Sudan at ‘cataclysmic breaking point’, says UN agency

Sudan at ‘cataclysmic breaking point’, says UN agency
People line up to register for a potential food aid delivery at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Agari, South Kordofan, on June 17, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 12 August 2024
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Sudan at ‘cataclysmic breaking point’, says UN agency

Sudan at ‘cataclysmic breaking point’, says UN agency

GENEVA: Sudan is at a catastrophic “breaking point,” with tens of thousands of preventable deaths looming due to multiple crises, the United Nations’ migration agency warned Monday.
The International Organization for Migration said famine and floods were adding to a catalogue of challenges facing millions of people in the war-torn country, amid the world’s largest displacement crisis.
“Make no mistake: these conditions will persist and worsen if the conflict and restrictions on humanitarian access continue,” Othman Belbeisi, IOM Middle East and North Africa director, said in a statement.
“Without an immediate, massive, and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months. We are at breaking point — a catastrophic, cataclysmic breaking point.”
War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, according to the UN.
The IOM said new figures showed more than 10.7 million people are internally displaced within Sudan, with many uprooted several times over.
Meanwhile 2.3 million have fled across the borders into neighboring countries.
Flooding has displaced more than 20,000 people since June across 11 of Sudan’s 18 states, the IOM said, adding that critical infrastructure had been washed away, disrupting the delivery of vital supplies.
Overall, more than 45,000 people have been displaced over the last two weeks, with more than 38,000 of them fleeing across the borders.
The conflict has pushed the Zamzam camp near the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher into famine, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review.
The IOM said humanitarian and protection conditions in Sudan were “among the worst in the world.”
“Restrictions on humanitarian access, including impediments imposed by parties to the conflict, have severely curtailed the ability of aid organizations to scale up and save lives, especially during the current rainy season,” the Geneva-based agency said.
“Urgent funding” is required for “those still in desperate need of food, shelter, water, health services, and specialized protection.”

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Israel strike on Syria capital kills three: war monitor

Israel strike on Syria capital kills three: war monitor
Updated 33 sec ago
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Israel strike on Syria capital kills three: war monitor

Israel strike on Syria capital kills three: war monitor
SANA quoted a military source as saying that that “the Israeli enemy launched an air strike... targeting one of the residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighborhood“
The source said three civilians were killed and three wounded

BEIRUT: An Israeli air strike killed three people in Damascus Wednesday, a monitor said, in the second strike in as many days on a neighborhood that is home to security headquarters and embassies.
“An Israeli air strike targeted a flat in a residential building in the Mazzeh neighborhood frequented by Hezbollah leaders and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It killed at least three people, two of them foreigners, the monitor said.
State news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that that “the Israeli enemy launched an air strike... targeting one of the residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighborhood.”
The source said three civilians were killed and three wounded.
Wednesday’s strike hit around 500 meters (yards) from Tuesday’s strike.
The Observatory said the earlier strike killed six people — three civilians including a television anchor and three Iran-backed fighters, one of them from Hezbollah.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including those of Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes but have said repeatedly they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
The strikes have intensified in recent days, including in areas near the border with Lebanon.

Israel strikes turn bustling south Beirut into ghost town

Israel strikes turn bustling south Beirut into ghost town
Updated 27 min 38 sec ago
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Israel strikes turn bustling south Beirut into ghost town

Israel strikes turn bustling south Beirut into ghost town
  • Mohammed Sheaito, 31, one of the few not leaving, said that “during the night, the ground shook below us... and the sky lit up” from the force of the strikes
  • An area of tightly packed blocks of flats, shops and businesses, Beirut’s southern suburbs are also home to Hezbollah’s main institutions

