‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum
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Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali holds his wedding picture as he searches through documents at his home in Khartoum North’s Bahri neighborhood on Mar. 17, 2025, as he returns to visit for the first time since being displaced nearly two years ago. (AFP)
‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum
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AFP journalist Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali walks around his home in Khartoum North’s Bahri neighborhood on Mar. 17, 2025, as he returns to visit for the first time since being displaced nearly two years ago. (AFP)
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Updated 18 April 2025
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‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum

‘War has taken everything’: AFP reporter returns home to Khartoum
  • Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape
  • Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves

KHARTOUM: It had been nearly two years since AFP journalist Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali set foot in his home in war-torn Khartoum, after the sound of children playing in the street gave way to the fearsome fire of machine guns.
Sudan’s once-peaceful capital awoke to the sound of bombs and gunfire on April 15, 2023 as war broke out between its two most powerful generals — army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Bombs tore through homes, fighters took over the streets and hundreds of thousands scrambled to escape — among them Abdelmoneim, his wife, his son and three daughters.
Since then they have been displaced five times — fleeing each time the front line closed in.
Eventually the 59-year-old journalist sent his family to safety in another African country while he settled down to work alone from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Then last month he was able to briefly return to his home in Khartoum North during a reporting trip escorted by the army after it recaptured the city.
He found his beloved neighborhood, known as Bahri, abandoned.
“The whole place is cloaked in silence, no grocery store chit-chats, no boisterous games of football on the corner, nothing,” he said.
“The last time I was here, the neighbors were all in the street saying goodbye, praying for each other’s safety, promising we would meet again soon.”
Now their doors hung ajar, beds dragged out onto the street, apparently by RSF fighters who used them to sleep in the open air.
Since the war broke out, the paramilitaries have been notorious for taking over and looting homes, selling the contents or taking it for themselves.
When he got to his landing, Abdelmoneim braced himself for what he would find inside.
“It was like an earthquake had hit. The furniture was upside-down and thrown around, pieces shattered on the ground,” he said.
He clambered slowly from room to room, taking in the damage.
The couch was pocked with burn marks where the fighters had put out cigarette after cigarette.
His daughters’ closets were ripped open and emptied of every last dress.
And on the floor of his office, lying among the tattered remains of his library, was a photo of his wedding to his wife Nahla, with her image torn out.
“I don’t get what they have against my books and my wedding photos,” he said.
“I knew they had stolen furniture. I couldn’t imagine they would destroy everything else.”
In March, the army recaptured Khartoum, to the joy of millions of displaced Sudanese anxious to return to their homes.
“But my girls say they never want to come back,” Abdelmoneim said.
“How can they ever forget sleeping huddled together in the living room, terrified by the sound of every air strike?“
Abdelmoneim shudders at the thought of the horrors they have seen since.
“When we were leaving Khartoum, there were bodies lying in the street and an old man standing over them, trying to keep a plastic sheet in place.
“When I stopped to ask him if he was okay, he said, ‘I’m trying to keep the dogs away.’ I wish my kids had never heard that.”
For seven months, Abdelmoneim tried to wait out the fighting in Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, hoping against hope they could go home.
“The moment I realized this wouldn’t end for years was when the war came to Wad Madani,” he said.
Again they took everything they could carry, and again they joined a wave of hundreds of thousands of people running away, this time on foot, heading east.
The veteran journalist and his wife made the painful choice to separate the family — she and the children would go to another country; and he would go to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, home to the United Nations, the army-aligned government and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Abdelmoneim, like countless Sudanese caught in the war’s crossfire, has lost family members, his life savings and any hope for the future.
“This war has taken everything from us,” he said.
“And everything they haven’t taken, they’ve destroyed.”
For years he had been building up a tiny homestead on the outskirts of Khartoum, lined with fruit trees and a few simple crops he could tend when he retired. The RSF destroyed it in their rampage.
His family’s home and land, in the agricultural state of Al-Jazira, were looted and cut off from power and water — his relatives left starving and powerless to defend themselves against the RSF’s predations.
Now both Al-Jazira and Khartoum are under army control but the war, and the suffering it has wrought, is far from over.
Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 12 million uprooted, including almost four million who fled to other countries.
Hundreds of thousands are returning to areas recaptured by the army, choosing destitution at home over displacement, but most of these areas still lack clean water, electricity and health care.
Famine still stalks Sudan, with around 638,000 people already in famine and eight million on the brink of mass starvation.
The country remains divided, and the RSF — in control of nearly all of the western region of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south — has not given up the fight.
In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have killed hundreds of people in famine-stricken displacement camps, while RSF chief Dagalo has announced a rival administration to rule over the ashes.
For many like Abdelmoneim, even their modest dreams now seem impossible.
“If this war ends tomorrow, all I want is to be somewhere quiet and safe with my family, farming in peace.”


Gaza rescuers say 44 killed in new Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 44 killed in new Israeli strikes
Updated 51 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say 44 killed in new Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 44 killed in new Israeli strikes
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 44 people across the war-ravaged Palestinian territory on Tuesday.
“Civil defense teams have transferred (to hospitals) at least 44 dead, mostly children and women, as well as dozens of wounded, following new massacres committed by the occupation” across Gaza since 1:00 am (2200 GMT Monday), agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Bassal said eight were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City and 12 in a strike on a house in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
Another 15 were killed in a strike on a gas station near the Nuseirat refugee camp and nine in a strike on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp.
There was no immediate comment on the strikes from the Israeli military.
Israel stepped up its military offensive in Gaza on Saturday, saying it was aimed at “the defeat of Hamas” — the Islamist group that runs the Palestinian territory.
It launched what it called “extensive ground operations” across Gaza the following day.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
Gaza’s health ministry said Monday at least 3,340 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,486.

