Ethiopia has inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa’s largest hydro power project. Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith says the dam is a source of national pride but remains contentious among downstream nations including Egypt and Sudan.
Published On 9 Sep 20259 Sep 2025
Ethiopia celebrates Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam as Egypt and Sudan express fears over water security.
Published On 9 Sep 20259 Sep 2025
Ethiopia has inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, as the $5bn project continues to sow dismay with downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has hailed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a “shared opportunity” for the region that is expected to generate more than 5,000 megaWatts of power and allow surplus electricity to be exported.
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A handful of regional leaders, including Kenya’s President William Ruto and Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, attended the festivities in person on Tuesday, which kicked off the night before with lantern displays and drones writing slogans such as “geopolitical rise” and “a leap into the future”.
But Sudan and Egypt – who rely heavily on the Nile for water supplies – have expressed fears that the dam will threaten their water security and even breach international law. Their leaders did not attend the inauguration of the dam.
The Blue Nile, one of the Nile’s two main tributaries, flows north into Sudan and then Egypt. The dam is located just 14km (9 miles) east of the Sudanese border, measuring 1.8km (1.1 miles) wide and 145 metres (0.1 mile) tall.
“I understand their worries, because of course, if you look at Egypt from the sky, you see that the street of life is existent” thanks to the Nile, Pietro Salini, the CEO of Italian company Webuild that constructed the dam, told Al Jazeera. But “regulating the water from this dam will create an additional benefit” to neighbours, he added.
GERD has spawned regional tension since it was launched in 2011, with years of cooperation talks between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt still stalled.
Last week, Sudan and Egypt released a joint statement calling Ethiopia’s actions “unilateral” and saying the dam posed a “continuous threat to stability”.
Sudan’s Roseires Dam, located about 110km (70 miles) downstream of GERD, faces potential future effects if Ethiopia were to perform large water releases without coordination, reports Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall.
“Roseires is the closest, it’s 60 years older, and when constructed was 25 times smaller – and will likely bear the brunt of the fallout if anything goes wrong at the Ethiopian dam,” Vall said.
But GERD may also provide benefits such as regulating the annual flow of the river and reducing potential flooding in villages on the banks of the Nile.
Abdullah Abderrahman, Roseires Dam administration manager, told Al Jazeera that GERD has helped to control overflow at Roseires that “used to be extremely big”.
“Then there is the reduction of the huge amounts of silt and trees that the rainy season used to bring into Roseires, causing its storage capacity to shrink by a third,” Abderrahman added.
Dessalegn Chanie Dagnew, associate professor of water resources at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia and a member of the Ethiopian parliament, told Al Jazeera the dam’s benefits could eventually reach beyond assuaging flooding and silt.
Rather than creating tension, he said, GERD “will also serve as a project that can really bring about regional integration and cooperation”.
JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan said Saturday it repatriated to Mexico a man deported from the United States in July.
The man, a Mexican identified as Jesus Munoz-Gutierrez, was among a group of eight who have been in government custody in the East African country since their deportation from the U.S.
Another deportee, a South Sudanese national, has since been freed while six others remain in custody.
South Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said it carried out Munoz-Gutierrez’s repatriation to Mexico in concert with the Mexican Embassy in neighboring Ethiopia.
The move was carried out “in full accordance with relevant international law, bilateral agreements, and established diplomatic protocols,” the ministry said in a statement.
In comments to journalists in Juba, the South Sudan capital, Munoz-Gutierrez said he “felt kidnapped” when the U.S. sent him to South Sudan.
“I was not planning to come to South Sudan, but while I was here they treated me well,” he said. “I finished my time in the United States, and they were supposed to return me to Mexico. Instead, they wrongfully sent me to South Sudan.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said that Munoz-Gutierrez had a conviction for second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
South Sudan is engaging other countries about repatriating the six deportees still in custody, said Apuk Ayuel Mayen, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
It is not clear whether the deportees have access to legal representation.
Rights groups have argued that the Trump administration’s increasing practice of deporting migrants to third countries violates international law and the basic rights of migrants.
The deportations have been blocked or limited by U.S. federal courts, though the Supreme Court in June allowed the government to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands.
Other African nations receiving deportees from the U.S. include Uganda, Eswatini and Rwanda. Eswatini received five men with criminal backgrounds in July, and the Trump administration wants to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador earlier this year, to the southern African kingdom. Rwanda announced the arrival of a group of seven deportees in mid-August.
Machol writes for the Associated Press.
Much of the affected region has become mostly inaccessible to the UN and aid groups, with Doctors Without Borders describing the area as a ‘black hole’ in Sudan’s humanitarian response.
Published On 3 Sep 20253 Sep 2025
Sudan has appealed for international aid after a landslide destroyed an entire village in the western Darfur region, killing more than 1,000 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent history in the country beset by a brutal civil war.
The village of Tarasin was “completely levelled to the ground,” the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the rebel group that controls the area, said as it appealed to the United Nations and international aid groups for help to recover the bodies on Tuesday.
The tragedy happened on Sunday in the village, located in Central Darfur’s Marrah Mountains, after days of heavy rainfall.
“Initial information indicates the death of all village residents, estimated to be more than 1,000 people,” the rebel group said in a statement. “Only one person survived,” it added.
The ruling Sovereign Council in Khartoum said it mourned “the death of hundreds of innocent residents” in the Marrah Mountains landslide. In a statement, it said “all possible capabilities” have been mobilised to support the area.
Luca Renda, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said he was “deeply saddened” by the reported landslide, adding that the UN and its partners were mobilising to support affected communities at the scene.
A local emergency network, which has been providing support to communities across Sudan during the war, said its teams recovered the bodies of at least nine people on Tuesday. Search teams were facing challenges to reach the area because of bad weather and a lack of resources, it added.
Mohamed Abdel-Rahman al-Nair, a SLM/A spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency that the village where the landslide took place is remote and accessible only by foot or donkeys.
Tarasin is located in the central Marrah Mountains, a volcanic area with a height of more than 3,000 metres (9,840 feet) at its summit. A World Heritage Site, the mountain chain is known for its lower temperatures and higher rainfall than surrounding areas, according to UNICEF. It is located more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) west of the capital, Khartoum.