BEIRUT: Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Hezbollah militant group, are usually teeming with life but on Wednesday the rubble-strewn streets and burning buildings were almost empty after days of Israeli bombardment and evacuation orders.
AFP photographers saw thick smoke rising from buildings hit by overnight strikes while young men on mopeds sped along largely empty roads and residents grabbed what they could from their homes, some driving off with mattresses tied to car roofs.
Mohammed Sheaito, 31, one of the few not leaving, said that “during the night, the ground shook below us... and the sky lit up” from the force of the strikes.
“The area has become a ghost town,” said the taxi driver, who has sent his parents, his sister and her children — already displaced by Israeli bombing in south Lebanon — to safety elsewhere.
An area of tightly packed blocks of flats, shops and businesses, Beirut’s southern suburbs are also home to Hezbollah’s main institutions.
Israel says it is targeting sites belonging to the Iran-backed militant group, which was founded during the Lebanese civil war after Israel besieged the city in 1982.
A series of Israeli raids last week hit the southern suburbs — known as Dahiyeh — before a massive strike on Friday killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, with raids on the area increasing after that.
Thousands have fled the bombings or because of Israeli army evacuation orders on social media posted ahead of some strikes.
Some are staying with relatives, others in schools turned shelters in Beirut or in rented flats, while those with nowhere to go have been sleeping on the streets.
“The area was full of people. We used to sit at the cafe or along the street, older people would play backgammon,” Sheaito said.
Now, everything is “closed — corner stores, restaurants... even the pharmacy,” he said, adding: “I leave Dahiyeh to buy food supplies.”
Mohammed Afif, the head of Hezbollah’s information office, told journalists on a media tour that was broadcast that all the buildings hit in Dahiyeh were “civilian buildings and are not home to military activity.”
In one neighborhood, emergency workers combed the rubble of a flattened four-building residential complex in a grim search for survivors.
In another, a woman carried a cat as a building burned.
Rubble blocked some streets, with burnt-out cars scattered around various strike sites.
“I came quickly to get our identify papers and some other things,” said one resident who declined to be identified, expressing shock at finding an eight-building residential complex behind his home had been destroyed.
He said the neighborhood was uninhabitable, with no water, shops, petrol stations or even electricity because generators had shut down in a country where the state network struggles to supply a few hours of power a day.
“Our apartment is full of dust and there is a strange smell — I left quickly before I choked,” he said.
“I only saw one or two people on the street. There is no life here anymore.”


Germany flies more citizens out of Lebanon

Germany flies more citizens out of Lebanon
Updated 40 min 30 sec ago
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Germany flies more citizens out of Lebanon

Germany flies more citizens out of Lebanon
  • An Airbus A330 MRTT departed for Beirut to pick up 130 German nationals
  • The special flight was also carrying some 5,000 kilograms of relief supplies from the German Red Cross

FRANKFURT: Germany on Wednesday said it had organized a second military flight to evacuate its nationals from Lebanon, after Israel launched ground raids into its neighbor and Iran fired missiles at Israel.
An Airbus A330 MRTT departed for Beirut to pick up 130 German nationals considered “particularly vulnerable,” Germany’s foreign and defense ministries said in a joint statement.
The special flight was also carrying some 5,000 kilograms (11,000 pounds) of relief supplies from the German Red Cross, mainly medical supplies such as infusion equipment and bandages, “to provide emergency care for Lebanon’s civilian population.”
Germany already flew around 110 passengers out of Lebanon on Monday.
“The situation in the Middle East remains extremely volatile,” the ministries said.
Further flights would be deployed depending on the need and on how the situation develops, they added.
Other countries are also evacuating their citizens from Lebanon, including France, Spain, Britain and Canada.


Iran’s Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say

Iran’s Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say
Updated 02 October 2024
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Iran’s Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say

Iran’s Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say
  • Khamenei sent a message with an envoy to beseech the Hezbollah secretary general to leave for Iran
  • The messenger, the official said, was a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan

