Archive April 21, 2025

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have again attacked el-Fasher city in the western Darfur region of Sudan, killing more than 30 people, an activist group has said.

The attack by the RSF and allied militias is the latest deadly offensive on the area, the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the war-torn region.

The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher said dozens of other people were wounded in the Sunday attack, which involved “heavy artillery shelling”. The RSF renewed the assault on Monday, shelling residential buildings and open markets, according to the activist group, which tracks the war.

No new casualties were immediately reported. The RSF did not immediately respond to the claims.

For over a year, the RSF has sought to wrest control of el-Fasher, located more than 800km (500 miles) southwest of the capital, Khartoum, from the SAF, launching regular attacks on the city and two major famine-hit camps for displaced people on its outskirts.

However, observers say attacks have intensified in recent months as the RSF suffered battlefield setbacks in Khartoum and other urban areas in the county’s east and centre.

El-Fasher is estimated to be home to more than one million people, including hundreds of thousands of those displaced by the fighting.

Aid ‘dangerously restricted’

The latest violence comes less than a week after a two-day attack by the RSF and its allied militias on e-Fasher, as well as the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps for internally displaced people, killed more than 400 people, according to the United Nations.

The attack forced up to 400,000 people to flee the Zamzam camp, Sudan’s largest, which has become inaccessible to aid workers, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

On Monday, the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher described the situation in the region as “horrifying”.

He said he had spoken by phone with both SAF general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who committed to giving “full access to get aid in”.

International aid agencies have long warned that a full-scale RSF assault on el-Fasher could lead to devastating urban warfare and a new wave of mass displacement.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has described the situation as “hell on earth” for at least 825,000 children trapped in and around el-Fasher.

The UN also warned of a catastrophic humanitarian situation.

“The humanitarian community in Sudan is facing critical and intensifying operational challenges in North Darfur,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said on Sunday.

She added that “despite repeated appeals, humanitarian access to el-Fasher and surrounding areas remains dangerously restricted”, warning that the lack of access was increasing “the vulnerability of hundreds of thousands of people”.

Nkweta-Salami called for UN and NGO actors to be granted “immediate and sustained access to these areas to ensure life-saving support can be delivered safely and at scale”.

Meanwhile, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for aid airdrops into the city in the face of access restrictions.

Sudan’s brutal civil war began on April 15, 2023, after a tenuous power-sharing agreement between SAF General al-Burhan and RSF leader Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, fell apart.

To date, more than 24,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the UN, although activists say the number is likely far higher.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke and irreversible heart failure, Vatican doctor Andrea Arcangeli has said in a death certificate.

The certificate released on Monday for the 88-year-old pontiff said the pope had fallen into a coma before his death earlier in the day.

Pope Francis died of “cerebral stroke, coma, irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse”, the death certificate said. It added the religious leader, who had been the first Latin American pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, died at 7:35am local time (0535 GMT) in his apartment at the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican.

Just a day earlier, the pontiff made what would be his final major appearance as he greeted thousands of Easter worshippers from an open-top Popemobile in St Peter’s Square and delivered a blessing through an aide.

Pope Francis had suffered various ailments during his 12-year papacy, with severe complications in recent weeks following a bout of double pneumonia for which he spent 38 days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

The death certificate added that Francis also suffered from arterial hypertension, multiple bronchiectasis and Type 2 diabetes, ailments which had not been previously disclosed.

The Vatican also released Pope Francis’s spiritual testament – a written statement of faith – in which he said he wished to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major and not at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, unlike many of his predecessors.

The text specified Pope Francis wanted to be buried “in the ground, without particular decoration” but with the inscription of his papal name in Latin: Franciscus.

“As I sense the approaching twilight of my earthly life, and with firm hope in eternal life, I wish to set out my final wishes solely regarding the place of my burial,” read the testament, which was dated June 29, 2022.

“May the Lord grant a fitting reward to all those who have loved me and who continue to pray for me,” it said.

The Vatican began on Monday evening a Rosary prayer in St. Peter’s Square in its first public commemoration following Pope Francis’ death. Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, led the prayer at sunset.

Sister Raffaella Petrini, president of the Vatican City State and one of the highest ranking women at the Vatican, delivered the first reading. Her appointment was a sign of Francis’ insistence that women be given more prominent, decision-making roles.

Pope Francis’s passing marks the beginning of nine days of mourning called the Novendiale.

His body will be dressed in papal vestments and placed in St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing ahead of his burial. Daily prayer services and requiem masses will be held in Catholic churches worldwide and at St Peter’s Basilica during this time.

The Vatican also enters a transitional period called the sede vacante or interregnum, where power is handed over to the College of Cardinals, but no major decisions will be made until the papacy is filled.