New analysis, shared exclusively with Sky News, reveals 180 separate incidents of settlements in Sudan being set on fire, with 108 villages, towns and cities affected since the start of the war.
More than a quarter (27%) of the 108 settlements where burnings have been verified by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) have been targeted more than once since April 2023.
On 15 April, 2023, violent clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Many of these fires have been attributed to the RSF and local level disputes.
The fires are another element of a war that has resulted in the forced displacement of millions of people and human rights abuses including more than 100 incidents of sexual violence observed by the UN.
Sir Nicholas Kay, a former British ambassador to Sudan, told Sky News the repeated fires may be a “deliberate attempt to… instil a great level of fear and extreme violence to subdue and remove the population”, and “a determined consistent effort to ensure people leave and don’t come back ever”.
US-Africa policy expert Cameron Hudson said the current RSF activity in Darfur is “ethnic cleansing”, including war crimes “that some people will call genocide” – reminiscent of the atrocities of 2003-05.
One Sudanese human rights worker who spoke anonymously to Sky News said he had been specifically targeted in an assassination attempt for his work doing things like providing water to people whose water sources had been burned and destroyed.
The Darfur region has experienced the most significant impact from the fires, with the majority of incidents taking place in the West Darfur state.
The highest number of fires took place in in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, along with the village of Misterei.
In one instance between 29 May and 2 June 2023, multiple fires were detected in Misterei, mainly inhabited by ethnic Masalit people, who have faced extensive violence from the RSF and allied Arab militias throughout the war.
Humans Rights Watch reported that the town came under attack on the morning of 28 May, when RSF and Arab militias allegedly launched an assault on the town.
Satellite imagery of the town from 2 June shows both burn marks and active fires.
In the middle of the attack on Misterei, a video was recorded in the centre of town, in which burning and burned down houses are shown. The person filming accuses the Nuba people of killing and slaughtering and goes on to say “as you condemn, you will be condemned”, which roughly translates as “what goes around comes around”.
The video was shared in a RSF WhatsApp group and was located to the period between 30 May and 1 June 2023.
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Violence takes place in Misterei, Sudan
There was further fire damage in Misterei following a pattern of what appears to be strategic burnings of residential areas, where the town was burned in intervals of multiple days, between 6 October 2023 and 1 March 2024.
Between 11 and 31 October 2023, roughly 3,750 square metres (more than 60% of the town) was burnt in this manner.
“What the RSF is doing has felt very similar to what they did in a previous generation as the Janjaweed [a Sudanese Arab militia group that the RSF grew out of], in terms of who they’re targeting and how they are targeting them, ” explained Cameron Hudson, Senior Associate for the Africa Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“One of the things we assessed at the time was that they were doing things like burning villages, poisoning water sources or destroying livestock to prevent people from ever returning.
“So, if they are doing that again, which is what this sounds like, then that is a very similar tactic to what we have seen before.
“There’s a profit motive here because there they are looting, they are taking valuables,” added Mr Hudson, who also served as the chief of staff to successive U.S. presidential special envoys for Sudan during the period of South Sudan’s separation from Sudan (2011) and the Darfur genocide (2003-2005).
As in Misterei, many of the burnings disproportionately affect the Masalit and other minority communities.
On 9 June 2023, a video was shared on X showing an RSF soldier outside the residence of the Sultan of the Masalit in El Geneina, making statements targeting the Masalit.
He says, “Dar [the house of] Masalit, only Arab. “Allah Akbar [x4].. Sultan Dar Masalit? .. There’s no more Dar Masalit, Dar Arab only.”
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Fighter speaks against the Masalit
CIR geolocated the footage to the same day as potential related footage showing burning property and dead bodies in the streets only one block away from the Sultan’s residence.
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Violence in Sudan
Mr Hudson said: “Obviously, there has been ethnic cleansing by the RSF in Darfur going on recently, going on presently. There have been obviously war crimes committed and some people will call that genocide because it is targeting African tribal minorities in Darfur, so that is all reminiscent of an earlier period.”