DUBAI/BEIRUT: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply worried about Israeli infiltration of senior government ranks in Tehran, three Iranian sources said.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Hezbollah’s booby-trapped pagers on Sept. 17, Khamenei sent a message with an envoy to beseech the Hezbollah secretary general to leave for Iran, citing intelligence reports that suggested Israel had operatives within Hezbollah and was planning to kill him, one of the sources, a senior Iranian official, told Reuters.
The messenger, the official said, was a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, who was with Nasrallah in his bunker when it was hit by Israeli bombs and was also killed.
Khamenei, who has remained in a secure location inside Iran since Saturday, personally ordered a barrage of around 200 missiles to be fired at Israel on Tuesday, a senior Iranian official said. The attack was retaliation for the deaths of Nasrallah and Nilforoushan, the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement.
The statement also cited the July killing of Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Israel has not claimed responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.
Israel on Tuesday began what it labelled as a “limited” ground incursion against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Iran’s foreign ministry and the office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which oversees the country’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad, did not reply to requests for comment.
Nasrallah’s assassination followed two weeks of precise Israeli strikes that have destroyed weapons sites, eliminated half of Hezbollah’s leadership council and decimated its top military command.
Iran’s fears for the safety of Khamenei and the loss of trust, within both Hezbollah and Iran’s establishment and between them, emerged in the conversations with 10 sources for this story, who described a situation that could complicate the effective functioning of Iran’s Axis of Resistance alliance of anti-Israel irregular armed groups.
Founded with Iran’s backing the 1980s, Hezbollah has long been the most formidable member of the alliance.
The disarray is also making it hard for Hezbollah to choose a new leader, fearing the ongoing infiltration will put the successor at risk, four Lebanese sources said.
“Basically, Iran lost the biggest investment it had for the past decades,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah expert at the Swedish Defense University, of the deep damage caused to Hezbollah that he said diminished Iran’s capacity to strike at Israel’s borders.
“It shook Iran to the core. It shows how Iran is deeply infiltrated also: they not only killed Nasrallah, they killed Nilforoushan,” he said, who was a trusted military adviser to Khamenei.
Hezbollah’s lost military capacity and leadership cadre might push Iran toward the type of attacks against Israeli embassies and personnel abroad that it engaged in more frequently before the rise of its proxy forces, Ranstorp said.

IRAN MAKES ARRESTS
Nasrallah’s death has prompted Iranian authorities to thoroughly investigate possible infiltrations within Iran’s own ranks, from the powerful Revolutionary Guards to senior security officials, a second senior Iranian official said. They are especially focused on those who travel abroad or have relatives living outside Iran, the first official said.
Tehran grew suspicious of certain members of the Guards who had been traveling to Lebanon, he said. Concerns were raised when one of these individuals began asking about Nasrallah’s whereabouts, particularly inquiring about how long he would remain in specific locations, the official added.
The individual has been arrested along with several others, the first official said, after alarm was raised in Iran’s intelligence circles. The suspect’s family had relocated outside Iran, the official said, without identifying the suspect or his relatives.
The second official said the assassination has spread mistrust between Tehran and Hezbollah, and within Hezbollah.
“The trust that held everything together has disappeared,” the official said.
The Supreme Leader “no longer trusts anyone,” said a third source who is close to Iran’s establishment.
Alarm bells had already rung within Tehran and Hezbollah about possible Mossad infiltrations after the killing in July of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on a secretive Beirut location while meeting an IRGC commander, two Hezbollah sources and a Lebanese security official told Reuters at the time. That killing was followed a few hours later by the assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran.
Unlike Haniyeh’s death, Israel publicly claimed responsibility for the killing of Shukr, a low-profile figure who Nasrallah nonetheless described, at his funeral, as a central figure in Hezbollah’s history who had built its most important capabilities.
Shukr was key to the development of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponary, including precision-guided missiles, and was in charge of the Shiite groups operations against Israel over the past year, Israel’s military has said.
Iranian fears about Israeli penetration of its upper ranks stretches back years. In 2021, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the head of an Iranian intelligence unit that was supposed to target agents of Mossad had himself been an agent for the Israeli spy agency, telling CNN Turk that Israel obtained sensitive documents on Iran’s nuclear program, a reference to a 2018 raid in which Israel obtained a huge trove of top secret documents about the program.
Also in 2021, Israel’s outgoing spy chief Yossi Cohen gave details about the raid, telling the BBC that 20 non-Israeli Mossad agents were involved in stealing the archive from a warehouse.