Sunday’s landslide was one of the deadliest natural disasters in Sudan’s recent history. Hundreds of people die every year in seasonal rains that run from July to October. Last year’s heavy rainfall caused the collapse of a dam in the eastern Red Sea State, killing at least 30 people, according to the UN.
News of the disaster came as Sudan’s continuing war – now in its third year – plunges the country further into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine already declared in parts of Darfur.
People fleeing clashes between the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Darfur state had sought shelter in the Marra Mountains, and food and medication were in short supply, the Reuters news agency reported.
Much of the region has become mostly inaccessible for the UN and aid groups, with Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) describing the area as a “black hole” in Sudan’s humanitarian response.
The International Organization for Migration on Tuesday called for safe access and the scaling-up of support to the area.
Factions of the SLM/A have pledged to fight alongside the SAF against the RSF.
Fighting has escalated in Darfur, especially in el-Fasher, since the army took control of Khartoum from the RSF in March.
El-Fasher has been under RSF siege for more than a year, as the paramilitary force is seeking to capture the strategic city, the last major population centre held by the army in the Darfur region.
The paramilitaries, who lost much of central Sudan, including Khartoum, earlier this year, are attempting to consolidate power in the west and establish a rival government.
Sudan’s civil war saw a number of developments on the battlefield as well as in diplomacy and the humanitarian crisis.
Published On 31 Aug 202531 Aug 2025
Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary has produced the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.
Estimates suggested tens of thousands of people have died from combat and thousands more have perished from disease and hunger brought on by the war, now well into its third year.
There have been many significant military and political developments this month. Here are the key updates:
The attack is the second in the past three months to prevent a UN aid convoy from delivering to North Dafur.
A drone attack has hit a convoy of 16 trucks carrying desperately needed food to Sudan‘s famine-hit North Darfur region, the United Nations said, as warring parties trade blame for the attack.
UN spokesperson Daniela Gross told reporters on Thursday that all drivers and personnel travelling with the World Food Programme (WFP) convoy were safe.
At least three of the trucks caught fire, according to a WFP statement quoted by the Reuters news agency. Gross said all trucks had caught fire, according to The Associated Press news agency.
It was not yet clear who was responsible for Wednesday’s attack, the second in the past three months to prevent a UN convoy from delivering to North Darfur.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) accused the Sudanese army of hitting the convoys as part of a drone attack on Mellit market and other areas. The army later said in a statement that this was a fabrication to distract from what it termed the RSF’s crimes.
In early June, a convoy from the WFP and the UN agency for children, UNICEF, was attacked while awaiting clearance to proceed to North Darfur’s besieged capital, el-Fasher, killing five people and injuring several others.
Edem Wosornu, of UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said some 70 trucks of supplies were waiting in the RSF-controlled city of Nyala to get to el-Fashir, but security guarantees were needed as humanitarian workers were coming under attack.
The attack came as several countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Egypt, voiced alarm at the worsening hunger situation in war-torn Sudan, calling for pauses in fighting to let in more aid.
The war in Sudan began in April 2023, when violence caused by long-simmering tensions between its military and the paramilitary RSF erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur.
Some 40,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million displaced, UN agencies say. Nearly 25 million people are experiencing acute hunger.
The RSF and their allies announced in late June that they had formed a parallel government in areas they control, mainly in the vast Darfur region, where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated.
The RSF has encircled el-Fasher, where the UN says people are facing starvation. It is the only capital the paramilitary forces don’t hold in Darfur, which is comprised of five states.
An estimated 300,000 remaining residents in the city have been subjected to a long siege as fighting rages.
Last year, a famine was declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur. The risk of famine has since spread to 17 areas in Darfur and the Kordofan region, which is adjacent to North Darfur and west of Khartoum, according to the UN.
WFP spokesperson Gift Watanasathorn urged the warring parties to “respect international humanitarian law”. “Humanitarian staff and assets must never be a target,” Watanasathorn said.
US, Saudi Arabia, UAE and others urge warring sides to halt fighting and allow aid into Sudan, including famine-struck areas.
United States-led mediators have said they are “appalled” by the continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sudan, where a brutal civil war is raging into its third year, and called for urgent action by the warring parties to protect civilians.
The mediators, known as the Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan (ALPS) Group, include the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
“The ALPS group urgently reiterates that international humanitarian law must be fully respected. This includes the obligations to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel, their premises and assets, as well as to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need,” the ALPS Group said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group said it was also appalled by “the growing number of people in situations of severe malnutrition and famine, and by the wide range of access impediments that are delaying or blocking the response in key areas”.
It added that the situation was especially urgent in the North Darfur and Kordofan regions.
“Civilians continue to pay the highest price for this war,” it said.
Sudan has been ravaged by violence and hunger since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went to war in April 2023.
The country in effect is split in two, with the army controlling the north, east and centre of Sudan and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Nearly 25 million people in Sudan face dire hunger, with millions cut off from lifesaving aid, according to the United Nations.
The UAE has been accused of championing the RSF, including by sending weapons, something it strongly denies.
The plea for Sudan comes as the US faces global criticism for its support of Israel in the genocidal war on Gaza, which is also facing an Israeli-induced famine.
The highest number of attacks on aid workers was in Palestinian territory, followed by Sudan, the UN says.
United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has issued a “shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy” as he has shared statistics on the killing of 383 aid workers last year worldwide, nearly half in Gaza.
Marking World Humanitarian Day on Tuesday, Fletcher said the killings rose by 31 percent from the year before, “driven by the relentless conflicts in Gaza, where 181 humanitarian workers were killed, and in Sudan, where 60 lost their lives”.
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” Fletcher said. “Attacks on this scale with zero accountability are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy.”
The UN said most of those killed were local staff and were either attacked in the line of duty or in their homes.
“As the humanitarian community, we demand – again – that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account,” said Fletcher, who is the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
The Aid Worker Security Database, which has compiled UN reports since 1997, said the number of killings rose from 293 in 2023.
Provisional figures from the database for this year show 265 aid workers have been killed as of August 14.
One of the deadliest attacks this year took place in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli troops opened fire before dawn on March 23, killing 15 medics and emergency responders travelling in clearly marked vehicles.
