Sudan’s military sacks commander after tribal clashes

Sudan’s military sacks commander after tribal clashes
Land dispute reignited fighting in the Blue Nile, pitting the Hausa tribe, with origins across West Africa, against the Berta people. (File/AFP)
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Updated 24 October 2022

Sudan’s military sacks commander after tribal clashes

Sudan’s military sacks commander after tribal clashes
  • Fighting in Blue Nile reignited earlier this month over a land dispute
  • The violence comes ahead of the first anniversary of Sudan’s military coup

CAIRO: Sudan’s ruling military sacked a commander in the southern Blue Nile province after two days of fierce tribal clashes there last week killed at least 220 people, the army announced Monday. The unrest added to the woes of a country mired in civil conflict and political chaos.
Fighting in Blue Nile, which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan, reignited earlier this month over a land dispute, pitting the Hausa tribe, with origins across West Africa, against the Berta people. The tensions escalated Wednesday and Thursday in the town of Wad el-Mahi on the border with Ethiopia.
The violence comes ahead of the first anniversary of Sudan’s military coup that upended the nation’s short-lived transition to democracy. It has also drawn criticism of the powerful-military, with a Sudanese pro-democracy group accusing the ruling generals of not protecting ethnic groups in the province.
Sudan’s military spokesman, Col. Nabil Abdalla, said that Maj. Gen. Rabei Abdalla Adam was named as the commander for the Blue Nile, replacing Maj. Gen. Ramzi Babaker who was removed from his post over the weekend.
The appointment was a part of the military’s efforts to “address the regrettable security events,” the spokesman said. The military also established a fact-finding mission to investigate the clashes, Abdalla said.
Fath Arrahman Bakheit, the head of the Health Ministry in Blue Nile, said Sunday that the death toll, including scores of women and children, became clearer late Saturday, after the first humanitarian and medical convoy managed to reach Wad el-Mahi. Local authorities announced a nighttime curfew in the town, and deployed enforcements to the area to prevent further unrest.
In Damazin, the provincial capital of Blue Nile, protesters angered over the clashes on Sunday stormed the headquarters of the local government and a military facility, local media reported.


Russian drone attack kills two civilians in Ukraine’s Sumy region

Russian drone attack kills two civilians in Ukraine’s Sumy region
Updated 40 min 19 sec ago

Russian drone attack kills two civilians in Ukraine’s Sumy region

Russian drone attack kills two civilians in Ukraine’s Sumy region

KYIV: A Russian drone attack killed two civilians and wounded one in the Sumy region of northern Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, the head of the president’s office, said on Wednesday.

Yermak said on the Telegram messaging app that a Iranian-made “Shahed” drone had destroyed a private house and caused a fire. The president’s office said in a statement that Russia shelled the border region in the northeast several times at overnight and on Wednesday morning.


Pope Francis to undergo intestinal surgery and will be hospitalized for several days

Pope Francis to undergo intestinal surgery and will be hospitalized for several days
Updated 13 sec ago

Pope Francis to undergo intestinal surgery and will be hospitalized for several days

Pope Francis to undergo intestinal surgery and will be hospitalized for several days
  • The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said the pontiff underwent "some clinical examinations and returned to the Vatican before noon”
  • Witnesses at the Vatican's Perugino gate said Francis greeted guards as he usually does before returning to his residence

ROME: Pope Francis went to the hospital on Wednesday for surgery on his intestine, two years after he had 33 centimeters of his colon removed because of an inflammation and narrowing of the large intestine.

The Vatican said Francis, 86, would be put under general anesthesia and would be hospitalized for several days.

Pope Francis briefly went to Rome’s main hospital on Tuesday for tests and returned to the Vatican, two months after he was hospitalized with an acute case of bronchitis.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said the pontiff underwent “some clinical examinations and returned to the Vatican before noon” from the Gemelli hospital.

Witnesses at the Vatican’s Perugino gate, one of the main entrances to the city state, told The Associated Press that Francis greeted guards as he usually does before returning to his residence.

Francis spent three days at the Gemelli hospital in late March. Initially, the Vatican said he had gone in for scheduled tests, but the pontiff later revealed he had felt pain in his chest and was rushed to the hospital where bronchitis was diagnosed. He was put on intravenous antibiotics and was released April 1, quipping that he was “still alive.”

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man. He also suffers from sciatica nerve pain and has been using a wheelchair and walker for more than a year because of strained ligaments in his knee.

Francis has had a packed schedule of late, with multiple audiences each day. The Vatican has recently confirmed a travel-filled August, when the Holy See and Italy are usually on vacation, with a four-day visit to Portugal the first week of August and a similarly long trip to Mongolia starting Aug. 31.

In a sign that the trips were very much on, the Vatican on Tuesday released the planned itinerary for Francis’ visit to Portugal for World Youth Day events from Aug. 2-6. The itinerary confirms a typically busy schedule that includes all the protocol meetings of an official state visit plus multiple events with young people and a day trip to the Marian shrine at Fatima.

Francis’ next public appointment, if confirmed, would be his weekly general audience on Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square.


