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Clashes in Sudan’s besieged Darfur city kill 57

Clashes between Sudanese paramilitaries and the regular army have killed at least 57 civilians in the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher, a medical source and a volunteer aid group said Thursday.The local resistance committee, a grassroots aid group, said the civilians were killed on Wednesday in clashes and shelling of the city by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023.The violence came just days after the RSF killed more than 400 people in attacks on North Darfur’s capital of El-Fasher and nearby displacement camps, according to the United Nations.El-Fasher, which the RSF has besieged for nearly a year, is the last major urban stronghold in Darfur still under army control.It is a strategic target for the paramilitary group, which has sought to consolidate its hold on Darfur following the army’s recapture of the capital Khartoum last month.In an earlier statement, the army put Wednesday’s death toll at 62, including 15 children ages three to 10, and dozens more wounded.It said it had repelled the “fierce” assault on the city’s east in a coordinated response with “allied armed movements, intelligence services, the police” and volunteer fighters.El-Fasher has been defended in large part by a coalition of army-allied groups known as the Joint Forces.- Hundreds of thousands flee -The war, which entered its third year on Tuesday, has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created what the UN describes as the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.It has also fractured the country essentially in two, with the army holding the centre, north and east while the RSF controls nearly all of Darfur and, along with its allies, parts of the south.After Friday’s major offensive in Darfur, the RSF announced that it had taken full control of Zamzam refugee camp — which is one of Sudan’s largest.Zamzam — home to about one million displaced people according to aid sources — was the first area of Sudan where famine was declared in August last year.By December, famine spread to two nearby displacement camps in Darfur as well as parts of the south, according to a UN-backed assessment.About 400,000 people were displaced from Zamzam after the RSF seized the camp, the UN’s migration agency said on Monday.In the past two weeks, an estimated 450,000 people have arrived in Tawila alone, a town about 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of Zamzam, according to the local Emergency Response Room — one of hundreds across Sudan coordinating frontline aid.The newly displaced, they added, are suffering from acute shortages of food, clean drinking water and shelter materials, with barely any humanitarian aid available in the area.

‘Help us,’ says wife of Gaza medic missing since ambulance attack

More than three weeks after an Israeli military ambush killed 15 of her husband’s fellow medics, Nafiza al-Nsasrah says she still has no idea where he is being held.”We have no information, no idea which prison he’s in or where he is being held, or what his health condition is,” Nsasrah told AFP, showing a photograph of her husband Asaad in his medic’s uniform at the wheel of an ambulance.The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday that Nsasrah was in Israeli custody after being “forcibly abducted” when Israeli soldiers opened fire on a convoy of ambulances on March 23.In the early hours of that day, Israeli soldiers ambushed a convoy of ambulances and a firetruck near the southern city of Rafah as the crew responded to emergency calls.Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were killed in the attack, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA.Their bodies were found buried in the sand near the site of the shooting in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah, in what OCHA described as a mass grave.One member of the crew survived the attack. He was initially detained by troops but subsequently released.The Palestinian Red Crescent was able to recover footage of part of the attack filmed by one of the medics on his mobile phone before he was gunned down.An Israeli military official told journalists that the soldiers who fired at the ambulances “thought they had an encounter with terrorists”.The video footage contradicts that account as the ambulances had their lights blinking when they came under attack.- ‘Intent to kill’ -“At the time of the incident, we had no idea what had happened,” Nsasrah said in the plastic-sheet shelter in the southern city of Khan Yunis which she and her family have called home for nearly a year.Her husband’s body was not among those found in the mass grave near Rafah.”We heard some ambulances had been surrounded (by the Israeli army), so we called (the Red Crescent) because (my husband) was late to return from his shift,” the 43-year-old said.”They told us that he was surrounded but didn’t know what had happened exactly.”Afterwards, the Red Crescent told her that he had been detained by Israeli forces.”We felt a little relieved but not completely because detainees often face torture. So we are still afraid,” Nsasrah said, her voice drowned out by the persistent buzz of an Israeli surveillance drone overhead.When the Red Crescent announced he had been detained, AFP reached out to the Israeli military for confirmation.The military responded by referring AFP to an earlier statement noting that armed forces chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir had ordered a thorough investigation into the attack.The March 23 killings occurred days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory and drew international condemnation. The Palestinian Red Crescent has charged that Israeli soldiers shot the medics in their upper body with “intent to kill”.Nsasrah, her husband and their six children have been living under canvas in Khan Yunis since May last year.Despite the hardship, she remains determined to get her husband back.”I call on the international community to help us get any information on Asaad Al-Nsasrah,” she said.”I ask to obtain information about his health condition and to allow us to visit him or to help us get him released.”

