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The presidents of Syria and Lebanon arrived in Qatar on separate visits Tuesday, the first official trips by both leaders to the wealthy Gulf state since taking office.Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha, the Qatari leader’s office said in a statement.Qatar has been a key backer of the new administration in Damascus after longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December.The talks between the Qatari and Syrian leaders “covered the most prominent regional and international developments, and an exchange of views on ways to enhance security and stability”, Shiekh Tamim’s office said. Earlier, Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani posted on X that he was accompanying Sharaa on his “first presidential visit to the country that has stood by Syrians from day one and has never abandoned them”.Sharaa and Shaibani’s Qatar trip comes on the heels of a Sunday visit to the United Arab Emirates, where they met Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.Sharaa led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad from power on December 8.His new administration has received support from several countries, including key backers Turkey and Qatar, as well as multiple Arab states.Qatar was one of the first Arab countries to back the armed rebellion that erupted after Assad’s government crushed a peaceful uprising in 2011.Unlike other Arab nations, Doha did not restore diplomatic ties with Syria under Assad.The new authorities have engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity since taking power, and Sharaa has visited several Arab countries as well as Turkey.- ‘Important interlocutor’ -Later on Tuesday Lebanese President Joseph Aoun touched down in Doha, accompanied by foreign minister Youssef Raggi, the Lebanese presidency said in a statement.Earlier, Aoun’s office had said talks between the Qatari and Lebanese delegations would continue into Wednesday afternoon and include a meeting with the Qatari emir. A day earlier, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam met with Sharaa in Damascus in an effort to reboot ties between the two neighbours.Beirut and Damascus have been seeking to improve relations since the overthrow of Assad, whose family dynasty exercised control over Lebanese affairs for decades and has been accused of assassinating numerous officials in Lebanon who expressed opposition to its rule.Middle East analyst Andreas Krieg said since the fall of the Assad government, Qatar had emerged as “the most important interlocutor with the Sharaa government in the Arab world, at least after Turkey”. He said the gas-rich Gulf emirate was a “diplomatic force multiplier to the Sharaa government in Syria” and would be able to connect the new Syrian authorities with Lebanon, “which is, for both countries, extremely important”. Sheikh Tamim visited Damascus in January, becoming the first head of state to visit since Assad’s ouster.Doha has pledged to support the rehabilitation of Syria’s infrastructure, and has signed multiple deals to provide the war-ravaged country with much-needed power.Syrian authorities are seeking assistance including from wealthy Gulf states for reconstruction after nearly 14 years of war.Qatar is also one of the providers of financial and in-kind support to the Lebanese army and pledged support for reconstruction in February after the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

Amna Hussein didn’t stop when the bullet hit her hand. She kept on running as paramilitaries attacked Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the dead of night.”They entered Zamzam and started shooting at us,” she told AFP in the small town of Tawila, 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of the huge famine-stricken camp, which by Sunday had fallen to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).”I tied my hand with a cloth to stop the blood and we kept running,” the 36-year-old said, her hand swollen and body weak after a three-day trek on foot.The United Nations says more than 400 people have been killed and around 400,000 people displaced since the RSF on Friday began attacking Zamzam, where aid sources estimate up to a million people were sheltering.The lucky ones like Hussein made it to Tawila, despite barely any aid available there. The fighters did not pursue them.Ibrahim Essa, a 43-year-old father of six, didn’t think he would make it out.”We tried to leave on the first day, but RSF fighters blocked the roads and fired artillery at us,” he told AFP from underneath the dead tree his family now uses for shelter.Since war erupted between the regular Sudanese army and the RSF two years ago, Darfur has seen some of the worst violence, with entire villages and camps torched.- Systematic destruction -Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (Yale HRL), which uses remote sensing data to track the conflict, confirms that the RSF now controls the sprawling camp.”Zamzam camp is now being systematically destroyed by fire from intentional arson by RSF forces,” it reported Monday, a day after the RSF claimed it had “liberated” the area.The camp lies just south of North Darfur state capital El-Fasher, the only major city in the vast western region not conquered by the RSF.The UN and international leaders have for nearly a year warned against a full-scale attack on Zamzam and El-Fasher, with fears of ethnically motivated massacres such as those the RSF committed elsewhere in Darfur.According to the Yale HRL, the RSF has positioned a 200 vehicle-strong force inside Zamzam, indicating “an imminent large-scale assault on El-Fasher city itself”.The RSF has besieged El-Fasher since last May, but has been unable to defeat the army and its allied militias known as the Joint Forces.After the army retook the capital Khartoum 1,000 kilometres to the east last month, the RSF intensified its attacks in a final push to claim all of Darfur.