UN court finds Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga unfit for trial

UN court finds Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga unfit for trial
Updated 07 June 2023

UN court finds Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga unfit for trial

UN court finds Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga unfit for trial
  • ‘The trial chamber finds Mr. Kabuga is no longer capable of meaningful participation in his trial’

THE HAGUE: Judges at a UN war crimes court in The Hague have ruled that geriatric Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga is unfit to stand trial but in a decision published Wednesday also said that slimmed down legal proceedings in his case can continue.
“The trial chamber finds Mr. Kabuga is no longer capable of meaningful participation in his trial,” a decision published on the court’s website said.
However, instead of halting the trial the judges said they would set up an “alternative finding procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction.”


Dozens of wildfires in Canada remain out of control as Quebec orders more evacuations

Dozens of wildfires in Canada remain out of control as Quebec orders more evacuations
Updated 07 June 2023

Dozens of wildfires in Canada remain out of control as Quebec orders more evacuations

Dozens of wildfires in Canada remain out of control as Quebec orders more evacuations
  • More than 150 forest fires burning in the province on Tuesday, including more than 110 deemed out of control

MONTREAL: Northern Quebec’s largest town was being evacuated on Tuesday as firefighters worked to beat back threats from out-of-control blazes in remote communities in the northern and northwestern parts of the province.
According to the province’s forest fire prevention agency, more than 150 forest fires were burning in the province on Tuesday, including more than 110 deemed out of control. The intense Canadian wildfires are blanketing the northeastern US and parts of Eastern Canada in a haze, turning the air acrid, the sky yellowish gray and prompting warnings for vulnerable populations to stay inside.
The effects of hundreds of wildfires burning in Quebec could be felt as far away as New York City and New England, blotting out skylines and irritating throats.
Late Tuesday, authorities issued an evacuation order for Chibougamau, Quebec, a town of about 7,500 in the remote region of the province. Authorities said the evacuation was underway and promised more details Wednesday.
“We’re following all of this from hour to hour, obviously,” Premier François Legault told reporters in Sept-Îles, Quebec. “If we look at the situation in Quebec as a whole, there are several places where it is still worrying.”
Legault said the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region in northwestern Quebec is an area of particular concern, with the communities of Normétal and Lebel-sur-Quévillon under threat.
The mayor of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, where about 2,100 people were forced from their homes on the weekend, said the fire is about 10 kilometers outside of town, but its advance has been slower than expected.
“The fire started in an area where there were no trees, which slowed it down considerably,” Mayor Guy Lafrenière said.
Other northern communities at risk include Chibougamau the Cree village of Chisasibi on the eastern shore of James Bay. Firefighting resources have also been dispatched to Hydro-Québec’s Micoua substation near Baie-Comeau, Legault said.
On Monday, Legault said authorities had no choice but to leave the hamlet of Clova to burn, drawing the ire of local residents. Legault said Tuesday that he had simply repeated what fire prevention officials told him: the fire around the tiny community about 325 kilometers northwest of Montreal was too intense to send water bombers. That remained true Tuesday, he said, but he noted that no homes had burned.
Dominic Vincent, the owner of the Auberge Restaurant Clova, said that by Monday afternoon, the situation in the area had already improved, aided by cooler temperatures and a change in wind direction. While smoke remained visible, it was far less intense, he said.
Quebec Natural Resources Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina told reporters in Quebec City that evacuees across the province number just over 8,300, down from 10,000 to start the week, but the Abitibi region remains a concern.
“We are not expecting rain in the short term, which is what makes it more difficult to fight fires,” Blanchette Vézina said.


Russia says West trying to confuse the world over Nord Stream culprits

Russia says West trying to confuse the world over Nord Stream culprits
Updated 07 June 2023

Russia says West trying to confuse the world over Nord Stream culprits

Russia says West trying to confuse the world over Nord Stream culprits
  • The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to blow up the Russia-to-Germany project

The Russian embassy in the United States said on Wednesday that a report the United States knew of a Ukrainian plan to attack the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines was part of a coordinated Western attempt to confuse the world over the truth.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing leaked information posted online that the CIA learned last June, through a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to blow up the Russia-to-Germany project.

“The coordinated campaign of the West, led by the United States, to confuse the international community is sewn with white threads,” Russian diplomat Andrey Ledenev was quoted as saying in a post on the embassy’s Telegram messaging channel.

“The reason for the proliferating theories and versions, supported by the notorious ‘confidential’ data of the local intelligence community, is simple to the point of banality.”

Several underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. Both countries said the explosions were deliberate, but have yet to determine who was responsible. Those countries and Germany are investigating.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that investigations into the Nord Stream attack were active.

“The last thing that we’re going to want to do from this podium is get ahead of those investigations,” Kirby said when asked about The Post’s reporting on the matter.

The Kremlin said in February that the world should know the truth about who sabotaged the pipelines and that those responsible should be punished after an investigative journalist said US divers blew them up at the behest of the White House.

Russia has repeatedly said the West was behind the blasts affecting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines last September — multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects that carried Russian gas to Germany.

The Post said it agreed to withhold the name of the European intelligence agency as well as some aspects of the suspected plan at the request of government officials, citing risks to sources and operations.

The CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not immediately confirm the intelligence cited by the Washington Post.