https://arab.news/4fpmy
KHARTOUM: Thousands of Sudanese protesters rallied in the capital on Sunday to demand an end to military rule and tribal clashes that have killed over 100 people, AFP correspondents said.
“Down with Burhan,” they chanted, referring to Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the army chief who last year led a military coup that upended a transition to civilian rule following the 2019 ouster of President Omar Bashir.
Near-weekly protests have been held since, despite a deadly crackdown that has killed at least 116 people, according to pro-democracy medics.
“The authority is the people’s,” protesters chanted, demanding soldiers return to their barracks.
Since last year’s coup, Sudan — already one of the world’s poorest countries — has been reeling from a spiraling economic crisis and a broad security breakdown which has seen a spike in ethnic clashes in its far-flung regions.
Protester Mohammed Ali said that he was demonstrating for ‘one unified nation.’
On July 11, tribal clashes over a land dispute erupted in southern Blue Nile state, leaving at least 105 people dead and 291 wounded, and sparking protests demanding justice and calls for coexistence.
Protester Mohammed Ali said on Sunday that he was demonstrating for “one unified nation.”
The military council has “turned a blind eye” to tribal violence, Ali said, “because these problems allow it to stay in power.”
Pro-democracy activists have long accused Sudan’s military and ex-rebel leaders who signed a 2020 peace deal of exacerbating ethnic tensions for political gain.
The strength of the pro-democracy movement has ebbed and flowed since the coup, most recently rocked by a surprise announcement on July 4, when Gen. Al-Burhan pledged in a televised address to step aside and make way for Sudanese factions to agree on a civilian government.
Key civilian leaders dismissed his move as a “ruse,” and pro-democracy protesters have held fast to their rallying cry that there can be “no negotiation, no partnership” with the military.
Other civilian factions have been more amenable to negotiations, seeing them as a necessary stepping stone to democratic rule.
DUBAI: Sixteen people died and nine others were injured in a massive fire that ripped through a residential building in Dubai on Saturday, the civil defense said.
In a statement released by the Government of Dubai Media Office early Sunday, a Dubai Civil Defense spokesperson said the cause of the blaze in Al Ras area of Deira was “a lack of compliance with building security and safety requirements.”
“Relevant authorities are conducting a comprehensive investigation to provide a detailed a report on the causes of the accident,” the statement added.
Firefighters rushed to the scene and evacuated the building six minutes after being notified of the fire at 12:35 p.m..
The fire, which broke out in an apartment located on the fourth floor, was put out about two hours later at 2:42 p.m. before cooling operations started.
Sending condolences to the families of the deceased, Dubai civil defense “stressed the importance of residential and commercial building owners and residents fully complying with security and safety requirements and guidelines to avoid accidents and protect people’s lives.”
Eyewitnesses reported seeing large plumes of smoke coming from the building.
A worker in a shop at the building said he heard a “loud bang,” according to Khaleej Times newspaper. A few people tried to rush into the building and rescue the tenants, but the smoke was too dense.
“Fire engines, firemen and police officers were at the spot within minutes. They brought a crane and started helping people. Their swift action helped save many lives,” an eyewitness was quoted saying in Khaleej Times.
Al Ras area is a densely populated area located in old Deira that houses long-standing markets like the Gold Souk, and the Spice Souk.
ANKARA: Ali, a 23-year-old student, lost everything in Turkiye’s earthquake.
His parents are missing and his ancient hometown, Antakya, lies in ruins.
To fight back, Ali, who like many survivors declines to give his full name, has launched a drive to ensure that more than 3 million people displaced by the February disaster can vote in next month’s general election.
The May 14 ballot promises to be perilous for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a dominant leader forced into the unusual position of apologizing for his government’s response to Turkiye’s worst disaster of modern times.
Rescuers and relief workers took days to reach some ravaged areas, creating a sense of abandonment and directing anger at officials for a death toll that has topped 50,000.
“It’s important to reflect this anger at the polls,” said Ali, who now lives in Ankara.
May 14 ballot promises to be perilous for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a dominant leader forced into the unusual position of apologizing for his government’s response to Turkiye’s worst disaster of modern times.
With friends, he launched an appeal on Twitter asking political parties to pay the bus tickets of students who had to leave Antakya but want to return to cast their votes.
The main opposition CHP party has pledged its support.
People who sought shelter in cities such as Ankara, Istanbul and Mersin on Turkiye’s southern coast had until April 2 to register their new voting address.
Those who missed out have to return to their ruined cities to cast ballots. Erdogan’s opponents view the early deadline as a covert government effort to suppress the protest vote.
“People lost loved ones and everything that was precious to them. Most were in no condition to take care of their election registration,” said Ali Oztunc, a CHP deputy representing Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude quake.
Only 50,000 of the 820,000 registered voters in Kahramanmaras were able to change their registration, according to Oztunc, who estimates that half of the province’s residents have left.