Tribal conflicts
While the cases of El Geneina and Misterei show some of the violence and hatred incited by the RSF and its supporters, village fires have also been attributed to alleged local-level and inter-communal conflict.
“As we saw in the violence 20 years ago, there is a lot of very local level score settling and fighting going on between nomads and pastoralists between communities that have been in tension for a very long time and so within the context of this larger conflict, there is also a very local level conflict going on.
“I think the violence in Darfur is much more about local level, political, tribal and economic dynamics,” said Mr Hudson.
CIR also collected and verified multiple videos related to alleged clashes between Bani Halba and Al Salamat tribes in August and September 2023 in the Kubum and Mukjar localities, near the border of South and Central Darfur.
Various fighters on both sides appear in RSF uniforms.
Markundi, a town about 20 kilometres south from Kubum and inhabited largely by the Bani Halba, was attacked by what appears to be Al Salamat fighters on 7 September or 8 September.
Footage recorded by the Al Salamat people shows men in RSF uniforms surrounded by burning dwellings in an area nearby the Markundi market.
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A video shows the aftermath of tribal violence in Kubum
Continuing violence and displacement in Sudan
The findings add to atrocities already observed by the UN, including more than 100 incidents of sexual violence.
“It’s a messy war because there are many, many different factors. I heard so many Sudanese complaining and lamenting the fact that mercenaries from across the Sahel were fighting on the side of the RSF and were there essentially just to loot and unfortunately rape, in Khartoum in particular but in other parts of Sudan as well,” said Sir Nicholas Kay, former UK ambassador to Sudan, now Senior Advisor at Crisis Management Initiative.
More than 8.4 million people have been forcibly displaced since the start of the conflict in April 2023, equivalent to one in six people in Sudan.
“What we’ve also seen is that it’s not just settlements being targeted, but there is also frequent fires as at IDP camps, which would result in double displacement and people having to leave again because the areas that they’ve finally found refuge also turn out to be unsafe or are left unliveable,” said Anouk Theunissen, team leader for the Sudan Witness project at CIR.
More than 6.5 million are displaced within the country, with others fleeing to neighbours like Chad, South Sudan and Egypt.
This includes one human rights worker, Ibrahim (not his real name), who spoke with Sky News but requested to remain anonymous. He fled to Chad in June 2023 but witnessed burnings before he left.
“I was monitoring all kinds of violations committed by all parties of the conflict. I also provided potable water to citizens after the destruction and burning most of the water sources. These things made part of the conflict group target me. I survived an assassination attempt and the office was looted and burned.
“Secondly, because of my colour or race, the El Geneina War took on an ethnic manner, as people were killed on the basis of race or colour, especially after the killing of Wali Khamis and the defeat of the Masalit groups, where the Janjaweed took over the entire city and practiced the worst types of killing and looting.
“Because of all of that, I fled to Chad with great difficulty. I lost my homeland and my home, as it was completely looted and burned. I lost my job. I lost a number of my family members who have been killed, and I lost all that I have, money, documents, and other things.”
Despite the great scale of damage and humanitarian catastrophe, Sir Nicolas holds hope that people like Ibrahim may be able to return one day.
“I believe that those communities [targeted in the Darfur Genocide] proved to be resilient and as the conflict was ending and some people were being held to account for further violence and with the presence of the UN and African Union peacekeeping mission on the ground, communities did return, re-establish and consolidate themselves.
“So it’s happened before and again, it may happen after this round of violence and bloodletting. It would require, clearly, a determination by the international community and institutions to hold people to account but it would also require a future government of Sudan to also take seriously its responsibility to protect civilians and provide an environment in which all communities can live together.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The family of a missing high school student who may have been the first victim of a suspected serial killer in Mexico City have protested at the site where bones were found last week.
The bones were discovered with the belongings of at least six women, police said, and Amairany Roblero’s relatives have been told that evidence was found relating to her 2012 disappearance.
Ms Roblero was 18 when she vanished and, as is often the case in Mexico, her family was left to investigate her disappearance with little help from prosecutors.
Family friend Alejandra Jimenez said: “The prosecutors had the case file but they didn’t ever give any results to her parents.”
