U.S. and European media

May 11, 2023

Reuters: Clashes in North Darfur, civilians flee. Darfur rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) clashed with forces loyal to a former rebel leader in North Darfur on Saturday, rebels and the Sudanese army said. A spokesman for the UNAMID peacekeeping force said there were unconfirmed reports about fighting between the government and JEM in North Darfur and that about 160 people had been displaced. JEM commander Suleiman Sandal told Reuters JEM forces had fought off an ambush in Umm Baru by Sudanese armed forces and troops loyal to former rebel Minni Arcua Minnawi, the only Darfur rebel to sign a peace deal with the government in 2006. UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said: "Civilian populations from that area, because of the fighting, have started moving towards our camp. They are mostly women, children and older people, and we are taking care of them."

Reuters: UN says not as ready as would like for Darfur rainy season. The expulsion of international NGOs means aid agencies are not as ready as they could be for the rainy season in Darfur but a humanitarian crisis is not imminent, a senior U.N. official said on Sunday. Some parts of Darfur, a region roughly the size of France in western Sudan, become very difficult to reach during the rainy season which starts in a few weeks. Rain floods unmade roads and tracks and rivers swell. Many of the camps, where some 2 million people headed after the violence drove them from their homes, lie in flood plains. Speaking to reporters at the end of a trip to Sudan including Darfur, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said: "We are not as ready as we would like to be. Normally before the rainy season, the agencies, NGOs working there would be pre-positioning food and other goods...because it becomes very difficult to move them around once the rainy season started." "We now have access, we'll be working extremely hard to make up for lost time. But we're not in as good a position as we would have been otherwise," Holmes said.

Associated Press: Sudan: Gunmen Kill Peacekeeper. Gunmen shot and killed an unarmed peacekeeper outside his home in Darfur, a spokesman for the joint United Nations-African Union mission said Friday. The peacekeeper, whose name and nationality were not released, was the 15th military observer to be killed in Darfur since the peacekeeping mission began in January 2008. Noureddine Mezni, the spokesman for the mission, said the peacekeeper was attacked late Thursday outside his home in South Darfur's capital, Nyala. The gunmen fled in the peacekeeper's sport utility vehicle, he said.

Reuters: Chad threatens to cut ties with Sudan, AU. Chad may cut ties with its neighbour Sudan and the African Union after the organisation failed to solve the long-running dispute between the two oil-producing countries, President Idriss Deby said on Saturday. Chad halted an attempted rebel advance on the capital last week after fighting in the east, which it accused Sudan of stoking by sending armed groups over the border. "The Chadian government should evaluate, together with friendly countries, our relations with the African Union seeing its inability to find suitable solutions to crisis between Chad and Sudan," Deby told politicians at the presidential palace. "Chad should consider withdrawing its confidence in the African Union and pass the resolution of the crisis to the United Nations alone," he said. The fighting, in which Chad said 225 rebels and 22 government soliders were killed, threatens a peace deal Chad and Sudan signed in Doha last week in which they agreed to normalise relations and reject support for rebels hostile to either of them.

Reuters: Mia Farrow ends Darfur fast, Branson takes over. Actress Mia Farrow, ailing after almost two weeks on a hunger strike, announced on Friday that British billionaire Richard Branson would take over her protest in solidarity with people in Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region. A Farrow spokesman said her health had deteriorated in the past few days and her doctor requested that she end the liquids-only fast she began 12 days ago to protest Khartoum's expulsion of more than a dozen aid agencies from Darfur. Farrow asked Branson to take over the fast, her statement said, adding that the British entrepreneur had accepted and would begin a three-day hunger strike on Friday. "We all need to stand up and demand that international aid is restored and that the people of Darfur are protected and given the chance to live in peace," Branson was quoted as saying in the statement.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].