Ethnic cleansing awaits North Darfur’s besieged, starving population in war-torn Sudan
Original article by Pavan Kulkarni republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
The specter of ethnic cleansing looms over hundreds of thousands trapped without food, water, or medicines in the North Darfur state’s besieged capital, El Fasher.
Nearly half a million people were forced to flee from North Darfur state’s capital, El Fasher, and the nearby Zamzam camp for displaced people in just the two months of April and May, the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said in a press briefing on Monday, July 7.
North Darfur is the only one of the five states where the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have retained a foothold in the war-torn Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur, overrun by its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), within six months of the war’s start in April 2023.
Moving against this last holdout, the RSF laid siege in May 2024 on El Fasher, where the SAF has a base, and the Zamzam camp on its outskirts, where some of the local self-defense units allied with the SAF are positioned.
Read more: Sudan’s paramilitary attacks largest IDP camps amid world’s biggest displacement crisis, killing over 100
“People are not only caught in indiscriminate heavy fighting between” the two warring forces, but are also being “actively targeted by the RSF and its allies, notably on the basis of their ethnicity,” Michel Olivier Lacharité, MSF head of emergencies, said on July 3.
SAF created the RSF in Darfur
The RSF was coalesced in 2013 from the militias the SAF had spawned from Arabic-speaking nomadic communities to perpetrate mass atrocities on the regional-language-speaking groups of sedentary farmers that supported the rebel groups during the Darfur civil war in the 2000s.
The partnership between SAF and the RSF lasted a decade, during which they seized power together to form a military junta in 2019, when mass pro-democracy protests forced the ouster of Omar al-Bashir after a 30-year-long dictatorship.
The duo deployed its troops to jointly repress the militant protests that continued until April 15, 2023, when the intensifying power struggle within the junta between the two forces crossed the Rubicon, mobilizing their forces against each other and hurling the country into a civil war.
IDPs under attack
Now continuing into its third year, the civil war has claimed an estimated 150,000 lives and displaced nearly 13 million people, unleashing in this poor North African country the world’s worst displacement crisis.
Over three million of the displaced have fled to other countries as refugees. An estimated 8.6 million have remained as Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Darfur, which already had almost 3.1 million IDPs from the regional civil war in the 2000s, was among the worst-affected regions by this new war.
The RSF maneuvered quickly to take control over this region, starting with West Darfur, where it committed ethnically targeted massacres in June 2023 against the Masalit community, most of whom were displaced in the Darfur civil war. Ethnic cleansing of this community from West Darfur was nearly complete by November that year.
Read more: Ethnic cleansing of West Darfur’s El Geneina culminates in largest massacre since onset of war in Sudan
By then, the RSF had taken over most of the region, with North Darfur as the SAF’s only holdout. Members of the state’s Zaghawa community, which had until then remained neutral, volunteered in large numbers to form self-defense units that aligned themselves with the SAF.
“In light of the ethnically motivated mass atrocities committed on the Masalit in West Darfur… MSF fears such a scenario will be repeated in El Fasher – notably because witnesses report that RSF soldiers spoke of plans to ‘clean El Fasher’ of its non-Arab, and especially Zaghawa, community,” MSF said in a report released on July 3.
Titled “Besieged, attacked, starved: Mass atrocities in El Fasher“, the report added: “Aside from the direct violence exerted on civilians, residents from El Fasher and surrounding areas [also] have been prevented from meeting their basic needs.”
Famine
The RSF’s siege since last May has cut off the city and its surrounding localities from supplies. Its markets have been repeatedly bombed by both sides. At the Zamzam camp located seventeen kilometers south of El Fasher, a famine was declared in August 2024.
Among the largest IDP camps in the country, it was already sheltering about 350,000 displaced people from the Darfur civil war. With new displacements from this intra-junta civil war, IDPs nearly doubled in Zamzam. Its meagre resources in the form of aid were already stretched when its supply was cut off by the RSF’s siege in May 2024.
“When fighting erupted in Zamzam in December 2024 and then intensified at the end of January and in February 2025, the camp was hosting … up to 700,000,” MSF’s report added.
