Armed groups of JNIM fighters have blocked key routes used by fuel tankers, disrupting supply lines to the capital Bamako and other regions across Mali.

The al-Qaida-linked jihadist group Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) is gradually converging on Mali’s capital, Bamako, with increasing attacks in recent weeks, including on army-backed convoys.

Should the city fall, the west African country would be on its way to becoming an Islamist republic with strict interpretations of sharia law.

That would fulfil a jihadist mandate following in the steps of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan or Syria, where the former rebel Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is now head of state. In areas under its control, JNIM is already enforcing dress codes and punishments via courts that, as Human Rights Watch noted in a 2024 report, did not adhere to fair trial standards.

On Tuesday the US state department issued its second advisory in a week to its citizens in Mali, urging all US citizens to “depart immediately using commercial aviation”, citing infrastructural problems and the “unpredictability of Bamako’s [the capital] security situation”. On Wednesday, Australia, Germany and Italy also urged their citizens to leave as soon as possible.

Observers within and outside Mali say things could escalate faster and that the US’s warnings are the latest indication that the country is on the brink of a third successful coup in five years and the sixth since independence from France in September 1960.

“I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but the country is collapsing before our eyes,” a former Malian minister who now lives in exile told the Guardian anonymously. “I would not be shocked if another overthrow happens within the next few days.

“Before 31 December, a coup will happen in the Sahel,” the former official continued. “Mali will go first and then you’ll have the same domino effect that we’ve seen between 2020 and 2023, with all of these countries falling one after the other.”

Mali is grappling with a two-week fuel scarcity due to blockades targeting trucks from neighbouring Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal, by JNIM. Drivers and soldiers have either been kidnapped or killed – or in some cases, both.

Landlocked Mali relies mostly on imports to keep its stuttering economy running. In the absence of the fuel trucks, life has come to a standstill in most of Bamako.

Long queues in gas stations are a common sight now, and in many parts of the city, there is no electricity. Shops and supermarkets are closed, as many people stay indoors, unable to find transport and prices of food items keep rising. Schools have also been shut down tentatively, until 9 November.

Analysts such as Ulf Laessing, the Bamako-based head of the Sahel programme at the German thinkthank Konrad Adenauer Foundation, say next week could be pivotal in the lifespan of the current junta.

“I think next week will be really bad, because then the existing stocks everybody’s living off will be gone,” he said. “It’s hard to see a way out. It’s just difficult to see how they can resupply the capital in sufficient quantities.”

Several analysts approached by the Guardian declined to comment on the matter, saying the regime’s sensitivity about comments deemed to not be strongly in its favour, is at an all-time high.

An Islamic state

“So far nobody is demonstrating against the government because I think they know if they brought down this government, then the next one would be an Islamist one so it can also kind of strengthen the regime’s resolve a bit,” said Laessing.

In June 2020, civil society, religious groups and opposition parties formed a protest coalition known as the June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP) that spearheaded large-scale protests against the democratically elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, citing corruption and worsening security.

Among the M5-RFP’s most visible figures was Mahmoud Dicko, an influential and controversial imam who first came to national spotlight with his role in the 1991 coup of the then president Moussa Traoré. The cleric’s mobilisation played a key role in forcing the collapse of the Keïta government.

During one meeting where the regional bloc Ecowas, or the Economic Community of West African States, mediated between the state and M5-RFP, Keïta dropped a shocker. “I was part of the meeting when he told Ecowas leaders that Imam Dicko wants Mali to become an Islamic country under sharia law,” the former minister said. “When he said that, hell broke loose.”

Within two months, soldiers led by Assimi Goïta, a young captain, took over government, replacing parliament with the National Transitional Council (NTC). A second coup within a year led to Goïta being sworn in as head of state.

However, the junta’s promises have mostly been unfulfilled. The NTC, headed by Col Malick Diaw, scheduled elections for February 2022 but has repeatedly postponed them.

