Bashir Discusses with Russia Setting up Military Base on Red Sea

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir in Sochi on November 23, 2017. PHOTO | SPUTNIK | MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV | AFP
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir in Sochi on November 23, 2017. PHOTO | SPUTNIK | MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV | AFP
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Bashir Discusses with Russia Setting up Military Base on Red Sea

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir in Sochi on November 23, 2017. PHOTO | SPUTNIK | MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV | AFP
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir in Sochi on November 23, 2017. PHOTO | SPUTNIK | MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV | AFP

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said he had discussed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin setting up a military base on the Red Sea, adding that he had asked for providing Sudan with Russian defensive weapons to upgrade the army.

“We are not willing to attack any country, but want to protect ours,” Bashir said. “I discussed with the Russian president and minister of defense the possibility of setting up a military base on the Red Sea,” he added.

Bashir expressed content over the visit’s outcome, which started on Thursday in response to Putin's invitation that is the first of its kind. He also stated that a breakthrough was made in Russian-Sudanese ties in various fields: politics, economy, trade, culture and specially military.

He leaked information about US intentions to divide Sudan into five states, in case protection wasn't provided, complaining over “huge pressure and a US conspiracy” against Sudan.

During his talks with Putin on Thursday in Sochi, the Sudanese president stated that the separation of south Sudan in 2011 resulted from the US policy. He called on Putin to tackle the US intervention in the Red Sea from the standpoint of setting up a Russian military base in the region.

In other cooperation fields, Sudanese president affirmed signing an agreement with the Russian side on the use of nuclear energy to produce electrical energy.

In a first reaction over the Sudanese-Russian talks on possibility of setting up a military base on Red Sea, Frants Klintsevich, First Deputy Chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of Russia's Federation Council, said that there are no reasons for Russia to reject this.

Yet, he pointed that such decision is taken by the Russian president who is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".