The Israeli army drove bulldozers over the bodies and the emergency vehicles and buried them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were able to reach the site only a week later.
The UN reiterated that attacks on aid workers and their operations violate international humanitarian law and damage the lifelines sustaining millions of people trapped in war and disaster zones.
“Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” Fletcher said.
Lebanon, which Israel battered in a war with Hezbollah last year, saw 20 aid workers killed, compared with none in 2023.
Ethiopia and Syria each had 14 killings, about double their numbers in 2023, and Ukraine had 13 aid workers killed in 2024, up from six in 2023, according to the database.
Meanwhile, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said it verified more than 800 attacks on healthcare in 16 territories so far this year with more than 1,110 health workers and patients killed and hundreds injured.
“Each attack inflicts lasting harm, deprives entire communities of lifesaving care when they need it the most, endangers healthcare providers and weakens already strained health systems,” the WHO said.
World Humanitarian Day marks the day in 2003 when UN rights chief Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other humanitarians were killed in a bombing of UN headquarters in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.
Thousands at risk as foreign aid cuts hit humanitarian efforts.
Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years is spreading in a country ravaged by conflict.
Health and aid workers are battling desperately to stop it from escalating and crossing into neighbouring countries.
What’s driving the outbreak – and how serious is it?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Mathilde Vu – Advocacy manager for Sudan at the Norwegian Refugee Council
Simon Mane – Sudan national director at the humanitarian organisation, World Vision International
Mitch Rhyner – Deputy head of mission at Doctors Without Borders, Sudan
Human rights groups have warned that expelling the population from Gaza would violate international law.
Israel is in discussions with South Sudan about forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza to the East African country, according to six people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press.
The proposal is part of an Israeli effort to displace Palestinians from Gaza – a move human rights groups warn would amount to forcible expulsion, ethnic cleansing, and would violate international law.
Critics of the transfer plan fear Palestinians would never be allowed to return to Gaza and that mass departure could pave the way for Israel to annex the enclave and re-establish Israeli settlements there, as called for by far-right ministers in the Israeli government.
South Sudan has struggled to recover from a civil war that broke out shortly after independence in 2011, killing nearly 400,000 people and leaving parts of the country facing famine. It already hosts a large refugee population from conflicts in neighbouring countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said he wants to advance what he calls “voluntary migration” for much of Gaza’s population, a policy he has linked to previous statements of United States President Donald Trump.
“I think that the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there,” Netanyahu said Tuesday in an interview with i24, an Israeli TV station. He did not make reference to South Sudan.
The AP reported that Israel and the US have floated similar proposals with Sudan, Somalia, and the breakaway region of Somaliland.
Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, has strongly opposed any forced transfer of Palestinians out of the enclave, fearing a refugee influx into its territory.
South Sudanese civil society leader Edmund Yakani told the AP that the country “should not become a dumping ground for people … and it should not accept to take people as negotiating chips to improve relations”.
Joe Szlavik, founder of a US lobbying firm working with South Sudan, said he was briefed by South Sudanese officials on the talks.
According to Szlavik, the country wants the Trump administration to lift a travel ban and remove sanctions on some South Sudanese elites, suggesting the US could be involved in any agreement about the forcible displacement of Palestinians.
Peter Martell, a journalist and author of First Raise a Flag, said “cash-strapped South Sudan needs any ally, financial gain and diplomatic security it can get”.
The Trump administration has previously pressured several countries to accept deportations, and South Sudan has already taken in eight individuals removed from the US under the administration’s mass deportation policy.
Sudanese women who fled the city of el-Fasher say paramilitary Rapid Support Forces fighters killed, looted, and raped people during their escape. Now in Tawila, about 60km to the west, they face rain, hunger, and a growing cholera outbreak.
Published On 4 Aug 20254 Aug 2025
People in Sudan’s North Darfur region are forced to eat animal fodder to survive as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to lay siege to el-Fasher – the last urban centre in the region under army control.
“We are suffering, world. We need humanitarian aid – food and medicine – whether by airdrop or by opening ground routes. We cannot survive in this condition,” Othman Angaro, from a displacement camp in el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera.
Angaro described how he and his family rely on livestock fodder known as ambaz, a type of animal feed made out of peanut shells.
Another woman, veterinarian Zulfa Al-Nour, told Al Jazeera that her family relies daily on a charity kitchen called “Matbakh Al-Khair” for a single meal, amid a total lack of external aid.
She called for urgent international intervention, including airdrops of humanitarian supplies, warning that even the ambaz fodder is nearly depleted.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last week warned about starvation in the el-Fasher region. Starvation has reached the most severe level on the United Nations-backed food security scale – ‘IPC Phase 5’, indicating full-blown famine – it said on Friday.
The two-month siege of el-Fasher has complicated aid efforts.
The RSF has blocked food supplies, and aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked, locals said. Prices for the goods smuggled into the region cost more than five times the national average.
An outbreak of cholera in the North Darfur state, of which el-Fasher is the capital, has further added to the misery.
Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, which has witnessed months of fighting between Sudan’s army and the RSF, according to a government official.
At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in the North Darfur state, the spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, Adam Rijal, said in a statement on Monday.
Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and the Otash camps, Rijal added, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
Some 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
In recent months, more than half a million people have taken shelter in Tawila, some 60km (37 miles) west of el-Fasher, the state capital, which has been under two months of siege by the RSF rebels. Most of the Darfur region is under the rebel control except for el-Fasher.
Meanwhile, with Sudan in the throes of the rainy season, along with poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation, the outbreak of cholera is only worsening, warn aid groups.
Cholera was first identified in early June in Tawila and has since spread to numerous refugee camps, according to NGO Avaaz.
Nearly 40 people have died due to cholera in the Jebel Marra area, a district of West Darfur state.
Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is operating two cholera treatment facilities in Tawila housing 146 beds – coordinating nearly the entire medical response to the outbreak.
Last month, it warned that “much more” needs to be done to improve “access to water, hygiene, and medical care to curb the spread of the outbreak in the midst of the rainy season”.
Samir, a former teacher displaced to el-Fasher with his family, told Avaaz last week that the situation was “catastrophic” and that the cholera outbreak was being exacerbated by widespread hunger.