At least 58 corpses found in Libyan hospital, ministry says

At least 58 corpses found in Libyan hospital, ministry says
Updated 20 May 2025
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At least 58 corpses found in Libyan hospital, ministry says

At least 58 corpses found in Libyan hospital, ministry says
  • The corpses found on Monday are the second set of unidentified remains discovered in recent days

TRIPOLI: At least 58 unidentified corpses were found on Monday in a hospital in Tripoli that was under the control of a militia whose leader was killed last week, the interior ministry said.
The corpses were found in a morgue refrigerator in Abu Salim Accidents Hospital in the densely populated Abu Salim neighborhood, following a report from the hospital, the ministry said in a statement.
Pictures of corpses with numbers and censored faces were posted by the ministry, showing remains in various states of decomposition on steel carriers and beds. Some of the remains were burnt. An investigation was underway to establish the identities of the deceased.
“So far, 23 corpses have been examined, and all necessary legal procedures have been taken, including documenting data and collecting samples,” the ministry said.
Abu Salim was home to a militia known as the Stabilization Support Apparatus, whose chief, Abdulghani Kikli, widely known as Ghaniwa, was killed in unconfirmed circumstances last Monday.
Kikli’s killing led to the sudden defeat of the SSA by factions aligned to internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah of the Government of National Unity (GNU).
On Tuesday, Dbeibah ordered armed groups to be dismantled, triggering the fiercest clashes Tripoli had seen in years between two armed groups. The clashes killed at least eight civilians, according to the United Nations.
The corpses found on Monday are the second set of unidentified remains discovered in recent days. On Saturday, officials said nine corpses had been found in a morgue refrigerator in Al-Khadra hospital, another SSA-controlled hospital in the Abu Salim neighborhood.
The militia had not reported the corpses to the relevant authorities, the interior ministry said.
Dbeibah said on Saturday that eliminating militias was an “ongoing project,” as a ceasefire after last week’s clashes remained in place.
The GNU posted a video on Monday showing bulldozers demolishing the so-called 77 camp, one of the biggest facilities that was under control of SSA. The camp is to be turned into a national park.
Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi. The country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.


Netanyahu says UK-French-Canada condemnation gives ‘huge prize’ to Hamas

Netanyahu says UK-French-Canada condemnation gives ‘huge prize’ to Hamas
Updated 20 May 2025
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Netanyahu says UK-French-Canada condemnation gives ‘huge prize’ to Hamas

Netanyahu says UK-French-Canada condemnation gives ‘huge prize’ to Hamas

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday hit back at condemnation of his country’s military offensive in Gaza by the leaders of France, Canada and Britain saying they had given a “huge prize” to Hamas.
“By asking Israel to end a defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottawa and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities,” Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the October 2023 attack that set off the Gaza war.


Palestinian hospital chief calls for pressure on Israel

Palestinian hospital chief calls for pressure on Israel
Updated 20 May 2025
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Palestinian hospital chief calls for pressure on Israel

Palestinian hospital chief calls for pressure on Israel

HELSINKI: An East Jerusalem hospital chief told AFP on Monday that Gaza was in a “catastrophic” state after weeks of a complete blockade of humanitarian aid and called on countries to act to end the suffering of civilians.
Fadi Atrash, chief executive of the Augusta Victoria-Hospital in East Jerusalem — which helps Palestinians from the occupied territories and Gaza — said he could no longer “find the words” to describe the crisis faced by people in war-torn Gaza.
“We are facing a very, very critical and catastrophic situation,” he said, with all components of the health care system destroyed, and health care workers “running out of energy.”
Augusta Victoria, which had a hospital in Gaza that has been destroyed in Israeli bombings now provides health care in Gaza with the limited resources available, Atrash said.
Atrash visited Finland — which has not recognized Palestine as a state — on Monday as part of a tour of the Nordic countries.
“My main message for the Nordic countries is to put pressure to stop the war, to stop the killing.”
Humanitarian food, medical and fuel supplies have been blocked from entering Gaza for 11 weeks, and the World Health Organization has warned that two million people face starvation.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb joined other European leaders on Monday to call on Israel to guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Stubb also said “forced displacement of populations is a war crime and cannot form part of any solution,” in a post on X.
Israel this month approved an expanded military offensive in Gaza but has agreed to let limited aid into Gaza.


Gaza civil defense says 91 killed in Israeli strikes Monday

Gaza civil defense says 91 killed in Israeli strikes Monday
Updated 20 May 2025
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Gaza civil defense says 91 killed in Israeli strikes Monday

Gaza civil defense says 91 killed in Israeli strikes Monday

GAZA CITY: A Gaza civil defense official said that 91 people were killed in strikes and attacks throughout Monday as Israel steps up an offensive in the Palestinian territory.
The deaths had been recorded since the early hours of Monday, according to Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, an official in the civil defense agency of the Hamas-run territory. The department had earlier given a toll of 52 dead.