Members of UK Jewish group say can’t ‘turn blind eye’ to Gaza war

Members of the largest organisation representing British Jews have said they can no longer “turn a blind eye” to the war in Gaza, adding “Israel’s soul is being ripped out”.In a major break with the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ policy of supporting the Israeli leadership, 36 of its members criticised the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Gaza in an open letter published in the Financial Times.”The inclination to avert our eyes is strong, as what is happening is unbearable, but our Jewish values compel us to stand up and to speak out,” said the letter, signed by around one in eight members of the Board of Deputies.It is the first time since the start of the war that members of the body have publicly criticised the Israeli government.”We cannot turn a blind eye or remain silent” about the loss of life since a two-month truce collapsed on March 18, as negotiations over the return of Israeli hostages broke down, the letter added.Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. “Israel’s soul is being ripped out and we, members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, fear for the future of the Israel we love and have such close ties to,” added the letter.The signatories accused the “most extremist of Israeli governments” of “openly encouraging violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.””We stand against the war. We acknowledge and mourn the loss of Palestinian life,” they added.A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies told the Guardian that other members would “no doubt put more emphasis on the fundamental responsibility of Hamas for this ghastly situation.”At least 1,691 Palestinians have been killed since the resumption of the Israeli offensive, bringing the death toll in Gaza since the start of the war to 51,065, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.Hamas’s attack on October 7 left 1,218 dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Gaza rescuers say 37 people killed in Israeli strikes, most of them displaced

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Thursday that a series of Israeli air strikes killed at least 37 people, most of them in encampments for displaced civilians, as Israel pressed its unrelenting military offensive in the Palestinian territory.The Israeli military did not immediately comment, but said it was looking into reports of the strikes, which came as Hamas officials said internal deliberations on the latest Israeli truce offer were nearly complete.Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said two Israeli missiles hit several tents in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis, resulting in at least 16 deaths, “most of them women and children, and 23 others were wounded”.Survivors described a large explosion at the densely packed encampment that set multiple tents ablaze.”We were sitting peacefully in the tent, under God’s protection, when we suddenly saw something red glowing — and then the tent exploded, and the surrounding tents caught fire,” Israa Abu al-Rus told AFP.”This is supposed to be a safe area in Al-Mawasi, and the place just exploded. We fled the tent towards the sea and saw the tents burning.” After Israel declared Al-Mawasi a safe zone in December 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked to its sand dunes along the Mediterranean coast seeking refuge from Israeli bombardment.But the area has since been hit by repeated Israeli strikes, which have exacted a heavy civilian death toll.Bassal said that Israeli strikes on two other encampments of displaced Gazans killed a further nine people — seven in the northern town of Beit Lahia, and a father and son near Al-Mawasi.Separately, the civil defence agency reported two more attacks on displaced people in Jabalia — one that killed at least seven members of the Asaliya family, and another that killed three people at a school being used as a shelter.The agency also reported two people killed by Israeli shelling in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City.- ‘Starvation as a weapon’ -Israel said Wednesday that it had converted 30 percent of Gaza into a buffer zone in the widening offensive it resumed in March, ending a two-month ceasefire.Defence Minister Israel Katz said this month that the military was leaving Gaza “smaller and more isolated”.The United Nations said half a million Palestinians have been displaced since the offensive resumed, triggering what it has described as the most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.The Israeli military said its air strikes had hit “approximately 1,200 terror targets” since March 18, and “more than 100 targeted eliminations have been carried out”.Hamas accused Israel on Thursday of attempting to starve Gaza’s 2.4 million people after Katz said the day before that Israel would continue preventing aid from entering the territory.”This is a public admission of committing a war crime, including the use of starvation as a weapon and the denial of basic necessities such as food, medicine, water, and fuel to innocent civilians for the seventh consecutive week,” the group said in a statement.Israel halted the entry of aid on March 2, exacerbating the territory’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.”Blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population,” the defence minister said.- New truce offer -In parallel to the Gaza offensive, Hamas said Israel had proposed a new 45-day ceasefire through mediators that would include the release of dozens of hostages.Netanyahu met hostage negotiators and security chiefs on Wednesday and “issued directives for the continuation of the steps to advance the release of our hostages”, his office said.The proposal also called for Hamas to disarm to secure a complete end to the war, the militant group said. A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Mardawi, told AFP that the group’s “weapons will not be subject to any negotiations”.Two Hamas officials said on Thursday that internal discussions on the truce proposal were nearly complete, with one telling AFP “the group will send its response to the mediators once they finish”. “It’s expected the talks will wrap up soon — possibly even today,” the official said.Israel’s renewed assault has so far killed at least 1,691 people in Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory reported, bringing the overall toll since the war erupted to 51,065, most of them civilians.Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