- ‘Die together in Zamzam’ -Although the Joint Forces have for months intercepted RSF supply lines, experts warn a full-scale attack could overcome their defences.Several survivors from Zamzam told AFP they were stopped by Joint Forces fighters who urged them not to flee.”They told us: ‘Don’t leave. We will all die together in Zamzam,” said one survivor who gave her name as Nasha.When the fighting intensified, she took her children and ran for Tawila, arriving three days later.”Now we’re sitting in the dirt with no blankets, no mattresses, not even proper clothes,” she told AFP.Behind her, hundreds of families huddled under scattered trees, nothing to their name but the clothes they fled in.On Monday, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said its small team in Tawila reported 10,000 displaced people arriving in under two days.Little aid is available in Tawila, where people displaced from other parts of North Darfur have slept on the ground for months.An AFP journalist saw a steady stream of exhausted families pour in, some clinging to overcrowded trucks or jolting slowly along in wooden donkey carts piled high with children.”After we arrived in Tawila, aid workers gave us water and dates. But I was already very sick,” Nasha said.”I collapsed and fainted from thirst and the heat.”On Tuesday, Sudan’s war entered its third year with no hope of respite.Tens of thousands have been killed, including up to 15,000 in ethnically motivated massacres by the RSF and allied militias in the West Darfur town of El-Geneina alone, a UN panel said.Thirteen million more have been uprooted and eight million are on the brink of famine, in what the UN calls the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.An independent UN fact-finding mission warned Monday that “the darkest chapters of this conflict have yet to unfold”, citing rising ethnic violence and retaliation nationwide. 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday he was satisfied with talks with arch-foe the United States but warned they could ultimately prove fruitless.Tehran and Washington are due to meet again in Muscat on Saturday, a week after top officials held the highest-level talks since the landmark 2015 nuclear accord collapsed.US President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the deal during his first term, revived his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign after returning to office in January.In March, he sent a letter to Khamenei urging talks and warning of possible military action if Iran refused.Saturday’s talks were “well carried out in the first steps”, Khamenei said, quoted by state television. “Of course, we are very pessimistic about the other side, but we are optimistic about our own capabilities.”But he added that “the negotiations may or may not yield results”.Despite having no diplomatic ties since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, both sides described the talks as “constructive”.Iran insists discussions remain “indirect” and mediated by Oman.- Trump threats -On Monday, Trump again threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if no deal was reached, calling Iranian authorities “radicals” who should not possess nuclear weapons.Tehran denies seeking an atomic bomb, saying its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, especially energy production.Khamenei said Iran’s “red lines are clear”, without elaborating.Earlier Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the country’s military capabilities were off limits in the discussions.”National security and defence and military power are among the red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which cannot be discussed or negotiated under any circumstances,” Guards spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini said.On Monday, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who led the talks in Oman with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said Iran should return to the 3.67 percent enrichment level stipulated in the 2015 accord.He said the process with Iran “is going to be much about verification on the enrichment programme and then ultimately verification on weaponisation that includes missiles, the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there and it includes the trigger for a bomb”.- ‘Red lines’ -In its latest quarterly report in February, the UN nuclear watchdog said Iran had an estimated 274.8 kilograms (605 pounds) of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent, close to the 90 percent threshold required for weapons-grade material.The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi is expected in Iran on Wednesday.Late Sunday, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the country’s regional influence and its missile capabilities — long criticised by Western governments — were among its “red lines” in the talks.Tehran supports the “axis of resistance” — a network of militant groups opposed to Israel, including Yemen’s Huthi rebels, the Hezbollah armed group in Lebanon, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Shiite militia groups in Iraq.Iran has long been wary of talks with the United States, citing past mistrust.The 2015 accord — known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — offered Iran relief from international sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.Iran complied with the agreement for a year after Trump’s withdrawal before scaling back its compliance.In his speech, Khamenei said Iran should not pin its hopes on progress in the negotiations.”At the time (of the JCPOA), we made everything conditional on the progress of the negotiations,” he said.”This mistake… should not be repeated here.”