“People are dying because they are too weak to survive,” he told the NGO.
“Their immune systems are compromised from severe malnutrition. People are starving in the displacement camps.”
مدينة الفاشر في ولاية شمال دارفور غرب السودان بتعيش مجاعة قاتلة بسبب فرض الحصار عليها من قبل قوات الدعم السريع المدعومة من الامارات
المجاعة دخلت المرحلة الخامسة يعني مجاعة كاملة ووضع كارثي
اتكلموا عنهم#الفاشر_تموت_جوعاََ pic.twitter.com/1aNfuGY9nH— Ahmed Elhadary (@Ahmed_hadary77) August 2, 2025
Translation: “The city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state, western Sudan, is experiencing a deadly famine due to the siege imposed on it by the Rapid Support Forces backed by the Emirates. The famine has reached the fifth stage, meaning a full-scale famine and a catastrophic situation. Speak about them.”
Meanwhile, fighting continues.
“The RSF’s artillery and drones are shelling el-Fasher morning and night,” one resident told the Reuters news agency.
“The number of people dying has increased every day, and the cemeteries are expanding,” he said.
On Monday, Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group, said at least 14 people fleeing el-Fasher were killed and dozens were injured when they were attacked in a village along the route.
The UN called for a humanitarian pause to fighting in el-Fasher last month as the rainy season began, but the RSF rejected the call.
Fighting between the two groups first erupted in the capital Khartoum in April 2023. It has since spread to several regions of the country as the army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, jostles for power with RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to UN estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Fighting between the armies of Uganda and neighbouring South Sudan, which are longtime allies, erupted this week over demarcations in disputed border regions, leading to the death of at least four soldiers, according to official reports from both sides.
Thousands of civilians have since been displaced in affected areas as people fled to safety amid the rare outbreak of violence.
A gunfight began on Monday and comes as South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest countries, is facing renewed violence due to fracturing within the government of President Salva Kiir that has led to fighting between South Sudanese troops and a rebel armed group.
Uganda has been pivotal in keeping that issue contained by deploying troops to assist Kiir’s forces. However, the latest conflict between the two countries’ armies is raising questions regarding the state of that alliance.
There are conflicting accounts of the events that began at about 4:25pm local time (13:25 GMT) on Monday, making it hard to pinpoint which side struck first.
The two agree on where the fighting took place, but each claims the site as being in its own territory.
Ugandan military spokesperson Major-General Felix Kulayigye told reporters on Wednesday that the fighting broke out when South Sudanese soldiers crossed into Ugandan territory in the state of West Nile and set up camp there. The South Sudanese soldiers refused to leave after being told to do so, Kulayigye said, resulting in the Ugandan side having “to apply force”.
A Ugandan soldier was killed in the skirmish that ensued, Kulayigye added, after which the Ugandan side retaliated and opened fire, killing three South Sudanese soldiers.
However, South Sudan military spokesperson Major-General Lul Ruai Koang said in a Facebook post earlier on Tuesday that armies of the “two sisterly republics” had exchanged fire on the South Sudanese side, in the Kajo Keji County of Central Equatoria state. Both sides suffered casualties, he said, without giving more details.
Wani Jackson Mule, a local leader in Kajo-Keji County, backed up this account in a Facebook post on Wednesday and added that Ugandan forces had launched a “surprise attack” on South Sudanese territory. Mule said local officials had counted the bodies of five South Sudanese officers.
Kajo-Keji County army commander Brigadier General Henry Buri, in the same statement as Mule, said the Ugandan forces had been “heavily armed with tanks and artillery”, and that they had targeted a joint security force unit stationed to protect civilians, who are often attacked by criminal groups in the area. The army general identified the deceased men as two South Sudanese soldiers, two police officers and one prison officer.
The fighting affected border villages and caused panic as people fled from the area, packing their belongings hurriedly on their backs, according to residents speaking to the media. Children were lost in the chaos. Photos on social media showed crowds gathered as local priests supervised the collection and transport of remains.
Uganda and South Sudan have previously clashed over demarcations along their joint border, although those events have been few and far between. As with the Monday clash, the fighting is often characterised by tension and violence. However, heavy artillery fighting, which occurred on Monday, is rare.
Problems at the border date back to the demarcations made during the British colonial era between Sudan, which South Sudan was once a part of, and Uganda. Despite setting up a joint demarcation committee (unknown when), the two countries have failed to agree on border points.
In November 2010, just months before an anticipated South Sudanese referendum on independence from Sudan, clashes erupted after the Ugandan government accused the Sudanese army of attacking Dengolo village in the West Nile district of Moyo on the Ugandan side in multiple raids, and of arresting Ugandan villagers who were accused of crossing the border to cut down timber.
A South Sudanese army spokesperson denied the allegations and suggested that the assailants could have been from the forestry commission. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and South Sudan’s Kiir met a few days later and pledged to finalise the border issue, but that did not happen.
Little was reported on the matter for several years after that, but in October 2020, two Ugandan soldiers and two South Sudanese soldiers were killed when the two sides attacked each other in Pogee, Magwi County of South Sudan, which connects to Gulu district of northern Uganda. The area includes disputed territory. Some reports claimed that three South Sudanese were killed. Each side blamed the other for starting the fight.
In September 2024, the Ugandan parliament urged the government to expedite the demarcation process, adding that the lack of clear borders was fuelling insecurity in parts of rural Uganda, and Ugandan forces could not effectively pursue criminal cattle rustling groups operating in the border area as a result.
Following the latest flare-up of violence this week, the countries have pledged to form a new joint committee to investigate the clashes, South Sudan military spokesperson, General Koang, said in a statement on Tuesday. The committee will also investigate any recurring issues along the border in a bid to resolve them, the statement read.
Uganda’s Museveni has been a staunch ally of South Sudan’s independence leader, Kiir, and his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) party for many years.
Museveni supported South Sudan’s liberation war against Sudan, especially following alleged collusion between the former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group originally formed in Uganda but which regularly attacks both Ugandan and South Sudanese locations in its efforts to overthrow the Ugandan government.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in January 2011. In 2013, Uganda sent troops to support Kiir after a civil war broke out in the new country.