Most of them had to flee again, for the second, even third time, after the RSF’s large-scale ground offensive this April, displacing over 400,000 in three weeks, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“A large proportion of the population fled to El Fasher, where they remained trapped, out of reach of humanitarian aid and exposed to attacks and further mass violence,” the report warns.
No escape for the Zaghawa community
Over 68,000 others have fled across the western border to Chad, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). No one identified as Zaghawa was let through the RSF checkpoints, multiple survivors told the MSF. “They would only let mothers with small children under the age of five through,” said one of the refugees interviewed in Chad.
“Other children and adult men didn’t go through. Males over fifteen can hardly cross the border [into Chad]. They take them, they push them aside, and then we only hear a noise, gunshots … Fifty families came along with me. Not even one boy of 15 years old or above.. [is] among us” in Chad.
“The number of people killed and injured” in the RSF’s offensive on Zamzam is “unknown”, the report said, adding “with no functional hospital within the camp, most of the wounded had no access to life-saving medical assistance.”
“Access to healthcare has been rendered near impossible, as most healthcare infrastructure has been partially or completely damaged.” MSF’s own medical facilities have been attacked over a dozen times since last May.
Original article by Pavan Kulkarni republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Israeli forces take control of Gaza aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg
Crew of activists making symbolic attempt to deliver aid expected to be held in port until deportation hearings
A boat seized by Israel’s military as it tried to break the blockade on Gaza was towed into an Israeli port after sunset on Monday, with the crew of activists including Greta Thunberg expected to be held there in advance of deportation hearings.
The Madleen was attempting to bring a symbolic shipment of aid to Gaza, which faces a looming famine after more than 11 weeks of total siege and ongoing severe restrictions on food entering the territory.
In recent days Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians and injured hundreds more as they tried to reach a handful of sites where a US- and Israeli-backed logistics organisation is handing out limited supplies.
Thunberg and the other 11 members of the Madleen crew, including the French MEP Rima Hassan and the Al Jazeera journalist Omar Faiad, have been out of contact since Israeli forces took control of the boat in the early hours of Monday morning.
The legal adviser to the Israeli navy told the rights group Adalah, which is representing the detainees: “To the best of our knowledge, none of them are injured or currently require medical treatment.”
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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/09/gaza-aid-boat-madleen-israel-greta-thunberg-freedom-flotilla-coalition
Israel’s Seizure of Gaza Freedom Flotilla Called a ‘Blatant Act of International Piracy’
Israel’s defence minister vows to prevent aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg from reaching Gaza
Climate activist Greta Thunberg stands near a Palestinian flag after boarding the Madleen boat and before setting sail for Gaza along with activists of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, departing from the Sicilian port of Catania, Italy, June 1, 2025ISRAEL’S far-right defence minister vowed today to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching the Gaza Strip.
The remarks by Israel Katz comes as the Israelis continue to carry out their attacks on Palestinians desperately seeking aid in Gaza.
Mr Katz said today that Israel wouldn’t allow anyone to break its naval blockade of the Palestinian territory, which he said was aimed at preventing Hamas from importing arms.
“To the anti-semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propagandists — I will say this clearly: You should turn back, because you will not make it to Gaza,” he said in a statement.
Ms Thunberg, a climate campaigner, is among 12 activists aboard the Madleen, which is operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The vessel departed Sicily last Sunday on a mission that aims to break the sea blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave.
The vessel was expected to reach Gaza’s territorial waters this evening.
After a three-month total blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas, Israel started allowing some basic aid into Gaza last month, but humanitarian workers have warned of famine unless the blockade [is lifted] and the war end[s].
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israels-defence-minister-vows-prevent-aid-boat-carrying-greta-thunberg-reaching-gaza
‘The Witkoff Massacre’: Hundreds Killed or Wounded as Israeli Forces Open Fire on Gaza Food Aid Site
Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them.”
Fresh international outrage erupted on Sunday after Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of starving Palestinians in Gaza gathered at a food distribution point where they had been directed by Israeli officials, resulting in a massacre described by witnesses as the largest since a new U.S.-backed humanitarian plan run by Israel was put in place last month.