Instead, her parents printed flyers and gave them out near her school – the last place she was seen – but they had “nothing, nowhere to start, nor any directions to the end”, Ms Jimenez added.
A suspect, identified only by his first name, Miguel, was detained by neighbours and police last week after he is alleged to have killed a seventh young woman.
He is accused of waiting for a woman to leave her apartment and then rushing inside to sexually abuse and strangle her 17-year-old daughter.
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The woman returned to the apartment to see the suspect leaving and she was slashed across her neck before he ran off.
She survived but her daughter died.
Investigators searched a room rented by the suspect and found bones, mobile phones and ID cards belonging to several women in the same block, thought to be mementos.
Miguel is awaiting trial on charges of murder and attempted murder relating to the most recent victims.
City prosecutor Ulises Lara insisted the suspect was difficult to catch because “he showed no signs of violent or aggressive behaviour in his daily life”.
Ms Roblero’s family and friends were not accepting this, however.
“They (authorities) have all the means to look for missing people,” Ms Jimenez said. “Instead of focusing on their political campaigns, they should help all the women who are looking for their children.”
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Juan Carlos Gutierrez, a lawyer representing the family of another victim, was also frustrated, asking why no investigation had never been launched in that case, despite missing person reports being filed in 2015.
Ms Jimenez said Ms Roblero’s family had not been told which of the items or remains in the apartment had been linked to her, adding: “This is wearing her parents down physically, mentally.”
Some 2,580 women were murdered in Mexico in 2023, according to the country’s National Public Security System but poorly funded and badly trained prosecutors have failed to stop serial killers over the years.
In 2021 a serial killer in Mexico City killed 19 people but their bodies were only found, buried at his house, after the wife of a police commander became one of the victims.
In 2018 another serial killer in Mexico City murdered at least 10 women and was only stopped after he was seen pushing a dismembered body down the street in a pram.
A wave of demonstrations have swept the Canary Islands as locals protested against a tourism model they say has plundered the environment, priced them out of housing and forced them into precarious work.
The seven main Canary Islands are home to 2.2 million people – and welcomed almost 14 million international visitors in 2023, up 13% from the previous year.
The protests were not aimed at individual tourists, activists say, but at the governments that have created a system that skews so much in favour of investors at the expense of local communities.
The tourism industry accounts for 35% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Canary Islands and local residents who spoke to Sky News agree the islands can’t survive without tourism.
But they are also questioning whether local communities and the environment can survive if things stay the way they are.
What’s the problem? Tourism is a ‘cash cow’ – but not for locals
If you’re looking for what’s behind the wave of protests, you need to look back decades, Sharon Backhouse tells Sky News.
Along with her Canarian husband, she owns GeoTenerife, which runs science field trips and training camps in the Canary Islands and conducts research into sustainable tourism.
The tourism model in the Canary Islands hasn’t been updated since before the tourism boom of the 1980s, when the islands were “trying desperately” to attract investment, she explains.
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The answer back then was a model that was “incredibly generous” to investors, who only pay 4% tax and can send the profits earned in the Canaries back to the firm’s home country, Ms Backhouse explains.
But the model hasn’t changed.
That’s created a situation where “more and more of these giant, all inclusive resort hotels” are being built, and the proceeds of this “incredible cash cow” aren’t shared equitably with the local population, she says.
“It is absurd to have a system where so much money is in the hands of a very few extremely powerful groups, and is then funnelled away from the Canary Islands,” she says.
“We’re seeing really low salaries, zero-hour contracts and awful working conditions in some of these hotels.”
Ms Backhouse was at the 20 April protest in Tenerife and says she has “never seen anything like it” in terms of Canarians being united for a single cause.
‘My misery, your paradise’
Earlier this year there was a spate of graffiti in Tenerife.
Andy Ward, director of Tenerife Estate Agents, tells Sky News the media coverage of a smattering of “tourists go home” graffiti has been “100x greater than the on-the-ground reality”, where there is little visible animosity.
But there was one spray-painted message that sums up the gulf between Canary Islands residents and the tourists who flock there: “My misery, your paradise”.