In the meantime the death toll from the insurgency has risen sharply; the total since 2012 has exceeded 17,700, with more than two-thirds of that occurring after 2020, according to data from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. JNIM, whose finances have been boosted by several high-profile ransoms paid for abductees, including Emirati citizens, is expanding operations to Benin and Nigeria in coastal west Africa.

Human rights groups have also alleged that Mali’s operations with Wagner mercenaries and pro-junta militias comprising hunter militias are rife with abuses.

End of the road?

The junta’s isolation seems nearly complete.

It signed a pact for military assistance with the regimes of Burkina Faso and Niger but the effect of that remains to be seen. Having broken off relations with Ecowas, Mali is also unable to draw on its military resources.

In recent years, some foreign diplomatic missions have scaled back their presence just as the junta expelled staff from other groups amid deteriorating relations with the west.

Consequently, there have been reports of increasing frustration within the ranks of the army, suggesting internal tensions among the five colonels who staged the first coup. Two of them, Diaw and the defence minister, Sadio Camara, are being mooted as potential successors who could replace Goïta.

Meanwhile, Dicko, who has been in exile in Algeria since 2023 after falling out with the government and losing his diplomatic passport, is expected to return.

“Some JNIM people are asking for Dicko to come back so they can negotiate with him instead of the Malian government,” the insider said. “This is their end goal, to turn Mali into an Islamic state and they’re very close.”

The UN special rapporteur on torture is being urged to investigate Lebanon’s role in the treatment of the Egyptian-Turkish poet and activist Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi, a dissident who has been imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates for more than 10 months over a post he made on social media.

Legal counsel representing Qaradawi filed a complaint to the UN rapporteur on Thursday, asking it to examine the situation.

Qaradawi was arrested by Lebanese authorities after he returned from Syria in December 2024, where he went to celebrate the fall of the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

While there, he posted a video on social media in which he criticised the Emirati, Egyptian and Saudi governments and said he hoped they would suffer the same fate as the Assad regime.

Qaradawi comes from a politically active family. His father, Yusuf Qaradawi, was a prominent Islamist scholar associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who lived in exile until his death.

The Egyptian-Turkish activist was also an active supporter of pro-democracy protests in Egypt, and was sentenced in absentia in Egypt on charges of criticising the judiciary.

It was the UAE, however, not Egypt, that managed to convince Lebanon to arrest Qaradawi after his video in Syria, under charges of “fake news” and “disturbing public security”.

It circulated an arrest warrant for the dissident through the Arab Interior Ministers Council, a little known transnational organisation that fosters security cooperation between Arab states.

Lebanese authorities, under the previous government led by the former prime minister Najib Mikati, complied with the UAE’s request. It extradited Qaradawi to the UAE on 8 January, despite the fact that he was neither a citizen of the UAE nor of Lebanon.

The brazenness of his arrest, which showed that a person could be spirited away to a country where they were not a citizen because of a video they posted on social media, has created a chilling precedent for freedom of expression in the Middle East.

Qaradawi was extradited over the protests of his lawyers and of rights groups including Amnesty International, which warned that he could face torture if sent to the UAE.

Lebanon’s then government dismissed their concerns and justified its decision by saying the UAE promised to respect Qaradawi’s human rights.

Those pledges that his rights would be assured in the UAE, his legal counsel said, proved to be false.

Qaradawi has been held in solitary confinement for more than 10 months, with no access to sunlight, in an undisclosed location. These conditions amount to torture, his lawyers say.

To date, he has not had access to a lawyer nor has he been officially charged with a crime.

“Lebanon hastily approved the extradition on the basis that Abdulrahman’s human rights would be upheld. That promise lies in tatters,” said Rodney Dixon, the international legal counsel for Qaradawi.

Dixon added that even though it was the former Lebanese government that approved the extradition, the current government still had a legal obligation to right the wrong of its predecessor and seek Qaradawi’s return.