An island in the middle of Sudan’s capital that used to draw crowds to its Nile River farms now stands nearly deserted after two years of war, its homes ransacked and once-lush fields left fallow. Nestled at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers, Tuti Island has been devastated by two years of war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with residents subjected to violence and looting.When fighting broke out on April 15, 2023, RSF fighters swiftly captured the crescent-shaped island, forcing residents to flee in panic.”They fled in feluccas (sailing boats), leaving everything behind,” said Youssef al-Naim, 67, one of the handful of residents who never left.The war has devastated the nation, killed tens of thousands and uprooted 13 million, according to the United Nations.At the beginning of the war, the RSF had gained control of wide swathes of the capital, outflanking the army in the north and south, before the tides turned in the army’s favour earlier this year.The island, accessible only by a single suspension bridge, was cut off and besieged by the RSF since the war began.Residents were deprived of food, electricity and safe drinking water, even before fighters descended on the island.- Lifeless -“We used to carry water from a well for washing and drink from the Nile,” Naim said.”Sometimes we couldn’t reach the river and drank the well water, which made people sick.”Those able to pay  for passage, fled in sailing boats and then the back of lorries, headed east.”Every day, 10 or more people would leave,” Naim recalled as he sat on a tattered fabric chair.Tuti island was once known as “Khartoum’s garden” for its verdant fields of beans, arugula and fruit trees that supplied much of the capital’s produce. Now, the eight-square-kilometre (three-square-mile) floating patch, overlooking Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri (Khartoum North) which form the greater Sudanese capital, appears nearly lifeless.”For nearly two years, I haven’t seen a single tomato,” Naim said.An AFP team that visited the island after the army retook it in March saw signs of the sudden exodus.Doors hung ajar, children’s toys were scattered across the ground and shredded fabric fluttered through the ruins.- Scars of war -On March 22, Sudan’s army regained control of the Tuti bridge as part of its broader offensive to retake Khartoum. Within a week, Burhan declared the capital “free”.But the scars of two years of war run deep, with RSF fighters accused of subjecting civilians to indiscriminate violence.”They beat children, the elderly and even pregnant women,” Abdel Hai Hamza, another resident, told AFP.Witnesses also described systematic looting, with fighters raiding homes in search of gold jewellery, cash and weapons.”They had to leave houses with something,” added Hamza, 33.The conflict has decimated Sudan’s infrastructure, crumbled an already weak economy and pushed millions to the brink of mass starvation.In Khartoum alone, at least 3.5 million have been displaced while 100,000 are suffering from famine-levels of hunger, according to the UN.Both the army and the RSF have been accused of war crimes, but the paramilitary in particular has become notorious for allegedly committing systematic sexual violence, ethnic cleansing and massive looting.Now, with the bridge to Tuti reopened and RSF fighters pushed out, some residents are making their way back, determined to rebuild their lives.”Residents are trying to restore electricity,” after cables were cut by the RSF, said Sherif al-Tayeb, a former resident of Tuti who now lives abroad and still has close friends among the island’s residents.Despite the devastation, small groups of civilians clean the streets with shovels and buckets, while dump trucks haul away the remnants of their shattered lives.