More than a third of the population of the Canary Islands – nearly 800,000 people – are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to a recent report from the environmental group Ecologists in Action.
The average wage for restaurant staff and cleaners is between €1,050 and €1,300 a month, Mr Ward says, while the cost of renting an apartment can be almost as much.
‘Shanty towns’ in the shadow of luxury
One of the main issues is the dearth of affordable or social housing, Mr Ward says.
“The governments here have completely neglected this need, instead selling land for more hotels and selling land for luxury villas and high-end apartments, which locals are unable to afford.”
What has caused anger is property managers renting out properties to tourists that are “completely inappropriate and inadequate”, such as small apartments in residential buildings.
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Protest against tourism in Canaries on 20 April
The regulations on short-term lets “are a complete mess and a mish-mash”, he says. Landlords aren’t incentivised to let their properties long-term because they must sign up to long leases, and if tenants default on the rent it can take 18 months to evict them.
His views are echoed by Kris Jones, a British citizen who was born in Tenerife, taking over the bar his parents owned in Playa de la Americas, the Drunk’n Duck.
Many hotel employees are forced to live in the multiple motorhome sites that have popped up around the south of the island because they can’t afford anything else, he says.
“Shanty towns” is what Ms Backhouse calls them, built in the shadow of “uber luxury hotels”.
Mr Jones questions why planning permission has been granted to hotels without ensuring their employees will be able to live nearby.
He says the idea the island’s population hates foreign visitors is “utter garbage”.
He stresses that the protests were against the government – not tourists.
“It’s nothing to do with the behaviour of British tourists, and isn’t even part of the agenda at all,” he tells Sky News.
Hunger strike to stop hotels
Protesters say they are having to take increasingly drastic actions to have their voices heard.
Subsequently six members of Canarias Se Agota – which translates to the Canary Islands Are Exhausted – have been on hunger strike since 11 April.
As well as demanding a halt to new tourism developments and a limit to the number of visitors, the campaigners want to stop the development of two luxury resorts in Tenerife.
Both developments faced legal hurdles on environmental grounds that had paused construction, but stop work orders were lifted earlier this year.
Campaigners maintain the developments breach environmental laws – claims the developers deny – and have committed to continuing the hunger strike until the government intervenes, despite some strikers needing hospital treatment.
The hunger strikers, who have not been named, were among fellow protesters on the streets of Tenerife on 20 April.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “If anything happens to any of our comrades… you (Fernando Clavijo – president of the Canary Islands) will have to face the fury of the people.”
The strikers met with the Canary Islands president on 23 April, but their demands were rejected.
Representatives of the strikers said on 26 April the “medical condition of the six is deteriorating, but they are determined to continue” until their demands are met.
Protesters are also demanding “access to respectable housing”, an “eco-tax” and “immediate measures to put an end to the raw sewage discharges into the sea”.
Salvar La Tejita, an environmental organisation which helped organise the mass protest, says: “It is vital to clarify that these protests are not against the tourists or tourism in general, but are against the political class, administrations, hotel chains, and constructors who are jointly responsible for the unsustainable circumstances which Tenerife is now in.
“This platform is not in any way responsible for the graffiti messages ‘Tourists Go Home’ which have been sprayed in and around many tourist resorts.
The environmental cost of tourism
The Canary Islands are a “biodiversity jewel in the Atlantic”, Ms Backhouse says – but they haven’t been fully protected or valued.
Politicians in the past have said the development of the controversial resorts can’t be stopped “just because of a weed”, she says.
“These aren’t just weeds. What they’re actually doing is interfering with an ecosystem which will have difficulty surviving if you plonk a resort right in the middle of it.”
The building of these resorts has an environmental costs as “beautiful landscapes are cemented over”, Ms Backhouse says – and the cost only mounts once they open.
“The problem with these resorts is that we just don’t have enough resources in terms of water, what happens to all the rubbish, how is it all recycled.
“Locals are feeling disenfranchised from their spaces because it all becomes tourist territory.
