The World Health Organization says the death toll from nearly one month of brutal fighting in Sudan is now over 600.

The U.N. health agency said Tuesday that more than 5,000 others have been injured in connection with the fighting between Sudan’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

The two generals are former allies who together orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed a transition to civilian rule following the 2019 ouster of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir.

Tensions between the generals have been growing over disagreements about how the RSF should be integrated in the army and who should oversee that process. The restructuring of the military was part of an effort to restore the country to civilian rule and end the political crisis sparked by the 2021 military coup.

Repeated cease-fire agreements have failed to end the conflict or even do much to reduce the violence.

Envoys for the two factions have been meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for several days to hash out an agreement to allow humanitarian aid to reach hundreds of thousands in need of food, shelter and medical care in Khartoum and other Sudanese cities.

The Saudi kingdom has already pledged that it will provide Sudan with $100 million worth of aid.

The United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday more than 700,000 Sudanese have fled their homes since the violence broke out last month – a figure that is more than double the 334,000 the agency reported to be internally displaced last week.

The IOM said an additional 100,000 Sudanese have fled the country.

Most aid operations have been suspended or severely scaled back due to the lack of security. Several aid workers have been killed in the fighting.

Looting also has hampered aid operations. The World Food Program said nearly 17,000 tons of food worth between $13 million and $14 million have been stolen from its warehouses across Sudan.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) says it’s still searching for 20 people abducted by gunmen from a church during a Sunday service. CAN says gunmen invaded the church in a remote Kaduna state village and took more than 40 people but later let some go. Kaduna is among Nigerian states most affected by groups of armed bandits that frequently kidnap for ransom.

The Kaduna state chair of the Christian Association of Nigeria Tuesday said about 42 people were in the church on Sunday morning before the attackers invaded and took all the worshipers away, including women and children.

He said the bandits later released 22 of them and have been holding the remaining 20.

It’s the latest attack on a church in Nigeria.

Reverend Joseph Hayab, secretary general of the Christian Association of Nigeria, spoke to VOA by phone.

“Up till now, the people are with the bandits. The bandits have not called. The [remaining] in fear have left the village. The bandits for some reason just selected some and allowed them to come back. Sometimes when they pick a large number like that, they select those who they think are strong enough that they can use to bargain for money,” he said.

CAN said the state police have been told about the abduction. Police have yet to issue a statement, and spokesman Mohammed Jalige did not take calls for comment.

Armed gangs known locally as bandits have been carrying out kidnap-for-ransom raids in Northern Nigeria for years. Local villages, schools and churches are often targets.

Gangs have been especially active in Chikun district where the church is located.

CAN’s national spokesperson, Luminous Jannamike, said this latest kidnapping is one too many.

“It’s a deeply disturbing development. The Christian Association of Nigeria is closely monitoring the situation and is in contact with the families of the victims, as well as with the authorities to obtain more information on the incident. While security agents are making efforts, it is clear that more needs to be done to protect places of worship from criminals and terrorists,” said Jannamike.

Nigeria is facing numerous security challenges, but kidnap-for-ransom attacks are rampant. 

Experts say a declining economy and increasing hardships are fueling the rise in insecurity and criminality.

Jannamike said to address the problem, authorities must fix some fundamental issues.

“To put an end to the incessant attacks on churches and other places of worship, it is important government takes a comprehensive approach that involves addressing the underlying socioeconomic and political factors that contribute to insecurity in the country,” said Jannamike.

In May 2022, the prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria was kidnapped. He was freed after a huge ransom was paid.

In July, hundreds of clergymen protested attacks on priests in Kaduna after a clergyman was gruesomely killed by gunmen while on his farm.
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Sudanese citizens are cautiously optimistic about the Saudi- and U.S.-brokered peace talks in Jeddah between their country’s warring generals amid reports of a lull in the fighting.

But thousands of Sudanese are still trying to flee the country, and analysts are skeptical that any deal between the two sides will bring long-term peace.

The mediation talks continued for a third day Monday, with no word on whether the negotiations were making progress.

Representatives of the military and the Rapid Support Forces were invited to Jeddah to discuss a proposed cease-fire so humanitarian aid agencies can access people who are wounded, hungry or displaced after more than three weeks of fighting.

