destroyed.

Looted and pillaged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the early days of the war and then shelled, punctured with bullets and burnt to black in their ensuing battles with the army.

The cupboards of the gold shops were still open when we arrived. An emptied ring tray flattened on the ammunition-covered ashen ground.

At the corner facing the bullet-hole-ridden bus stop, the front of a wedding shop is littered with broken incense holders in traditional Sudanese scarlet synonymous with brides.

A nearby unexploded mortar round sat slanted on the debris and an upside-down fuschia couch blocked the road with dystopian absurdity.

It was there that I wept - out of disbelief and grief - as gunfire rang out a few hundred metres away.

Sounds, sights and smells I would never attach to this place had assaulted my senses all at once.

The loss is generational. Livelihoods and legacies shattered like the store-front glass.

An agony felt most by the shop owners and residents that once lined the streets, radiating outwards to all that walked them.

The heart of our city has stopped beating. The veins have emptied and the pulse has flatlined.

The destruction of Souq Omdurman is a massacre of memory and communal life. A casualty that even peace will struggle to restore.

View original including photos:

https://news.sky.com/story/destruction-of-sudans-largest-street-market-is-a-massacre-of-memory-and-communal-life-13070430

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