That means hundreds of thousands will have to somehow find their way back to take part in what is widely seen as Turkiye’s most important election in its post-Ottoman history.
“It is impossible to transport so many people,” said Oztunc.
“It would take thousands of buses and that would create a giant traffic jam. No party can organize that.”
The CHP’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is the opposition’s joint candidate in the knife-edge vote.
The party’s vice president, Onursal Adiguzel, openly accuses officials of trying to tamp down turnout among the displaced.
“The authorities could have extended the deadline to assist with the registration,” Adiguzel said.
“But they are afraid of the victims,” he said. “They are doing everything to hinder the vote.”
Forced to leave Kahramanmaras, father-of-two Abdullah said he was actively discouraged by civil servants from changing his registration address.
“I was told that I would lose my rights to public aid for earthquake victims,” Abdullah said at his temporary home in Ankara.
“So I kept my address in Kahramanmaras. But I don’t know how I’ll be able to go there and vote.”
At a shelter in the suburbs of Ankara, only 120 of the 525 displaced families had taken the necessary steps to change their legal address.
Eymen Gassaloglu, 34, who lives at the shelter with her two daughters, was determined to return to Antakya on election day — even if it meant sleeping in a tent.
“It’s about my future,” said Gassaloglu. “I’ll vote no matter what.”
Some said returning to the province would also give them a chance to monitor voting and report any irregularities.
Erdogan’s critics fear that voting lists will include people who went missing but not officially declared dead, creating room for manipulation by election officials.
“The authorities do not openly disclose the number of missing people. This is a concern,” Adiguzel, the CHP vice president, said.
Ozgur Yusuf Kavukcu, 45, managed to register to vote in Ankara. But most of his friends will have to return to Antakya, a ghost town where just a tiny fraction of the buildings has survived unscathed.
“I think free elections are impossible under such conditions,” Kavukcu said.
“But there is no other choice. We have already lost a lot with the earthquake. Losing the expression of our free will would be another disaster.”
WASHINGTON, ALGEIRS: Twenty-three US troops in Syria suffered traumatic brain injuries during two attacks in March by Iran-backed militants, the US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, has said.
“We have identified 11 additional cases of mild Traumatic Brain Injury from the March 23rd and 24th attacks in eastern Syria,” it said in a statement. “Twenty-three of those wounded and assessed as mTBI cases. Our medical teams continue to assess and evaluate our troops for indications of mTBI.”
Twenty-five US troops were wounded as a result of the strikes and counter-strikes in Syria, which also killed an American contractor and injured another.
The Pentagon estimated eight militants were killed during retaliatory US air strikes against two Iran-linked facilities in Syria.
It is not the first time US troops in the region have been diagnosed with brain injuries from attacks.
In 2020, more than 100 US troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries stemming from a missile attack by Iran against a base in Iraq.
Separately, a US citizen who says he was tortured in Syrian custody has filed a lawsuit against President Bashar Assad’s government in Washington, seeking accountability at a time that Damascus is reconciling in the region.
Obada Mzaik, who was born in Ohio and also holds Syrian citizenship, said he was hoping to see family when he was detained on arrival at the Damascus airport in January 2012, nearly a year into the brutal civil war.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, Mzaik said he was taken to a basement cell that held around 10 other people, including a 13-year-old boy who said he had been tortured for more than 80 days.
Mzaik, who had been a student in Syria when protests broke out against Assad, was “brutally and systematically beaten, whipped and threatened with electrocution,” the lawsuit said.
“He was held in inhumane detention conditions and forced to witness other detainees being tortured, including one of his relatives,” it said.
Mzaik alleged that interrogators from the Air Force Intelligence Directorate “inflicted severe physical and mental pain” as they sought information on his friends, contacts and interactions with the US government and to “punish him for perceived anti-regime activities.”
He was released within a month after his family paid bribes through an intermediary, the lawsuit said. He was then treated by doctors for more than a month before he headed to Jordan and then the United States, it said.
Mzaik is seeking unspecified payment as damages from the Syrian government under a US law that says that foreign governments designated as state sponsors of terrorism are exempt from immunity.
The lawsuit was filed in January but unsealed this week. The court documents showed that the Czech Embassy in Damascus, which represents US interests in the country, formally informed the government of the lawsuit.
While it remains highly unlikely that Assad would pay any damages awarded in a court case, the United States has previously seized and allocated Iranian funds as damages, drawing legal challenges from Tehran’s clerical state.
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad will visit Algeria, Algerian state radio reported late on Friday.
The Algerian foreign minister, Ahmed Ataf, will receive the visiting minister, state radio said.
It is expected that Mekdad will also visit Tunis early next week.
Syria and Tunisia agreed on Wednesday to reopen their respective embassies.
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, rose from lowly beginnings to head a widely feared Arab militia that crushed a revolt in Darfur, winning him influence and eventually a role as the country’s second most powerful man, and one of its richest.