The Sudan Tribune reported Sunday that the army negotiators have made three demands: unconditional withdrawal of the Rapid Support Forces from Khartoum, an extension of a humanitarian truce, and the integration of the RSF into the Sudanese army within two years.

The newspaper said, “It’s not clear how the RSF negotiators will respond to these demands.”

Renewed gunfire

A truce between the sides remains officially in place, but eyewitnesses in Khartoum told VOA they heard renewed gunfire and an airstrike in the city Monday in and around the downtown area.

Sudanese citizens are watching the talks in Jeddah with a mix of hope and skepticism.

Sumeya Musa, who fled to Al Jazirah state from the violence in Khartoum, said she was optimistic that the talks would bear fruit and allow her to find a safe route to escape Sudan.

“Our hope from these talks is that the guns will be silenced and we move out of this country,” she said. “Practically, we are suffering. We just want to see that airstrikes, bombing and guns stop for a while.”

Another woman, Amira Saleh, arrived in Port Sudan a week ago and is living in an  open area within the town.

Saleh said she doubted that the warring parties were ready to stop hostilities.

“There is no consensus among them, and they will not reach any agreement, or at least a basis to draw a road map that can take these talks to a stage of negotiations,” she said.

Sudanese writer Mekki Al Mograbi said that the majority of Sudanese citizens support the military and that there was no way they would allow the Rapid Support Forces to remain as a separate armed group.

He said he thought the only solution at the moment would be for the RSF to get a safe route and leave the city.

“Granting the Rapid Support Forces safe passage or their exit out of Khartoum could be a possible solution,” he said.

An Arab foreign ministers summit on Sunday in Cairo called for a complete cease-fire in Sudan. The ministers also formed a committee to try to find a way to halt the fighting.

In a statement, the African Union urged parties to the conflict to immediately cease fire for humanitarian reasons and urgently open humanitarian corridors.
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The remains of at least 20 people were found buried in a mass grave in an area used to cultivate cacao in Ndoma village in Congo’s North Kivu province over the weekend, according to local authorities and a military spokesperson. 

A team of forensic and security officers exhumed the bodies after residents of villages in Beni territory found bones and clothing and alerted officials. 

Until earlier this year, the area had been under the control of the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, a rebel militia with links to the Islamic State group. The area is now controlled by the Congolese army.

Muyisa Kambale Sindani, representative of the nearby Kilya village, said Saturday that the remains were reburied “with dignity and security.” He confirmed that bones of at least 20 people were found, but that it wasn’t possible to search further because of a lack of security in the region.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long the bodies had been there. Eastern Congo has been plagued by violence for decades as more than 120 armed groups fight for power, influence and resources and some to protect their communities.

The ADF attacks have concentrated on North Kivu province, but the group has recently extended its operations into the neighboring Ituri province and to areas near the regional capital, Goma, in South Kivu.

The rebels are accused by the U.N. and rights groups of targeting, maiming, raping and abducting civilians, including children. Captain Anthony Mwalushayi, regional spokesperson for the Congolese army, said the area had been an ADF stronghold. 

“There are innocent people who have been buried here. This is really a mass grave,” he said, but noted that among the bones that were found, there were military insignias. 

Mwalushayi pledged authorities would investigate and bring those responsible to justice. 

Residents are demanding more protection from the government but also justice. 

“We demand justice to be done so that the perpetrators of this massacre answer for their actions and set an example for other rebels to stop killing us unfairly,” said Richard Kakule, a farmer from Ndoma.

After the forensic experts collected the remains and placed them in white body bags, locals organized a small ceremony and sang while burying the bodies with their own hands.

ADF rebels have been active in eastern Congo for decades and have killed thousands in the region since they resurfaced in 2013. 

Earlier this year, the United States offered a reward of up to $5 million for information that could lead to the capture of the group’s leader, Seka Musa Baluku. 
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Nigerian security forces have rescued 58 people who were abducted by gunmen in central Kogi state, near the capital, Abuja. Nigerian police say one of those abducted was killed during the rescue operation and the kidnappers escaped.

