UN Security Council Fails to Agree on Israel-Hamas War

FILED - 21 September 2023, US, New York: A general view of the UN Security Council session dealing with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The UN Security Council is due on Monday to take up the war in Gaza once again. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa
FILED - 21 September 2023, US, New York: A general view of the UN Security Council session dealing with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The UN Security Council is due on Monday to take up the war in Gaza once again. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa
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UN Security Council Fails to Agree on Israel-Hamas War

FILED - 21 September 2023, US, New York: A general view of the UN Security Council session dealing with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The UN Security Council is due on Monday to take up the war in Gaza once again. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa
FILED - 21 September 2023, US, New York: A general view of the UN Security Council session dealing with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The UN Security Council is due on Monday to take up the war in Gaza once again. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa

The UN Security Council on Monday failed again to agree on a resolution on the monthlong Israel-Hamas war.
Despite more than two hours of closed-door discussions Monday, differences remained. The US is calling for “humanitarian pauses” while many other council members are demanding a “humanitarian cease-fire” to deliver desperately needed aid and prevent more civilian deaths in Gaza.
“We talked about humanitarian pauses and we’re interested in pursuing language on that score,” US deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters after the meeting. “But there are disagreements within the council about whether that’s acceptable.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier Monday told reporters he wanted an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza and a halt to the “spiral of escalation” already taking place from the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen.
Guterres said international humanitarian law, which demands protection of civilians and infrastructure essential for their lives, is clearly being violated and stressed that “no party to an armed conflict is above” these laws. He called for the immediate unconditional release of the hostages Hamas took from Israel to Gaza in its Oct. 7 attack.
China, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, and the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, called Monday’s meeting because of the “crisis of humanity” in Gaza, where more than 10,000 people have been killed in less than a month.
UAE Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh said all 15 council members “are fully engaged” and efforts will continue to try to narrow the gaps and reach agreement on a resolution.



Fighting in Sudan's Civil War Sets Ablaze the Country's Largest Oil Refinery

This Planet Labs PBC Satellite image shows a fire engulfing Sudan's largest oil refinery north of Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This Planet Labs PBC Satellite image shows a fire engulfing Sudan's largest oil refinery north of Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
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Fighting in Sudan's Civil War Sets Ablaze the Country's Largest Oil Refinery

This Planet Labs PBC Satellite image shows a fire engulfing Sudan's largest oil refinery north of Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This Planet Labs PBC Satellite image shows a fire engulfing Sudan's largest oil refinery north of Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

Fighting around Sudan 's largest oil refinery set the sprawling complex ablaze, satellite data analyzed by The Associated Press on Saturday shows, sending thick, black polluted smoke over the country's capital.
The attacks around the refinery, owned by Sudan's government and the state-run China National Petroleum Corp., represent the latest woe in a civil war between the rebel Rapid Support Force and Sudan's military, who blamed each other for the blaze.
International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide, have not halted the fighting.
The al-Jaili refinery sits some 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Khartoum, the capital. The refinery has been subject to previous attacks as the RSF has claimed control of the facility since April 2023, as their forces had been guarding it. Local Sudanese media report the RSF also surrounded the refinery with fields of landmines to slow any advance.
But the facility, capable of handling 100,000 barrels of oil a day, remained broadly intact until Thursday.
An attack on Thursday at the oil field set fires across the complex, according to satellite data from NASA satellites that track wildfires worldwide.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs PBC on Friday for the AP showed vast areas of the refinery ablaze. The images, shot just after 1200 GMT, showed flames shooting up into the sky in several spots. Oil tanks at the facility stood burned, covered in soot.
Thick plumes of black smoke towered over the site, carried south toward Khartoum by the wind. Exposure to that smoke can exacerbate respiratory problems and raise cancer risks.
In a statement released Thursday, the Sudanese military alleged the RSF was responsible for the fire at the refinery.
The RSF “deliberately set fire to the Khartoum refinery in al-Jaili this morning in a desperate attempt to destroy the infrastructures of this country," the statement read.
“This hateful behavior reveals the extent of the criminality and decadence of this militia ... (and) increases our determination to pursue it everywhere until we liberate every inch from their filth.”
The RSF for its part alleged Thursday night that Sudanese military aircraft dropped “barrel bombs” on the facility, “completely destroying it.” The RSF has claimed the Sudanese military uses old commercial cargo aircraft to drop barrel bombs, such as one that crashed under mysterious circumstances in October.
Neither the Sudanese military nor the RSF offered evidence to support their dueling allegations.
China, Sudan’s largest trading partner before the war, has not acknowledged the blaze at the refinery. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
China moved into Sudan’s oil industry after Chevron Corp. left in 1992 amid violence targeting oil workers in another civil war. South Sudan broke away to become its own country in 2011, taking 75% of what had been Sudan’s oil reserves with it.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres “is following with great concern the recent escalation of fighting in Sudan” a statement from his office Friday said, specifically mentioning the oil refinery attack.
“The secretary-general urges the parties to refrain from all actions that could have dangerous consequences for Sudan and the region, including serious economic and environmental implications,” the statement said.
Sudan has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. A short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the RSF joined forces to lead a military coup in October 2021.
Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in the western Darfur region with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the UN say the RSF and allied militias are again attacking ethnic African groups in this war.
The RSF and Sudan’s military began fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.
Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll in the civil war.