Category World News

The Sudanese armed forces (SAF) are renewing efforts for an operation to retake the Kordofan and Darfur regions from the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as the civil war rages deep into its third year.

The army has been assessing the RSF’s capabilities and resources in readiness for launching the military operation with a large number of military formations fully prepared to launch an attack, it said.

Any full-scale operation to liberate Kordofan in central Sudan and Darfur in the west would surpass the SAF’s recapture of the capital, Khartoum, in March in terms of the planning that has taken place before the mission, it added.

Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Moran said the Sudanese army had reorganised and redeployed troops in various part of Kordofan.

“We have also seen the Sudanese army retake control of territories in the Kordofan region as well as launch air strikes and drone strikes on several RSF positions in Darfur and Kordofan,” she said.

“And it looks like these are the preparations or the first steps of that offensive that the army has been speaking about in efforts to regain control of territories in Kordofan and Darfur,” she added.

The SAF on Friday said it inflicted heavy losses on the RSF during a series of air and ground operations carried out in Darfur and Kordofan.

In a statement, the military said its forces conducted strikes against RSF positions, destroying about 240 combat vehicles and killing hundreds of fighters.

It added that its ground forces had succeeded in pushing RSF fighters out of wide areas in both Darfur and Kordofan and operations were ongoing to pursue remaining elements.

Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi said recent military action by the SAF in Kordofan has prevented the RSF from laying siege on North Kordofan’s capital, el-Obeid.

But Morgan said people on the ground in Kordofan were not reassured by these words and want to see more definitive action from the SAF.

“They want to be able to return to their homes with the RSF withdrawing or retreating from the areas that they have taken over. So far, that is not happening,” she said.

In the meantime, attacks continue. A drone attack carried out by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, an RSF ally, on Monday reportedly killed five people in Habila in South Kordofan State.

The RSF’s recent resurgence in the vast regions of Darfur and Kordofan has displaced millions more people.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity while the RSF has been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that the United Nations said may amount to genocide.

Recently, the UN described el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, as a “crime scene” after gaining access to the largely deserted city for the first time since its takeover by the RSF in October, which was marked by mass atrocities.

International aid staff visited el-Fasher after weeks of negotiations, finding few people remaining in what was once a densely populated city with a large displaced population.

More than 100,000 residents fled el-Fasher after the RSF seized control on October 26 following an 18-month siege. Survivors reported ethnically motivated mass killings and widespread detentions.

Fierce fighting and global funding cuts have pushed more than 33 million people towards starvation in what has become one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, nongovernmental organisations said on Friday as the war passed its 1,000th day.

The conflict has displaced 11 million people internally and abroad and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.

Prime Minister Kamil Idris announced on Sunday the government’s return to Khartoum, after nearly three years of operating from its wartime capital of Port Sudan.

In the early days of the civil war, which began in April 2023, the army-aligned government fled the capital, which was quickly overrun by the RSF.

The government has pursued a gradual return to Khartoum since the army recaptured the city.

Malaysia has blocked access to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence model Grok amid a global uproar over the chatbot’s ability to create sexually explicit images of people without their consent.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Sunday it had temporarily banned Grok after ordering the chatbot’s developer xAI and the social media platform X to introduce safeguards to ensure compliance with the law.

In response to regulatory notices issued last week, X “focused primarily on the user-initiated reporting mechanisms and failed to address the inherent risks that arise from the design and operation of the AI tool”, the MCMC said in a statement.

“MCMC considers this insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance.”

The Malaysian watchdog’s announcement came a day after Indonesia became the world’s first country to formally ban the chatbot, which is offered as both a standalone platform and an in-built feature on X.

Grok has been mired in controversy in recent days over the use of its image-generation tool to depict real people in minimal clothing and sexualised poses without their consent.

The spread of the sexualised deepfakes, some of them including minors, has prompted condemnation and calls to action from officials in numerous countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia.

xAI initially responded to a request for comment from Al Jazeera with an automated response saying: “Legacy Media Lies.”

A spokesperson later directed Al Jazeera to an earlier statement by X, which said the platform takes action against illegal content, including child sexual abuse material.

“Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” the statement said.

Grok last week began limiting the use of its image-generation tool on X to paid subscribers in an apparent bid to quell the controversy.