Police authorities in a statement Sunday said the rescue mission was part of operations by security forces to fight violent crimes, rescue victims and nab offenders around Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and neighboring states.

The captives were held in a forest in Gegu district of nearby Kogi state.

Police said kidnappers fought back hard as security forces arrived but say security agents overpowered and injured many of them before they fled, leaving the victims behind.

The Abuja police commissioner Haruna Garba told VOA via phone that a total of 58 abductees were rescued in the Gegu raid and others.

“Fourteen of the people from Kwali were rescued, then another eight that were taken away from Niger into forests close to our borders were also rescued, that one came after,” he said.

Police said one of the abductees who sustained an injury during the Gegu rescue operation died on the spot. They said the other kidnap victims rescued will be reunited with their families after medical exams.

Nigeria is battling a range of security issues but kidnapping is among the most challenging.

Abuja has maintained relative calm despite states not far from it battling armed violence including more frequent kidnap-for-ransom attacks.

Security analyst Senator Iroegbu says the general insecurity can be traced back to a jailbreak last year in Abuja that that freed hundreds of criminals including terror suspects.

“It’s still linked to the issue of so many unresolved cases of insecurity, one leads to the other,” he said. “There are a lot of sleeper cells around waiting to activate any moment. So what you have now is mixed, from terrorist groups and criminals’ groups.”

Iroegbu says to address the problem, authorities must change their approach to security matters.

“They’ve not yet changed their tactics, they’ve always been reactive, government needs to take more proactive measures,” he added. “Most people are under the excruciating pain of the poor economy, people sleep without food. They should be able to sleep feeling safe.”

Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu will be sworn-in on May 29. His predecessor has been widely criticized for not securing the country enough.
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Envoys from both of Sudan’s warring factions are in Saudi Arabia to arrange for the opening of humanitarian corridors in Sudan. The parties have insisted that they are only sitting across from each other to bring some relief to the humanitarian situation in the North African country and not to negotiate a truce.  

The pre-negotiation talks began Saturday. The Saudi kingdom has already pledged that it will provide Sudan with $100 million’s worth of humanitarian aid.  

Fighting erupted in Sudan in mid-April. After just a few weeks of fighting between the country’s military and a paramilitary force, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have been forced to flee from their homes, with many of the displaced Sudanese seeking refuge in bordering countries.  

The two sides – Sudan’s military, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo – have not met since the fighting erupted April 15.    

Fragile cease-fire agreements have failed to end the conflict or even do much to reduce the violence. 

The United Nations migration agency said recently that at least 334,000 people have been internally displaced by the fighting, in addition to the 100,000 who have fled the country. The U.N. refugee agency has warned the fighting could cause more than 800,000 to flee Sudan.    

          

Most aid operations have been suspended or severely scaled back due to the lack of security. Several aid workers have been killed in the fighting. 

Looting also has hampered aid operations.    

     

The World Food Program said nearly 17,000 tons of food worth between $13 million and $14 million have been stolen from its warehouses across Sudan.  

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said recently it has launched an emergency appeal to support the Sudanese Red Crescent Society in its effort to deliver assistance to 200,000 people.  

     

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Seven soldiers were killed Sunday after their vehicle ran over a landmine in the Niger’s western Tillaberi region, said the National Guard of Niger (GNN).

Jihadist fighters regularly launch attacks in the region.

A vehicle carrying supplies on a weekly delivery run hit the mine late in the morning 6 kilometers (4 miles) from Samira village, said the GNN in a statement.  

The village, which lies not far from Niger’s border with Burkina Faso in the southwest, has since 2004 hosted the country’s only industrial-scale gold mine.

This assault was just the latest in a series of attacks against Niger’s soldiers.

The impoverished Sahel country is grappling with an insurgency by jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. In the southwest, they also have to contend with jihadist fighters from Boko Haram.

It is supported by a number of Western countries, including France and the United States, who both have military bases there.
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The death toll from flash floods and landslides in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo has risen beyond 200, with many more people still missing, according to local authorities in the province of South Kivu.

Thomas Bakenge, administrator of Kalehe, the worst-hit territory, told reporters on the scene Saturday that 203 bodies had been recovered so far, but that efforts to find others were continuing.