PAGER WARNING
Khamenei’s invitation to Nasrallah to relocate to Iran came after thousands of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah blew up in deadly attacks on Sept 17 and 18, the first official said. The attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, although it has not officially claimed responsibility.
Nasrallah, however, was confident in his security and trusted his inner circle completely, the official said, despite Tehran’s serious concerns about potential infiltrators within Hezbollah’s ranks.
Khamenei tried a second time, relaying another message through Nilforoushan to Nasrallah last week, imploring him to leave Lebanon and relocate to Iran as a safer location. But Nasrallah insisted on staying in Lebanon, the official said.
Several high-level meetings were held in Tehran following the pager blasts to discuss Hezbollah and Nasrallah’s safety, the official said, but declined to say who attended those meetings.
Simultaneously, in Lebanon, Hezbollah began conducting a major investigation to purge Israeli spies among them, questioning hundreds of members after the pager detonations, three sources in Lebanon told Reuters.
Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a senior Hezbollah official, was leading the investigation, a Hezbollah source said. The probe was progressing rapidly, the source said, before an Israeli raid killed him a day after Nasrallah’s assassination. Another raid earlier last week had targeted other senior Hezbollah commanders, some of who were involved in the inquiry.
Kaouk had summoned for questioning Hezbollah officials involved in logistics and others “who participated, mediated and received offers on pagers and walkie-talkies,” the source said.
A “deeper and comprehensive inquiry” and purge were now needed after the killing of Nasrallah and other commanders, the source said.
Ali Al-Amin, the editor-in-chief for Janoubia, a news site based that focuses on the Shiite community and Hezbollah said reports indicated that Hezbollah detained hundreds of people for questioning after the pagers saga.
Hezbollah is reeling from Nasrallah’s killing in his deep bunker in a command HQ, shocked at how successfully Israel penetrated the group, seven sources said.
Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy research director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut with a focus on Iran and Hezbollah, described the offensive as “the biggest intelligence infiltration by Israel” since Hezbollah was founded with Iran’s backing in the 1980s.
The current Israeli escalation follows almost a year of cross-border fighting after Hezbollah began rocket attacks in support of its ally Hamas. The Palestinian group killed 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages in an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies.
In Gaza, Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

LOSS OF TRUST
The Israeli offensive and fear of more attacks on Hezbollah have also prevented the Iranian-backed group from organizing a nationwide funeral on a scale reflecting Nasrallah’s religious and leadership status, according to four sources familiar with the debate within Hezbollah.
“No one can authorize a funeral in these circumstances,” one Hezbollah source said, lamenting the situation in which officials and religious leaders could not come forward to properly honor the late leader.
Several commanders killed last week were buried discreetly on Monday, with plans for a proper religious ceremony when the conflict ends.
Hezbollah is mulling the option of securing a religious decree to bury Nasrallah temporarily and hold an official funeral when the situation permits, the four Lebanese sources said.
Hezbollah has refrained from officially appointing a successor to Nasrallah, possibly to avoid making his replacement a target for an Israeli assassination, they said.
“Appointing a new Secretary General could be dangerous if Israel assassinates him right after,” said Amin. “The group can’t risk more chaos by appointing someone only to see them killed.”


UK says its fighter jets played a part in preventing further escalation in Middle East

Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey visits Joint Forces service personnel at RAF Akrotiri near Limassol, Cyprus.
Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey visits Joint Forces service personnel at RAF Akrotiri near Limassol, Cyprus.
Updated 02 October 2024
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UK says its fighter jets played a part in preventing further escalation in Middle East

Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey visits Joint Forces service personnel at RAF Akrotiri near Limassol, Cyprus.
  • Starmer, when asked if Britain was prepared to use its military to help Israel defend itself, said on Tuesday Israel had the right to self-defense

LONDON, Oct 2 : Britain said two of its fighter jets and an air-to-air refueling tanker played a part on Tuesday in attempts to prevent further escalation in the conflict in the Middle East, but that the jets did not engage any targets.
“Two Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets and a Voyager air-to-air refueling tanker played their part in attempts in attempts to prevent further escalation in the Middle East, demonstrating the UK’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on X.
“Due to the nature of this attack, they did not engage any targets, but they played an important part in wider deterrence and efforts to prevent further escalation.”
Iran on Tuesday fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. Israel vowed a “painful response” against its enemy.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, when asked if Britain was prepared to use its military to help Israel defend itself, said on Tuesday Israel had the right to self-defense.