Fighting had erupted between forces loyal to Kiir and those loyal to his longtime rival, Riek Machar, who was also Kiir’s deputy president pre and post independence, over allegations that Machar was planning a coup.
Ethnic differences between the two (Kiir is Dinka while Machar is Nuer) also added to the tensions. Machar fled the capital, Juba, to form his own Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).
The SPLM and SPLM-IO fought for five years before reaching a peace agreement in August 2018. About 400,000 people were killed in the war. Uganda deployed troops to fight alongside Kiir’s SPLM, while the United Nations peacekeeping mission (UNMISS), which was in place following independence, worked to protect civilians.
This year, a power-sharing deal has unravelled, however, and fighting has again broken out between South Sudanese forces and the White Army, a Nuer armed group which the government alleges is backed by Machar, in Nasir County, in the northeast of the country.
In March, Uganda again deployed special forces to fight alongside Kiir’s forces as fears of another civil war mounted. Kiir ordered Machar to be placed under house arrest and also detained several of his allies in the government.
Some South Sudanese who support Vice President Machar, who is still under house arrest, are opposed to Uganda’s deployment of troops in the country, and say Kampala is overreaching.
Since the Monday skirmish with Ugandan troops, some South Sudanese have taken to Facebook to rail against the army for not condemning alleged territorial violations by Ugandan soldiers, and mocked the spokesman, Koang, for describing the nations as “sisterly”.
“I wish the escalation would continue,” one poster wrote. “The reason why South Sudan is not peaceful is because of Uganda’s interference in our country’s affairs.”
“What did South Sudan expect when they cheaply sold their sovereignty to Uganda?” another commenter added.
Since joining forces to fight the rebel White Army, South Sudanese forces and the Ugandan Army have been accused by Machar and local authorities in Nasir State of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that they say has burned and killed civilians. Nicholas Haysom, head of the UN mission in South Sudan, confirmed that air strikes had been conducted with the bombs. However, Uganda has denied these allegations. The South Sudan army has not commented.
Forces local to Machar, including the White Army, have also been accused of targeting civilians. Dozens have died, and at least 100,000 have been displaced across northeastern South Sudan since March.
In May, Amnesty International said Uganda’s deployment and supply of arms to South Sudan violated a UN arms embargo on the country, which was part of the 2018 peace deal, and called on the UN Security Council to enforce the clause.
Parallel government recently formed by the RSF has been widely rejected.
Sudan has been struggling with a devastating conflict for more than two years.
Now it faces yet another challenge.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has announced a parallel government to rival the one led by the army chief.
The African Union has rejected the move, and the army has dismissed it as a desperate attempt by the RSF to cling to power.
But analysts say the move carries a real risk, one that could further divide an already fractured country.
So how will this new power struggle play out both inside Sudan and more widely?
And how could it affect the Darfur region, where the RSF still wields control?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Hafiz Mohamed – Director of Justice Africa Sudan, an advocacy organisation and research institute
Kholood Khair – Sudanese political analyst and founder of Confluence Advisory, a think tank formerly based in Khartoum
Cameron Hudson – Senior associate in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
The Tasis Alliance, a coalition of Sudanese armed groups formed in February, has unveiled a parallel ”transitional peace” government to rival Sudan’s wartime government in Port Sudan.
Tasis is based on a partnership between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a powerful armed group that controls swaths of South Kordofan and Blue Nile states in southern Sudan.
SPLM-N has been fighting a rebellion against the central government and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for 40 years – a conflict rooted in aggressive land grabs by central elites.
The RSF and SAF are former allies, yet a power struggle triggered an all-out civil war in April 2023.
Analysts have told Al Jazeera that Tasis aims to challenge SAF for legitimacy and power after more than two years of conflict.
“The Tasis government is the RSF’s latest desperate attempt to rebrand itself as a state authority rather than a militia,” said Anette Hoffmann, an expert on Sudan at the Clingendale Institute think-tank in the Netherlands.
“Yet all their actions have continued to prove the opposite. While announcing their government … RSF forces and their allies were besieging entire state capitals and starving innocent civilians,” she told Al Jazeera.
Tasis announced its government just three days before a new round of Sudan peace talks is set to begin on July 29 in the United States.
The talks will bring together representatives from the Sudan Quartet – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US. Neither SAF nor the RSF will be included in this round, according to Africa Intelligence.
Regardless, the RSF has long been wary of being dismissed as a mere “armed group” in ceasefire negotiations and left out of the circles of power and influence in a post-war Sudan due to a lack of international legitimacy.
By forming its own government, the Tasis Alliance aims to garner recognition from some friendly states and boost its bargaining position in future negotiations, said Kholood Khair, an expert on Sudan and the founder of the Confluence Advisory think-tank.
“What’s interesting is that there has been so little disclosed about these new talks, yet it has started a fury across Sudan and catalysed the formation of these two governments,” Khair told Al Jazeera.
She added that the army adopted a similar ploy in May when it appointed Kamel Idris as prime minister in Port Sudan, a strategic city on the Red Sea Coast.
Idris recently appointed five new ministers to round out his new government, just a day after Tasis announced its parallel administration.
Like Port Sudan, the RSF-backed government is run by a council of military elites and civilian loyalists.
The RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, heads the Tasis’s 15-member Presidential Council. SPLM-N leader Abdelaziz al-Hilu serves as his deputy.
A reported 47 percent of posts in the new administration went to RSF-aligned armed commanders and civil servants, while SPLM-N was given about one-third of the posts.
The rest were handed out to smaller armed groups and political parties who advantageously joined Tasis to boost their relevance, as previously reported by Al Jazeera.
Post appointees include Suleiman Sandal from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – a rebel group that emerged out of the Darfur wars and splintered in the current war – who was made interior minister.
Al-Tahir Hajar, from the Sudan Liberation Forces Gathering (SLFG), which also emerged from the Darfur wars, is a prominent member of the Tasis leadership council.
The prime minister of the Tasis government is Mohamed Hassan al-Ta’aishi, a politician from Darfur and a former member of the transitional Sovereign Council that led Sudan shortly after former President Omar al-Bashir was toppled in 2019.