In the village of Nyamukubi, where hundreds of homes were washed away, rescue workers and survivors dug through the ruins Saturday looking for more bodies in the mud.

Villagers wept as they gathered around some of the bodies recovered so far, which lay on the grass covered in muddy cloths near a rescue workers post.

Grieving survivor Anuarite Zikujuwa said she had lost her entire family, including her in-laws, as well as many of her neighbors. “The whole village has been turned into a wasteland. There’s only stones left, and we can’t even tell where our land once was,” she said.

Michake Ntamana, a rescue worker helping look for and bury the dead, said villagers were trying to identify and collect the bodies of loved ones found so far. He said some bodies washed down from villages higher in the hills were being buried shrouded just in leaves off the trees. “It’s truly sad because we have nothing else here,” he said.

Rivers broke their banks in villages in the territory of Kalehe, close to the shores of Lake Kivu on Thursday. Authorities have reported scores of people injured. One survivor told AP the flash floods took everyone by surprise.

South Kivu Gov. Théo Ngwabidje visited the area to see the destruction for himself. He posted on his Twitter account that the provincial government had dispatched medical, shelter and food supplies.

Several main roads to the affected area have been made impassable by the rains, hampering the relief efforts.

President Felix Tshisekedi has declared a national day of mourning on Monday to honor the victims, and the central government is sending a crisis management team to South Kivu to support the provincial government.

Heavy rains in recent days have brought misery to thousands in East Africa, with parts of Uganda and Kenya also seeing heavy rainfall.

Flooding and landslides in Rwanda, which borders Congo, left 129 people dead earlier this week.

Local government official Bakenge told AP, “This is the fourth time that such damage has been caused by the same rivers. Not 10 years pass without them causing enormous damage.”
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CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — With 12 storeys, a breathtaking view of Cape Town’s imposing Table Mountain and a minimal ecological footprint, the world’s tallest building made with industrial hemp is soon to open its doors in South Africa.

Workers in central Cape Town are putting the finishing touches on the 54-room Hemp Hotel, which is due to be completed in June.

“Hempcrete” blocks derived from the cannabis plant have been used to fill the building’s walls, supported by a concrete and cement structure.

Hemp bricks are becoming increasingly popular in the construction world thanks to their insulating, fire-resistant and climate-friendly properties.

Used notably in Europe for thermal renovation of existing buildings, the blocks are carbon negative — meaning their production sucks more planet-warming gases out of the atmosphere than it puts in.

“The plant absorbs the carbon, it gets put into a block and is then stored into a building for 50 years or longer,” explains Boshoff Muller, director of Afrimat Hemp, a subsidiary of South African construction group Afrimat, which produced the bricks for the hotel.

“What you see here is a whole bag full of carbon, quite literally,” Muller says as he pats a bag of mulch at a brick factory on the outskirts of Cape Town, where hemp hurds, water and lime are mixed together to make the blocks.

The industrial hemp used for the Hemp Hotel had to be imported from Britain as South Africa banned local production up to last year, when the government started issuing cultivation permits.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made developing the country’s hemp and cannabis sector an economic priority, saying it could create more than 130,000 jobs.

Carbon credits

Afrimat Hemp is now preparing to produce its first blocks made only with South African hemp.

Hemp Hotel architect Wolf Wolf, 52, sees this as a game changer to make hemp buildings more widespread in this corner of the world.

“It shouldn’t be just a high-end product,” says Wolf, whose firm is involved in several social housing projects in South Africa and neighboring Mozambique.

Yet cost remains an issue.

“Hemp is 20 percent more expensive to build with” compared to conventional materials, says Afrimat Hemp’s carbon consultant Wihan Bekker.

But as the world races to lower carbon emissions, the firm sees “huge opportunities” for its green bricks, says Bekker.

Carbon credits — permits normally related to the planting of trees to safeguard tropical rainforests that companies buy to offset their emissions — could help make hempcrete blocks more financially palatable, he says.

“We can fund forests, or we can fund someone to live in a hemp house. It’s the same principle,” Bekker says.

The carbon footprint of a 40 square meter (430 square foot) house built with hemp is three tons of CO2 lower than that of a conventional building, according to Afrimat Hemp.