Health officials in Gaza and multiple witnesses at the site near the southern city of Rafah reported that “Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometer (1,000 yards) away from an aid site run by an Israeli-backed foundation,” according to the Associated Press.
“The international community must act immediately and decisively to compel Israel to end its inhumane aid distribution mechanism in Gaza, following today’s massacre near a U.S.-backed aid centre south of Rafah, where Israeli forces killed or injured over 220 starving civilians,” said the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), in a Sunday morning statement, which had personnel on the ground near the aid station.
“Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us.”According to the group:
Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented Israeli forces opening fire on thousands of civilians gathered at dawn today, Sunday, 1 June 2025, in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, near an aid distribution centre established by the Israeli army. Preliminary data indicate that the attack killed at least 31 civilians, including two women, and injured more than 200 others. Several remain missing.
The death toll is expected to rise due to the high number of critical injuries and the severe collapse of the healthcare system caused by the blockade and Israeli targeting of medical facilities.
In early May, as Common Dreams reported, United Nations aid officials and other humanitarian relief experts warned against the plan put forward by Israel and backed by the Trump administration that would allow a private and newly created Israeli foundation, euphemistically named the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to administer the delivery of aid across Gaza with security provided by the IDF and U.S. mercenary soldiers.
“There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on May 9.a
The controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been marred by controversy since its creation last month and denounced as operating as cover for Israel’s ongoing atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza, said in a statement reviewed by the AP that it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early Sunday “without incident,” and dismissed what it referred to as “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos.”
Footage and testimony from witnesses at the scene posted online, however, made those claims look like lies:
Dr. Ramy Abdul, a professor of law and Euro-Med chair, however, shared footage of the scene where the killings and chaos took place and said: “The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them.”
As did others, Abdul dubbed the horrific event the “Witkoff Massacre,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, now in charge of brokering a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government.
The AP reports:
Thousands of people headed toward the distribution site hours before dawn. As they headed toward the site, Israeli forces ordered them to disperse and come back later, witnesses said. When the crowds reached the Flag Roundabout, around 1 kilometer (1,000 yards) away, at around 3 a.m., Israeli forces opened fire, the witnesses said.
“There was fire from all directions, from naval warships, from tanks and drones,” said Amr Abu Teiba, who was in the crowd.
He said he saw at least 10 bodies with gunshot wounds and several other wounded people, including women. People used carts to ferry the dead and wounded to the field hospital. “The scene was horrible,” he said.
Most of the casualties were shot “in the upper part of their bodies, including the head, neck and chest,” said Dr. Marwan al-Hams, a health ministry official at Nasser Hospital, where many of the wounded were transferred after being initially brought to a field hospital run by the Red Cross.
In a point-by-point breakdown on Friday, Drop Site News‘ Jeremy Scahill detailed that Witkoff, through his negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to “strong-arm Hamas into a deal that does not end the genocide” that continues apace in Gaza.
After Israel last week rejected tentative language amenable to both the U.S. and Hamas negotiators, Witkoff responded on Saturday to an updated draft submitted by Hamas with a rejection of his own, calling it “totally unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, the threat of famine for the entire population of Gaza continues—all with firm U.S. backing and complicity, infuriating humanitarians worldwide as the death and suffering mounts.
Reda Abu Jazar toldAl-Jazeera on Sunday that her brother was among those killed as he attempted to retrieve food at the distribution site in Rafah.
“Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us,” she said.
Multiple deadly incidents over recent weeks at the aid delivery sites set up by the Israelis led Euro-Med on Sunday, following the latest massacre, to say “these incidents should not be dismissed as procedural issues fixable through operational adjustments.”
“They must be understood within the broader context of the grave consequences of the Israeli military’s control over humanitarian aid” in Gaza, the group continued. “It is inconceivable that the same entity accused of committing genocide for nearly 20 months can be entrusted with improving the humanitarian conditions of the very population it targets.”
Euro-Med called for an “immediate end to the Israeli aid distribution mechanism in the Gaza Strip… as it has become a site of field executions and fails to meet even the most basic humanitarian standards.”
The group called for the reinstatement of UN-led relief operations “to ensure the safe and effective delivery of aid to Gaza’s population.”
Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