“Governments may change but obligations do not. Lebanon was responsible for sending him there, now it must do everything possible to bring him back,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Lebanese prime ministry said the extradition did not take place under the current government. They did not comment further.

The UAE did not respond to a request for comment but had previously told the New York Times Qaradawi’s detention complied with human rights standards.

A group of UN special rapporteurs have expressed concern over the conditions of Qaradawi’s detention, saying that his rights have been violated.

“Our worst fears that Mr al-Qaradawi would face grave human rights violations if he was extradited to the UAE appear to have been justified,” the UN experts said in March.

His family also expressed concerns, as they had been allowed to see him for only two 10-minute visits since he was detained.

“It’s been nearly a year since Abdulrahman was taken from us. The thought of him held alone in a cell, without sunlight, fresh air, or charges brought against him, is heartbreaking,” his family told the Guardian.

“We will not stop until Abdulrahman is safe. All we want is to see him back home surrounded by his family, reading us one of his poems again.”

Qaradawi’s popularity in the Arab world long preceded his visit to Syria. He built a large online following and spoke at political events.

He notably was a supporter of Hamas and praised its 7 October 2023 attack, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel. He dedicated a poem to Yahya Sinwar, the group’s late leader.

Rights groups say his detention creates a dangerous precedent in the region, where any government displeased with a person’s opinion can have them flown thousands of miles away to be imprisoned.

Dixon said: “If governments can hunt down their critics across borders and imprison them, then no one is safe. That’s why the UN and the international community must act now to stamp out this behaviour or risk setting a precedent that endangers us all.”

Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has been declared the winner of the country’s disputed election with more than 97% of the vote following violent protests across the country earlier in the week.

The landslide result announced by Tanzania’s electoral commission hands Hassan, who took power in 2021 after the death in office of her predecessor, a five-year term to govern the east African country of 68 million people.

At stake for the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party was its decades-long grip on power amid the rise of charismatic opposition figures who hoped to lead the country toward political change.

Still, a landslide victory is unheard of in the region. Only Paul Kagame, the authoritarian leader of Rwanda, regularly wins by a landslide.

Rights groups including Amnesty International cited a pattern of enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings in Tanzania ahead of the polls.

In June, a United Nations panel of human rights experts cited more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance since 2019, saying they were “alarmed by reports of a pattern of repression” ahead of elections.

Protests erupted during Wednesday’s vote for president and parliament, with some demonstrators tearing down banners of Hassan and setting fire to government buildings and police firing teargas and gunshots, according to witnesses.

Demonstrators were angry about the electoral commission’s exclusion of Hassan’s two biggest challengers from the race and what they described as widespread repression.

In April, Tundu Lissu, the vice-chair of the main opposition party, Chadema, was arrested and charged with treason and cybercrime offences. His party, which had led calls for a boycott of the election unless electoral systems were reformed, was later disqualified from participating.

Last month, Luhaga Mpina, the leader of ACT-Wazalendo, another opposition party, was also disqualified, meaning Hassan contested only lesser-known opponents from minor parties.

Government critics were also abducted and arrested in the run-up to the election.

Tanzania’s main opposition party said on Friday hundreds of people had been killed in the protests, while the UN human rights office said credible reports indicated at least 10 people were killed in three cities.

The government dismissed the opposition’s death toll as “hugely exaggerated” and has rejected criticisms of its human rights record.

With Reuters and Associated Press

The UN security council has approved a US-backed resolution supporting Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara, despite fierce opposition from Algeria.

Although Friday’s vote was divided, the resolution offers the strongest endorsement yet for Morocco’s plan to keep sovereignty over the territory, which also has backing from most European Union members and a growing number of African allies.

The resolution refers to Morocco’s plan as a basis for negotiation. As with similar resolutions in previous years, the text makes no mention of a referendum on self-determination that includes independence as an option, which is the solution long favoured by the pro-independence Polisario Front and its allies, including Algeria, Russia and China.

