Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, in tears after meeting sexual violence victims who fled Sudan civil war
The Duchess of Edinburgh was moved to tears after meeting refugees who fled to Chad to escape the civil war in neighbouring Sudan.
Sophie hugged five women who had suffered sexual violence related to the conflict which broke out in April 2023, and later admitted she was “quite wobbly” after hearing their “devastating” experiences.
The duchess was the first member of the Royal Family to make an official visit to Chad.
She spent three days in the central African country, including one at the border with Sudan.
The 59-year-old said: “People are having to exchange food and water for sex, for rape. That is violence that is being enacted through conflict. It is being used as a bargaining tool.
“These women have no option but to leave. And, even then, they’re lucky if some of them can get away because some of the villages and towns that they come from they can’t even leave their houses any more.
“If they leave their houses they get killed.”
Pic: PA
During her trip, the duchess went to Adre, where more than 220,000 refugees, mostly women and children, are living in a camp after fleeing the conflict between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Sophie, who was accompanied by representatives from the UNICEF charity, visited the border crossing with Chad, where between 400 and 1,000 people cross daily.
Among those she met were two women who had crossed into Chad after travelling around 30 miles with their children, including a baby and a toddler.
Pic: PA
The duchess also spoke to a mother-of-five, who had a small child lying on her lap and a baby strapped to her back, who told her she had travelled for 10 days before arriving.
The woman, like many of the refugees, did not know where her husband was and she had not seen him since fighting broke out.
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One of the women Sophie met said afterwards she had fled the city of Geneina, in the west Darfur region of Sudan, after thousands of people were killed over several days.
The woman said her family had been threatened with death and rape if they left their home, while her teenage son and brothers were among the men who were rounded up and taken away.
She described seeing bodies piled up in the street “like a wall”.
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The duchess, who arrived in Chad on Saturday and left on Monday, is a champion of the UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) and a supporter of the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI).
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Earlier this year Sophie, who has two children – Lady Louise Windsor, 20, and 16-year-old James, the Earl of Wessex – with her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, became the first royal to visit Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.
There she met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska to discuss how to support survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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