Sudan unrest grows as more than 250,000 flee safe zone after it’s taken over by militia responsible for Darfur destruction
A critical holdout and humanitarian hub in central Sudan’s al Jazira state has fallen to the militia terrorising civilians in their fight for territorial control of the country.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says at least 250,000 to 300,000 people have fled the state since the militia advanced on its capital Wad Madani on Friday.
Calls are mounting for the commander in chief of the Sudan Armed Forces Abdelfattah Burhan to be replaced after reports that the army and police fled their positions, leaving the city to a violent fate.
Video circulating on social media shows dozens of orphaned babies screaming in a tight room in a Wad Madani care home as panicked carers scrambled to soothe them. Their peace had been disturbed by days of bullet sounds, airstrikes, shelling and citywide panic.
The city was captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they cried – the Janjaweed militia notorious for razing Darfur to the ground.
The army and police were missing in action in the wake of their defeat – as the RSF carried out the mass looting and harassment it is known for.
Women living in Wad Madani shared their fear of rape at the hands of the militia online.
RSF stands accused of using mass rape as a weapon of war in Darfur and Khartoum. Some reports of rape emerged just hours after they captured the city.
Tens of thousands have fled Wad Madani city since the advance started on Friday.
Those who remain are the most vulnerable.
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“The situation is extremely dire after this battle in Wad Madani and all those in positions of authority have fled and taken their children – except us the sacrifices of this country. Where is the governor? Where is the Minister? Where are the child services?” says Radwan Abdeljabar in the online video, on behalf of the care home housing the orphaned infants.
He is visibly disturbed and rocking as he makes an urgent public appeal for help in a spiralling power vacuum
“In this home, I have 202 infants. Half of them have special needs, physical disabilities and devices attached to their heads. What happened in Khartoum, I do not want to happen here,” he says.
The babies were evacuated from the al Maygoma Orphanage in Khartoum on 7 June after being trapped in the crossfire for 50 days. At least 50 babies were reported to have died from the conflict conditions before the evacuation took place.
It was an arduous effort to navigate besieged areas of Khartoum and travel nearly four hours to Wad Madani.
“It took us weeks to prepare for the movement of children from Maygoma to Madani transit centre. I was informed that there were 46 critical care children arriving on the buses. I organised health teams to be on standby to manage the emergency cases and referrals,” UNICEF health officer, Mutwali Adam Mohammed said at the time of the evacuation.
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Now, their place of refuge is another battleground. A critical holdout in this war, Wad Madani was a sanctuary city and a humanitarian hub for at least half a million people who fled the armed violence in Khartoum to al Jazira state.
Many of them were sick and elderly, evacuated from Khartoum’s hospitals and care homes.
The United Nations (UN) has ceased all humanitarian missions in the al Jazira state and most of Wad Madani’s hospitals have now evacuated their patients. In a nearby town of Rufa’a, the RSF were documented raiding a hospital and killing two medical staff.
“I ask all organisations and all people charged with this work to intervene at the earliest and stand with us to create a state of protection,” says Radwan in his video appeal.
“No one feels our pain,” he adds, as he breaks down into tears.
“We are victims of this state and this war. We have nothing to do with war or politics.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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Azerbaijan team ‘optimistic’ about talks
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
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