Showing posts with label Red Sea State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red Sea State. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Drone attacks in Sudan's Port Sudan and Kassala. MSF hospital attack in South Sudan was deliberate says UN

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: A year or so ago, I saw credible reports saying Janjaweed RSF militia plan to take Khartoum, Darfur, Port Sudan. I documented them at Sudan Watch but don't have time to find them now. 

The following reports regarding a series of attacks over past three days on Sudan's Port Sudan/ International Airport and Kassala Airport, plus a market and MSF hospital in South Sudan's Jonglei, succeeded in creating a new round of explosive headlines and complex humanitarian needs and aid.

In my view, they are not a coincidence. A nagging feeling I am unable to shake off tells me the US is pulling strings behind the scenes. Hundreds of ruthless US civilians are financially invested, particularly in South Sudan.
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VIDEO REPORT from Channel 4 News
By Lindsey Hilsum International Editor
Dated Tuesday, 06 May 2025 - full copy:

PORT SUDAN ROCKED BY MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS
Sudan war latest: who was behind Port Sudan attacks?


Multiple explosions have rocked the Sudanese city of Port Sudan for a third day as paramilitary rebels target government forces.


The Red Sea city has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the civil war.


The two-year conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has already created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.


The attacks on the port have led to power cuts and represent a new front in the fighting as it had not been targeted before this month.



YouTube link: https://youtu.be/cQHh0HqRmVA

Channel 4 is a British public broadcast service

Source: https://www.channel4.com/news/sudan-war-latest-who-was-behind-port-sudan-attacks

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Related


Report from BBC

Dated Tuesday, 06 May 2025 - excerpt:

Sudan paramilitary attacks leave key city without power

Drone strikes have hit a major power station in the Sudanese city of Port Sudan causing a "complete power outage", the country's electricity provider said. Flights have been cancelled after drones hit the international airport and a hotel near the current presidential palace, reports say.

Full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx20x8g2nego

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Report from ReliefWeb

By UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Dated Tuesday, 06 May 2025 - full copy:

Port Sudan drone attacks: A call to protect civilian infrastructure - Statement by the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami


(Port Sudan, 6 May 2025) I am shocked and deeply concerned by intensifying drone attacks on civilian infrastructure in Port Sudan, the main humanitarian hub within Sudan. In the early morning hours of 6 May 2025, drone attacks reportedly the Port Sudan International Airport and other infrastructure – including a fuel storage facility and a power transformer – in Port Sudan.


Such attacks will deepen humanitarian suffering and needs, as well as exacerbate the already severe access and logistical challenges that humanitarian actors face in the delivery of urgently needed aid to the rest of the country.


The Port Sudan International Airport is a lifeline for humanitarian operations, serving as the primary entry point for aid personnel, medical supplies, and other life-saving relief into Sudan. Moreover, the availability of fuel in Port Sudan is critical to the dispatch of humanitarian supplies to areas across Sudan in dire need of assistance. Damage to critical infrastructure could also disrupt supply chains and increase the price of basic goods, further exacerbating human suffering in what is already the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.


These latest strikes follow a series of drone attacks over the past days on civilian infrastructure in Port Sudan and Kassala, cities that have largely represented safe locations for civilians who have been displaced multiple times throughout this devastating conflict. Recent attacks on the Kassala Airport in eastern Sudan has forced displaced individuals – who had sought refuge in a gathering site near the airport – to move once again.


Since January 2025, attacks on infrastructure such as power stations, water sub-stations, and oil refineries across the country have caused widespread electricity outages and disrupted access to essential rights and services, including safe drinking water for civilians, healthcare and food supplies.


These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. They reflect a consistent failure to comply with the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution.


Every measure must be taken to spare civilians and civilian objects.


Once again, I call on all those involved in this conflict to cease hostilities.


View original: https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/port-sudan-drone-attacks-call-protect-civilian-infrastructure-statement-united-nations-resident-and-humanitarian-coordinator-sudan-clementine-nkweta-salami

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Report from IOM-DTM

Dated Tuesday, 06 May 2025 - excerpt:

DTM Sudan Flash Alert: Port Sudan (Port Sudan town), Red Sea
Between 5 and 6 May 2025, DTM field teams reported that approximately 120 households were displaced from Transit and Al Shahinat neighbourhoods in Port Sudan town of Port Sudan locality, Red Sea due to increased insecurity following air drone attacks. Households were displaced primarily to locations within Port Sudan locality, Red Sea. 

View original: https://mailchi.mp/iom/dtm-sudan-flash-alert-port-sudan-port-sudan-town-red-sea-update-001

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Report from BBC News

By Will Ross, Africa regional editor

and Natasha Booty, BBC News - excerpt:

Seven killed in South Sudan hospital and market bombing, charity says
MSF shared a picture which showed part of the hospital on fire


At least seven people have been killed after a hospital and market were bombed in South Sudan, a medical charity has said, as fears grow of a return to civil war.


Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said helicopter gunships dropped a bomb on the pharmacy of the hospital it runs in Old Fangak, Jonglei state, burning it down, before firing on the town for 30 minutes. A drone then bombed a local market, MSF said.


The hospital is the only one in Fangak county, which has a population of more than 110,000 people, MSF said, and all its medical supplies were destroyed.


The charity called the attack, which left 20 people injured, a "clear violation of international humanitarian law".


MSF spokesman Mamman Mustapha told the BBC's Newshour programme the charity was still trying to establish the facts, but local witnesses had said the aircraft were "government forces helicopters".


"The hospital is clearly marked as 'hospital' with our logo," he said. "We have shared also our coordinates for all the warring parties in the area so the hospital should be known to both parties as a hospital."


Full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2536m9r2eo

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Sunday, March 03, 2024

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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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

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.

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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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