On Saturday, fighting erupted between his Rapid Support Forces, which were militias in Darfur before they became a paramilitary force, and the military.
Hemedti has played a prominent role in his country’s turbulent politics for 10 years, helping topple his one-time benefactor President Omar Bashir in 2019 and later quashing protests by Sudanese seeking democracy.
As deputy head of state, Hemedti, a former camel trader with little formal education, has taken on some of Sudan’s most important portfolios in the post-Bashir era, including the crumbling economy and peace negotiations with rebel groups.
Sudan’s army warned this week of a risk of confrontation after mobilizations by Hemedti’s paramilitary group, underlining growing friction between the rival forces.
Much of his power is derived from his RSF paramilitary — menacing young men armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns mounted on trucks — who mastered desert warfare in the Darfur region but lack the discipline of the regular army.
Hemedti first took up arms in the western Darfur region after men who attacked his trade convoy killed about 60 people from his family and looted camels, according to Muhammad Saad, a former assistant to Hemedti. Conflict had spread in Darfur from 2003 after mostly non-Arab rebels rose up against Khartoum.
A tall imposing figure, Hemedti went on to form a pro-government militia from nomadic Arab tribesmen, locally known as janjaweed, which he later transformed into the more diverse RSF.
The International Criminal Court charged Bashir and other top officials with genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, which began in 2003 and where as many as 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were displaced. No charges were brought against Hemedti.
When Bashir wanted protection from rivals during his 30-year rule, he chose Hemedti as his enforcer, insiders said. Impressed by Hemedti’s cunning and fighting skills, Bashir leaned on him to deal with enemies of the state in the Darfur conflict and elsewhere in Sudan.
Hemedti’s militia was legitimized. He won the rank of lieutenant-general and had free rein to seize gold mines in Darfur and sell Sudan’s most valuable resource. As Sudan limped from one economic crisis to another, Hemedti became wealthy.
“I’m not the first man to have gold mines. It’s true, we have gold mines and there’s nothing preventing us from working in gold,” Hemedti said in a BBC interview.
After years of supporting Bashir, Hemedti took part in the ousting in 2019 of his longtime ally, who had faced pressure from mass protests calling for democracy and an end to economic woes.
Under a civilian-military partnership set up after Bashir’s removal, Hemedti wasted no time in trying to shape the future of Sudan, which has been ruled for most of its post-colonial history by military leaders who seized power in takeovers. He spoke in public about the need for “real democracy,” met Western ambassadors and held talks with rebel groups.
“Hemedti planned on becoming the No. 1 man in Sudan. He has unlimited ambition,” said an opposition figure who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.
Hemedti showed little tolerance for dissent. The RSF launched a bloody crackdown on a protest camp in 2019 outside the Ministry of Defense after Bashir’s ousting, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed. Hemedti denied ordering the assault.
The military in October 2021 seized power and declared a state of emergency, ending the civilian-military power-sharing deal in a move decried by political groups as a military coup.
In a video statement, Hemedti said that the army seized power to “correct the course of the people’s revolution” and achieve stability.
Hemedti has said the military is prepared to hand over power in case of an agreement or elections. Many Sudanese were not convinced.
But divisions between Hemedti’s RSF and the army have complicated efforts to restore civilian rule.
“I have long believed that he (Hemedti) is an existential threat not only to Sudan’s democratic transition but to its very viability as a state,” said Ahmed T. El-Gaili a Sudanese lawyer.
TEHRAN: Police in Iran said on Saturday they have implemented a plan to deal with women who violate the country’s dress code.
The number of women defying the dress code that headscarves must be worn in public has increased since a protest movement triggered by the death in custody last year of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, for allegedly flouting it.
A statement on the police website on Saturday said action would be taken “from today” over violations in public places, in cars and other “sites where hijab is sometimes removed.”
“In this context, technology will be used for the smart identification of people who break the law,” it said.
“Removing hijab is considered a crime, and the police deal with social anomalies within the framework of the law,” the statement quoted Security Police chief Hassan Mofakhami as saying.
“People who break the law are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable for their behavior,” he added.
A wave of civil protest swept the Islamic republic after Amini’s death last Sept. 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police.
Thousands of people were arrested, hundreds killed — including members of the security forces — and four people executed because of the civil unrest following Amini’s death, with Iran labelling the protests as foreign-instigated “riots.”
Mofakhami also warned that businesses whose employees removed their headscarves in the workplace faced closure.
He said in such cases a warning would be issued, but “if the warning is repeated, the closure of the business will be on the agenda.”
Last week, police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said those who remove their headscarves would be identified using smart equipment.
“People who remove their hijab in public places will be warned first and presented to the courts as a next step,” he said.
Car owners would also receive a warning text if any passengers violated the dress code, and their vehicles would be seized if the offense was repeated.
In late March, the head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, said “removing hijab amounts to enmity toward values and people who commit such abnormality will be punished.”