The Sovereign Council was headed by SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Hemedti. The two were supposed to step down from power in 2021, yet they orchestrated a coup to dismiss the then-civilian cabinet and dash hopes for democracy.
Since SAF recaptured the capital Khartoum from the RSF in March, the former has been in control of the east and centre of the country, while the RSF has attempted to consolidate its control over the western and southern regions.
The Tasis government may have ended up cementing that division more than helping it gain an advantage at the negotiating table, said Alan Boswell, an expert on Sudan with International Crisis Group.
“The RSF aims to be legitimate as a national actor,” he said. “Yet [this government] makes de facto partition all the more likely, even if that is not the strategic intent.”
Khair added that the creation of a second government further incentivises armed groups to accumulate power in hopes of scoring a post in one of the two administrations.
“This [new government] really catalyses the proliferation of different armed groups,” she said. “More armed groups will mobilise … to win a position [in one of the two governments] during wartime.”
“This is a reality that really entrenches war dynamics.”
Global hunger fell in 2024 for a third straight year, but conflict and climate shocks deepened crises in Africa and the Middle East.
Global hunger levels declined for a third consecutive year in 2024, according to a new United Nations report, as better access to food in South America and India offset deepening malnutrition and climate shocks in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Around 673 million people, or 8.2 percent of the world’s population, experienced hunger in 2024, down from 8.5 percent in 2023, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, jointly prepared by five UN agencies.
The agencies include the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
The agencies said the report focused on chronic, long-term problems and did not fully reflect the impact of acute crises brought on by specific events and wars, including Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Conflict continues to drive hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in remarks delivered by video link from a UN food summit in Ethiopia on Monday, adding that “hunger further feeds future instability and undermines peace”.
The WHO has warned that malnutrition in the besieged Palestinian enclave has reached “alarming levels” since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2.
The blockade was partially lifted in May, but only a trickle of aid has been allowed to enter since then, despite warnings about mass starvation from the UN and aid organisations.
In 2024, the most significant progress was reported in South America and southern Asia, according to the UN report.
In South America, the hunger rate fell to 3.8 percent in 2024 from 4.2 percent in 2023. In southern Asia, it fell to 11 percent from 12.2 percent.
Progress in South America was underpinned by improved agricultural productivity and social programmes, such as school meals, Maximo Torero, the chief economist at the FAO, told news agency Reuters.
In southern Asia, it was mostly due to new data from India showing more people with access to healthy diets.
The overall 2024 hunger numbers were still higher than the 7.5 percent recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The picture was very different in Africa, where productivity gains were not keeping up with high population growth and the impacts of conflict, extreme weather and inflation.
In 2024, more than one in five people on the continent, or 307 million people, were chronically undernourished, meaning hunger is more prevalent than it was 20 years ago.
According to the current projection, 512 million people in the world may be chronically undernourished in 2030, with nearly 60 percent of them to be found in Africa, the report said.
“We must urgently reverse this trajectory,” said the FAO’s Torero.
A major mark of distress is the number of Africans unable to afford a healthy diet. While the global figure fell from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.6 billion in 2024, the number increased in Africa from 864 million to just over one billion during the same period.
That means the vast majority of Africans are unable to eat well on the continent of 1.5 billion people.
The UN report also highlighted “persistent inequalities” with women and rural communities most affected, which widened last year over 2023.
“Despite adequate global food production, millions of people go hungry or are malnourished because safe and nutritious food is not available, not accessible or, more often, not affordable,” it said.
The gap between global food price inflation and overall inflation peaked in January 2023, driving up the cost of diets and hitting low-income nations hardest, the report said.
The report also said that overall adult obesity rose to nearly 16 percent in 2022, from 12 percent in 2012.
In a couple of weeks, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the biggest hydroelectric dam on the African continent, will be inaugurated. The construction of this dam has taken more than a decade and has cost nearly $5bn. The government and people of Ethiopia mobilised the funds for this national project from their meagre internal resources. No international financing was made available for this project.
While the construction of the dam has received some international media attention, the media coverage has not made clear the Ethiopian perspective. This is a modest attempt to rectify that problem.
The GERD is constructed on the Blue Nile, which Ethiopians call Abay. Abay means “big” or “major” in several Ethiopian languages. Abay is one of the main tributaries of the Nile River. Although many associate the Nile almost exclusively with Egypt, the river traverses 10 other African countries. Among these countries, Ethiopia holds a unique position because 86 percent of the Nile water that reaches Egypt originates from the Ethiopian highlands.
Abay is the biggest river in Ethiopia with a huge potential to boost overall socioeconomic transformation and development. It has been a long-held aspiration of Ethiopians to utilise this resource. The GERD is a national development project that fulfils this dream.
Despite its huge labour force and economic potential, Ethiopia has yet to make headway in its endeavour to industrialise. One critical factor that has held back this effort has been Ethiopia’s lack of energy. According to the latest figures, barely 55 percent of Ethiopians have access to electricity.
There is a huge demand and need for electricity in Ethiopia. Hence, the GERD is seen as our national ticket out of darkness and poverty. Necessity dictates that Ethiopia use this major resource as an instrument to spur growth and prosperity for the benefit of its 130-million-strong population, which is expected to reach 200 million by 2050.
The GERD is expected to generate about 5,150 megawatts of electricity and produce an annual energy output of 15,760 gigawatt hours. This will double Ethiopia’s energy output, which will not only light our homes but also power industries and cities and transform our economy. The GERD would also make it possible to increase our energy exports to neighbouring countries, thereby strengthening regional integration and interconnectedness.
The lower riparian states of the Nile would also derive immense benefit from the GERD because it would prevent flooding, sedimentation and water loss through evaporation. The very purpose of the GERD, which is generating electricity, requires that the water flows to lower riparian countries after hitting the enormous turbines that generate the electricity. The dam does not block or stop the river from flowing. Doing so would make electricity generation impossible and defeat the very purpose for which the dam was built.
So, you might ask, why are some lower riparian countries complaining about the construction of the dam? The reason for their objections emanates not from rational fear or legitimate concern. The objections are the result of an attitude shaped by a colonial-era water-sharing agreement concluded between Britain and Egypt in 1929 and its derivative agreement sealed in 1959 between Egypt and Sudan.