“We see this as a bit of a lighthouse project,” Muller says of the Hemp Hotel.

“It shows hemp has its place in the construction sector.” Hemp Hotel has been ranked the “tallest building to incorporate hemp-based materials in the world” by Steve Allin, director of the Ireland-based International Hemp Building Association.
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At least 13 people were killed in a displacement camp in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday night, officials said, in the latest violence to hit the conflict-torn region.

The bloodshed occurred in a camp in Kisimba, in North Kivu province’s Masisi territory, said a local administrator who requested anonymity.

Five people were also wounded, he told Agence France-Presse, adding that pro-Hutu Nyatura militiamen were the suspected perpetrators.

A Red Cross official provided the same casualty toll.

Armed groups have plagued much of eastern DRC for three decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.

One militia, the M23, has captured swaths of territory in North Kivu since taking up arms again in late 2021 after years of dormancy.

The rebel campaign has displaced more than 1 million people, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A rights activist in Kisimba, who asked not to be named, said the M23 was initially assumed to be behind the attack but that the perpetrators were members of a Nyatura group.

AFP was unable to independently verify either the death toll or the motive behind the attack.

An East African regional military force has taken over some areas previously occupied by the M23 since December.

But the Tutsi-led rebels are still present in North Kivu and still occasionally clash with rival militias.

The DRC accuses its smaller central African neighbor Rwanda of backing the M23, something Rwanda has repeatedly denied. But United States and French officials, as well as United Nations experts, agree with the assessment.
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A group of 130 Nigerians evacuated from Sudan arrived in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Friday, about 36 hours after another group of nearly 400, mostly students, had landed.

The arrivals — 128 females and two males — were evacuated from Port Sudan on the Red Sea and received by Nigerian officials. More evacuations are expected in coming days.

Nasir Sani Gwarzo, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, told a crowd that Nigerians who fled Sudan to Egypt also will be brought home.

“We’re getting good cooperation from the Nigerian communities that are living in that port,” said Gwarzo. “In the next few hours, we shall have no Nigerian stranded in the Egyptian side.”

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency estimates some 5,000 Nigerians were in Sudan when fighting broke out on April 15 between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.

On Wednesday, Nigeria evacuated 376 Nigerians from Sudan. Gwarzo said hundreds more will be evacuated soon.

Ismail Aliyu, chairman of the nonprofit Center for Peace and Literacy Propagation, said students sponsored by the nonprofit to study in Sudan have yet to be evacuated.

“As I speak right now, none of my students is back from Sudan, they’re still in Port Sudan,” Aliyu said. “The most important thing is that most of the students have left the war zone.”

Authorities said the evacuation was delayed by logistics and bottlenecks at the Sudanese-Egyptian border. 

“Some Nigerians were claimed to have entered the bus without permission which caused the Egyptian side to delay the flight until that was sorted,” said Gwarzo. “The Nigerians have now been moved into the Egyptian side of the border and we have two planes that can carry all of them at the same time.”

NEMA said authorities have expanded partnerships with more airlines to evacuate the remaining nationals as soon as possible.
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Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission has denounced security measures against protesters in the Amhara region this week that it said led to the deaths of civilians.

The government-established commission, which is monitoring operations in the region, reported civilian deaths, though it did not specify how many people were killed.

The regional director for monitoring and investigation, Alemu Meheretu, said the commission has received reports of shelling in the Amhara region’s North Shewa Zone.

“There have been attacks with heavy weapons. People have died because of this, and we have also been informed about the destruction of houses as well,” Meheretu said. “Roadblocks and tensions are also being reported.”

Meheretu added that the commission will issue a report and work on interventions when it has full information.

The clashes are between the Ethiopian military and the Amhara region militia, which has set up roadblocks on major routes to the capital.

Protests in Amhara started in early April, following government calls to integrate regional forces into the military or the police.

Regional Amhara forces fought alongside the Ethiopian government during the two-year war in the neighboring Tigray region.

The government’s law enforcement operations have also targeted opposition members accused of inciting protesters, according to the Human Rights Commission.

Attempts to reach the region’s communications director went unanswered.
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