Clashes Escalate in Sudan’s North Darfur

Rapid Support Forces members. (AP)
Rapid Support Forces members. (AP)
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Clashes Escalate in Sudan’s North Darfur

Rapid Support Forces members. (AP)
Rapid Support Forces members. (AP)

Clashes renewed on Monday between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in several locations in North Darfur, while each side claimed to have inflicted the other with heavy losses in lives and military equipment.

Eyewitnesses said fierce ground clashes took place early in the morning in the vicinity of El Fasher, and around the Zarq and Um Baar areas, which are controlled by the RSF.

Meanwhile, residents fear counter-attacks following threats launched by several RSF leaders, who vowed to strongly respond to the killing of Ali Yagoub Gibril, one of their senior commanders during a battle in the besieged north Darfur city of El Fasher last Friday.

Social media accounts affiliated with the RSF posted videos showing violent clashes that took place Monday in the Um Baar area.

The video also showed destroyed military and armored vehicles of the army and the armed movements backing it.

Since the outbreak of fighting in Sudan, the RSF has pushed large numbers of its forces to capture the town of El Fasher. The city is the army's last stronghold in the western Darfur region.

On Sunday, RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti, blamed the escalation in El Fasher on armed factions “that have abandoned neutrality and chosen to side with their slaughterer.”

A resident of El Fasher said the Eid Al-Adha celebrations were completely absent, and that many residents did not leave their homes to perform religious rituals for fear of bombs targeting residential neighborhoods.



Israeli Bombardment Kills 29 People in Gaza, Rockets Fired into Israel

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
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Israeli Bombardment Kills 29 People in Gaza, Rockets Fired into Israel

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from fighters in the Palestinian enclave.

The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led armed factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.

On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.

"Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them," it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas' cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.

In Gaza City in north Gaza, Palestinian health officials said one Israeli aerial strike on a house killed at least seven people. Four people including two women and a baby were killed in the bombing of a home in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The rest were killed in airstrikes on several areas across the densely populated coastal enclave. Residents said Israeli forces operating in Gaza City's Zeitoun suburb and in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt, blew up clusters of homes.

Israel's military says Hamas combatants use crowded, built-up residential neighborhoods as cover. Hamas denies this.

Israel media, reporting on the rocket fire, said one rocket was intercepted by air defense and another crashed in an open area. There were no reports of casualties or notable damage.

Palestinians in Gaza will mark the first anniversary of the war next week with little hope of an end to the fighting in the foreseeable future, even as Israel pursues a new ground incursion into Lebanon against Hamas' major Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel almost a year ago in support of Hamas after the Palestinian movement staged the deadliest assault in Israel's history on Oct. 7, 2023.

The attack, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage, ignited the war that has devastated Gaza, displacing most of its 2.3 million population and killing over 41,800 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

International diplomacy led by the United States has so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Hamas wants an agreement that ends the war while Israel says fighting can only end when Hamas is eradicated.