Ethiopia was not a party to any of these treaties. However, some Egyptians contend that the water-sharing formula enshrined in the colonial-era agreement, which excludes the remaining nine African nations from having any share of the Nile, is still valid and should be adhered to by all Nile riparian countries.
From an Ethiopian point of view, this anachronistic argument, often presented as “historic rights over the Nile” is unacceptable. While Britain is entitled to enter into any agreements regarding the River Thames, it does not have the right to dispose of the waters of the Nile or the Abay River. As we all recall, the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser rejected Britain’s claims over the Suez Canal. For much stronger reasons, Ethiopian leaders have consistently rejected arguments based on colonial arrangements in which Ethiopia did not have a say.
The Ethiopian view is that the Nile is a shared natural resource. It should be used in a cooperative framework that would be beneficial for all riparian countries. The developmental aspirations and dreams of all nations are equally legitimate. The needs of some should not be prioritised over the needs of others.
A fair, just and inclusive arrangement that takes into account the realities of the 21st century is needed. Such an arrangement is already in place in the form of the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, which is a contemporary, African-initiated treaty designed to promote sustainable management and equitable use of the Nile. This treaty has already been signed and ratified by Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan.
Egypt should stop yearning for a bygone colonial era and join these Nile riparian countries in their joint effort to promote fair and equitable use of the Nile in a sustainable manner.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
In Shambat al-Aradi, a tight-knit neighbourhood in Khartoum North once known for its vibrant community gatherings and spirited music festivals, two childhood friends have suffered through confinement and injustice at the hands of one of Sudan’s warring sides.
Khalid al-Sadiq, a 43-year-old family doctor, and one of his best friends, a 40-year-old musician who once lit up the stage of the nearby Khedr Bashir Theatre, were inseparable before the war.
But when the civil war broke out in April 2023 and fighting tore through their city, both men, born and raised near that beloved theatre, were swept into a campaign of arbitrary arrests conducted by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The friends were detained separately and tortured in different ways, but their experiences nonetheless mirrored one another – until they emerged, physically altered, emotionally broken and forever bound by survival.
Al-Sadiq’s ordeal began in August 2023 when RSF forces raided Shambat and arbitrarily arrested him and countless other men.
He was crowded into a bathroom in a house that the RSF had looted along with seven other people and was kept there for days.
“We were only let out to eat, then forced back in,” he explained.
During his first days of interrogation, al-Sadiq was tortured repeatedly by the RSF to pressure him for a ransom.
They crushed his fingers, one at a time, using pliers. At one point, to scare him, they fired at the ground near him, sending shrapnel flying into his abdomen and causing heavy bleeding.
After three days, the men were lined up by their captors.
“They tried to negotiate with us, demanding 3 million Sudanese pounds [about $1,000] per person,” al-Sadiq recalled.
Three men were released after handing over everything they had, including a rickshaw and all their cash. Al-Sadiq and the other remaining prisoners were moved to a smaller cell – an even more cramped toilet tucked beneath a staircase.
“There was no ventilation. There were insects everywhere,” he said. They had to alternate sleeping – two could just about lie down while two stood.
A few kilometres away, al-Sadiq’s friend, the musician, who asked to remain anonymous, had also been arrested and held at the Paratrooper Military Camp in Khartoum North, which the RSF captured in the first months of the war with Sudan’s military.
That would not be the only time the musician was taken because the RSF had been told that his family were distantly related to former President Omar al-Bashir.
“They said I’m a ‘remnant of the regime’ because of that relation to him even though I was never part of the regime. I was against it,” he said, adding that he had protested against al-Bashir.
Months into the war, his family’s Shambat home was raided by the RSF and his younger brother was shot in the leg. To keep everybody safe, the musician quickly evacuated his family to Umm al-Qura in Gezira state, then went home to collect their belongings. That was when he was arrested.
During his time at the military camp, he told Al Jazeera, the RSF fighters would tie him and other prisoners up and lay them facedown on the ground in the yard. Then they would beat them with a “sout al-anag” whip, a Sudanese leather whip traditionally made of hippo skin.
The flogging lasted a long time, he added, and it was not an isolated incident. It happened to him several times.
In interrogations, RSF personnel fixated on his alleged affiliation with al-Bashir, branding him with slurs like “Koz”, meaning a political Islamist remnant of al-Bashir’s regime, and subjecting him to verbal and physical abuse.
He was held for about a month, then released to return to a home that had been looted.
He would be detained at least five more times.
“Most of the detentions were based on people informing on each other, sometimes for personal benefit, sometimes under torture,” al-Sadiq said.
“RSF commanders even brag about having a list of Bashir regime or SAF [Sudan armed forces] supporters for every area.”
While he was held by the RSF, the musician told Al Jazeera, he and others were forced to perform manual labour that the fighters did not want to do.
“They used to take us out in the morning to dig graves,” he said. “I dug over 30 graves myself.”
The graves were around the detention camp and seemed to be for the prisoners who died from torture, illness or starvation.
While he could not estimate how many people were buried in those pits, he described the site where he was forced to dig, saying it already had many pits that had been used before.
Meanwhile, al-Sadiq was blindfolded, bound and bundled into a van and taken to an RSF detention facility in the al-Riyadh neighbourhood.
The compound had five zones: a mosque repurposed into a prison, a section for women, an area holding army soldiers captured in battle, another for those who surrendered and an underground chamber called “Guantanamo” – the site of systematic torture.
Al-Sadiq tried to help the people he was imprisoned with, treating them with whatever they could scavenge and appealing to the RSF to take the dangerously sick prisoners to a hospital.
But the RSF usually ignored the pleas, and al-Sadiq still remembers one patient, Saber, whom the fighters kept shackled even as his health faded fast.
“I kept asking that he be transferred to a hospital,” al-Sadiq said. “He died.”
Some prisoners did receive treatment, though, and the RSF kept a group of imprisoned doctors in a separate room furnished with beds and medical equipment.
There, they were told to treat injured RSF fighters or prisoners the RSF wanted to keep alive, either to keep torturing them for information or because they thought they could get big ransoms for them.