“Towns and villages that locals grew up in or would go on holiday in suddenly are completely unrecognisable.”
What solutions are on the table?
One of the proposals is a tourist tax which would be invested in protecting the environment.
Ms Backhouse says the hotel industry is against it and the government is nervous about it – but GeoTenerife’s research indicates it wouldn’t put tourists off.
“I think the reality is very few people will cancel their holiday because they have to pay a little bit of money that goes towards protecting the landscapes they’re coming to see.”
Hoteliers have proposed instead putting up IGIC, which is similar to VAT, but Ms Backhouse says that isn’t welcomed by campaigners “because again, that just puts the onus on the locals to prop up the system”.
A tourist tax is one part of the answer to protect the environment, but it doesn’t answer the question of job insecurity and unaffordable housing.
Ms Backhouse says it is encouraging to see solutions proposed, but “it’s going to take something far more wide-ranging to put this train on a more sustainable track”.
Impending crackdown on holiday homes
A draft law is expected to be passed this year which would ban newly built properties from becoming short-term rentals and toughen up the rules for existing properties.
It comes as official figures show the number of rental beds on the island reached 220,409 in March this year – an increase of more than 40,000 from the same point in 2023.
Canaries regional tourism chief Jessica de Leon told the Reuters news agency that enforcement support for the islands’ 35 inspectors is key to the success of the new rules.
“We are going to empower [the police] so that they can act when fraudulent behaviour is detected in homes,” she said, adding that the plan could involve 1,300 people, which would include all of the islands’ police forces.
“The first step is to contain the growth, the second is to clean up [existing listings],” said Canaries director of tourism Miguel Rodríguez.
An example of the crackdowns to come occurred on 16 April, when police raided a property in Tenerife after its owner was reported for listing the building’s rooftop as a campsite on Airbnb, offering renters tents for €12 (£10) a night.
The plans have not proved popular with landlords, who would be forced to comply with the new rules within five years.
“Everything that the government is trying to impose is problematic,” says a spokesperson for Ascav, the Canary Islands Vacation Rental Association, adding it is “the most restrictive” legislation of its kind in Europe.
They believe around 95% of the existing holiday homes that abide by current laws will not be able to meet the new criteria, which includes getting consent from local authorities to open, meeting higher energy classification thresholds, having a minimum surface area and more in a long list of “impossible compliance”.
“The consequences will be immediate,” they warn. “If holiday homes are banned on the islands, visitors who demand this type of accommodation will choose other destinations, Canary Islanders will be even poorer, bars, restaurants, rent a cars, supermarkets, leisure activities, etc. will lose economic activity. Undoubtedly, we all lose.”
Ascav acknowledges “something is going wrong” for the island’s economy, but argues it’s not down to those providing holiday homes, nor the tourists Canarians “love”.
“The message is for our governments, for their passivity, incompetence and lack of planning,” they say.
“They are the ones that have allowed that the resources of tourism has not to been shared with the local population. Locals has been excluded because governments preferred permitting to exploit the territory and tourism to the maximum, without any return for the islands and their inhabitants.
“The solution is to listen to ourselves, to listen to our visitors, to listen and protect to the Canary islanders, to integrate, to plan, to be sustainable, to grow with, not at the expense of, to be responsible for the territory and the well-being of its people, to diversify, to ensure the quality of the destination.
“Our problems have to be resolved by politicians, but they lack will and predisposition, that’s why we are fed up.”
What have politicians said?
The islands’ president said the day before the 20 April protests that he felt “proud” the region is a leading Spanish tourism spot, but acknowledged more controls are needed.
“We can’t keep looking away. Otherwise, hotels will continue to open without any control,” Fernando Clavijo told a news conference.
Two days after the protest, Mr Clavijo posted on X saying: “What happened last Saturday in the streets of Canarias leaves a message that we share. Canarias has to review its model, where we want to go.
“It had to be done during the pandemic, but it is a challenge that we assumed and on which we are already working with the councils, with the city councils and that we must face as a whole in society.”
He has called a meeting of island presidents and Canary Island administrators on 30 April in the hope of finding a solution.