UN nuclear chief in Tehran ahead of fresh Iran-US talks

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi met the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Mohammad Eslami, on Thursday ahead of a fresh round of nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.Iranian and US delegations are to gather in Rome on Saturday for a second round of Omani-mediated negotiations, a week after the longtime foes held their highest-level talks since US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear accord in 2018.There were no immediate details on Grossi’s meeting with Eslami, but Iran’s reformist Shargh newspaper described his visit as “strategically significant at the current juncture”.On Wednesday, Grossi met with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the first round of talks with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday.  Araghchi said he had  a “useful” meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency chief.”The IAEA can play a crucial role in peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear file in the coming months,” he said. Araghchi called on the IAEA chief to “keep the agency away from politics” in the face of “spoilers” seeking to “derail current negotiations”. He did not elaborate.Grossi said their meeting was “important”. “Cooperation with IAEA is indispensable to provide credible assurances about the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme at a time when diplomacy is urgently needed,” he said on X.- ‘Not far’ from possessing bomb -Before heading to Iran, Grossi told French newspaper Le Monde that Tehran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb.Western governments have long accused Iran of seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.A year after Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran began rolling back its own commitments under the agreement, which gave it relief from sanctions in return for IAEA-monitored restrictions on its nuclear activities.In its latest report, the IAEA said Iran had an estimated 274.8 kilogrammes (605 pounds) of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent.That level far exceeds the 3.67 percent enrichment ceiling set by the 2015 deal, but still falls short of the 90 percent threshold required for a nuclear warhead.Since he returned to office in January, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” policy of punishing economic sanctions against Iran. In March, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urging talks and warning of possible military action if Iran refused.On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Trump had blocked an Israeli plan to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in favour of seeking a negotiated deal. – ‘Conflicting positions’ -On Tuesday, Khamenei cautioned that while the talks with the United States had started well, they could yet prove fruitless. “The negotiations may or may not yield results,” he said. On Wednesday, Araghchi said Iran’s enrichment of uranium was not up for discussion after Witkoff called for a halt.Witkoff had previously demanded only that Iran return to the 3.67 percent enrichment ceiling set by the 2015 deal.Araghchi said he hoped to start negotiations on the framework of a possible agreement, but that this required “constructive positions” from the United States.”If we continue to (hear) contradictory and conflicting positions, we are going to have problems,” he warned.On Thursday, Iran’s top diplomat was in Moscow on a “pre-planned” visit to the Tehran ally.”Our regular exchanges with Russia and China have allowed us to align our positions,” Araghchi said on his arrival in the Russian capital. The Kremlin said that Russia stood ready to do “everything” in its power to help resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme.Meanwhile, the official Saudi Press Agency reported that Defence Minister Prince Khaled bin Salman had travelled to Tehran for talks on Thursday. During his first term, Trump attempted to forge an alliance between Israel and the Gulf Arab states against Iran.But in 2023 Tehran and Riyadh restored ties in a Chinese-brokered rapprochement, while the outbreak of the Gaza war later the same year soured relations between all Arab states and Israel.Â