Al-Sadiq chose not to go with the other doctors and decided to cooperate less with the RSF, keeping to himself and staying with the other prisoners.
Conditions were inhumane in the cell he chose to remain in.
“The total water we received daily – for drinking, ablution, everything – was six small cups,” al-Sadiq said, adding that food was scarce and “insects, rats and lice lived with us. I lost 35kg [77lb].”
Their captors did give him some medical supplies, however, when they needed him to treat someone, and they were a lifeline for everyone around him.
The prisoners were so desperate that he sometimes shared IV glucose drips he got from the RSF so detainees could drink them for some hydration.
The only other sources of food were the small “payments” of sugar, milk or dates that the RSF would give to prisoners who they forced to do manual labour like loading or unloading trucks.
Al-Sadiq did not speak of having been forced to dig graves for fellow prisoners or of having heard of other prisoners doing that.
For the musician, however, graves became a constant reality, even during the periods when he was able to go back home to Shambat.
He helped bury about 20 neighbours who died either from crossfire or starvation and had to be buried anywhere but in the cemeteries.
The RSF blocked access to the cemeteries without explaining why to the people who wanted to lay their loved ones to rest.
In fact at first, the RSF prohibited all burials, then relented and allowed some burials as long as they were not in the cemeteries.
So the musician and others would dig graves for people in Shambat Stadium’s Rabta Field and near the Khedr Bashir Theatre.
He said many people who were afraid to leave their homes at all ended up burying their loved ones in their yards or in any nearby plots they could furtively access.
The friends’ ordeals lasted into the winter when al-Sadiq found himself released and the RSF stopped coming around to arrest the musician.
Neither man knows why.
Both al-Sadiq and the musician told Al Jazeera they remain haunted by what they endured.
The torment, they said, didn’t end with their release; it followed them, embedding itself in their thoughts, a shadow they fear will darken the rest of their lives.
On March 26, the SAF announced it had recaptured Khartoum. Now, the two men have returned to their neighbourhood, where they feel a greater sense of safety.
Having been detained and tortured by the RSF, they believe they’re unlikely to be viewed by the SAF as collaborators – offering them, at least, a fragile sense of safety.
As violence and rights abuses rage on, the coalition pledges to pursue a ‘secular, democratic’ and decentralised Sudan.
A Sudanese coalition led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has announced it is establishing an alternative government in a challenge to the military-led authorities in the capital Khartoum, with the northeastern African country’s brutal civil war in its third year.
The group, which calls itself the Leadership Council of the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS), said RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo will chair the 15-member presidential council of the government, which includes regional governors.
Sudanese politician Mohammed Hassan Osman al-Ta’ishi will serve as prime minister, TASIS said.
“On the occasion of this historic achievement, the leadership council extends its greetings and congratulations to the Sudanese people who have endured the flames of devastating wars for decades,” the coalition said in a statement.
“It also renews TASIS’s commitment to building an inclusive homeland, and a new secular, democratic, decentralized, and voluntarily unified Sudan, founded on the principles of freedom, justice and equality.”
The new self-proclaimed government could deepen divisions and lead to competing institutions as the war rages on between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
In May, the Sudanese army said it had completely driven the RSF out of the capital, Khartoum.
The fighting since April 2023 has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to United Nations estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
In recent months, the violence has been intensifying in the western region of Darfur, where the RSF has been besieging the city of el-Fasher, compounding hunger in the area.
Rights groups have accused both the RSF and SAF of rights abuses. Earlier this year, Amnesty International said RSF fighters were inflicting “widespread sexual violence” on women and girls to “assert control and displace communities across the country”.
Earlier this year, the US imposed sanctions on Hemedti, accusing the RSF of committing “serious human rights abuses” under his leadership, including executing civilians and blocking humanitarian aid.
Sudan has seen growing instability since longtime President Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in 2019 after months of antigovernment protests.
In October 2021, the Sudanese military staged a coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, leading to his resignation in early 2022.
Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Hemedti had shared power after the coup, but then began fighting for control of the state and its resources in April 2023.
Although the rivalry between al-Burhan and Hemedti does not appear to be ideological, numerous attempts to reach a peaceful resolution to the crisis have failed.
Emergency Lawyers says paramilitary force set fire to villages, killing dozens, including children and pregnant women.
A group of human rights lawyers in Sudan have accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raiding and setting fire to villages in the state of North Kordofan and killing nearly 300 people, including children and pregnant women.
The statement by Emergency Lawyers late on Monday came as fighting rages between the RSF and the Sudanese army in the western areas of the country.
The two sides have been locked in a civil war since 2023, and the army has taken firm control of the centre and east of the country, while the RSF is trying to consolidate its control of the western regions, including North Kordofan and Darfur.
Emergency Lawyers said the RSF had attacked several villages on Saturday around the city of Bara, which the paramilitary force controls.
In one village, Shag Alnom, more than 200 people were killed in a “terrible massacre”, the group said. The victims were either “burned inside their homes” or shot. In the neighbouring villages, 38 other civilians were also killed and dozens more have been forcibly disappeared.
The next day, the RSF carried out “another massacre” in the village of Hilat Hamid, killing at least 46 people, including pregnant women and children, the group added.
“It has been proven that these targeted villages were completely empty of any military objectives, which makes clear the criminal nature of these crimes carried out in complete disregard of international humanitarian law,” Emergency Lawyers said, placing the responsibility with the RSF leadership.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Sunday that intensified fighting in the region forced more than 3,000 people to flee the villages of Shag Alnom and al-Kordi.
Many have sought refuge in the surrounding parts of Bara, according to the UN agency.
The United States and human rights groups have accused the RSF of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Its soldiers have carried out a series of violent looting raids in territory it has taken control of across the country.
The RSF leadership says it will bring those found responsible for such acts to justice.
Sudan’s civil war has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, driving more than half the population into hunger and spreading disease, including cholera, across the country.
At least 40,000 people have been killed, while 13 million have been displaced.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has launched a new probe into war crimes in the western Darfur region, and on Thursday, senior prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that her office has “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed there.
Khan said her office has focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, and interviewed victims who have fled to neighbouring Chad.
She said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.
“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.