Western Sahara is a phosphate-rich stretch of coastal desert the size of Colorado which was under Spanish rule until 1975. It is claimed by Morocco and Polisario Front, which operates from refugee camps in south-western Algeria and claims to represent the Sahrawi people indigenous to the disputed territory.

The US, which sponsored the resolution, led 11 countries in voting in favour, while three countries – Russia, China and Pakistan – abstained. Algeria, Polisario’s primary benefactor, did not vote.

Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, said the vote had been “historic” and would “build on the momentum for a long, long overdue peace in Western Sahara”.

Amar Bendjama, the Algerian ambassador to the UN, said that while the resolution was an improvement on previous iterations, it “still has a number of shortcomings”.

“It is below, below, I say, of the expectations and the legitimate aspirations of the people of Western Sahara, represented by the Polisario Front,” he said.

The resolution says “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty could constitute a most feasible solution”.

The measure also renews the UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara for another year, as has been done for more than three decades. Prior extensions, however, have not included a reference to Morocco and its allies’ preferred outcome.

The UN resolution calls on all parties involved to “seize this unprecedented opportunity for a lasting peace.” Depending on progress, it asks António Guterres, the secretary general, to review the peacekeeping mission’s mandate within six months.

The shift could unsettle a long-stalled process that for decades has eluded resolution, despite a UN peacekeeping mission that was designed to be temporary. Demonstrations have ensued in Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria this week, where people have vowed not to give up their fight for self-determination.

Morocco controls nearly all of Western Sahara, except for a narrow strip known as the “free zone” that lies east of a Moroccan-built sand wall.

A 1991 ceasefire was meant to pave the way for a referendum on self-determination, but fighting over voter eligibility prevented it from taking place.

Over the years, Morocco has transformed the disputed territory, constructing a deepwater port and a 656-mile (1,055-km) highway. State subsidies keep food and energy prices low, and the population has ballooned as Moroccans settle in cities such as Dakhla and Laayoune.

Polisario withdrew from the ceasefire in 2020 after clashes near a road Morocco was paving to Mauritania.

The group has since regularly reported military activity, while Morocco has mostly denied open conflict. The United Nations calls it “low-level hostilities”.

In response to the draft resolution, Polisario said that it would not join any process aiming “to ‘legitimise’ Morocco’s illegal military occupation,” saying peace “can never be achieved by rewarding expansionism”.

Morocco’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to questions before the vote.

The conflict is the driving force in north African diplomacy. Morocco considers support for its autonomy plan as a benchmark for how it gauges its allies.

Last October, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura suggested partitioning Western Sahara, a proposal neither side accepted. He urged Morocco to clarify what autonomy would entail and warned a lack of progress might raise questions about the United Nations’ role and “whether there is space and willingness for us to still be useful.”

The push to reassess the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara comes as the United States slashes funding for UN programmes and agencies, including peacekeeping.

US officials are taking an a la carte approach to funding, picking which operations and agencies they believe align with Trump’s agenda and which no longer serve US interests. They argue that the UN’s budget and agencies are bloated. They pledge to halt new contributions pending a review of every UN agency and programme.

About 700 people have been killed during three days of election protests in Tanzania, the main opposition party has said.

Protests erupted on election day on Wednesday over what demonstrators said was the stifling of the opposition after the exclusion of key candidates from the presidential ballot.

John Kitoka, a spokesperson for the Chadema opposition party, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that hundreds of people had been killedsince then.

“As we speak, the figure for deaths in Dar [es Salaam] is around 350 and for Mwanza it is 200-plus. Added to figures from other places around the country, the overall figure is around 700,” he said.

He added that the toll could be much higher because killings could be happening during a night-time curfew that was imposed from Wednesday.

A security source told AFP there had been reports of more than 500 dead, “maybe 700-800 in the whole country”.

Amnesty International said it had received information that at least 100 people had been killed.

Kitoka said Chadema’s numbers had been gathered by a network of party members going to hospitals and health clinics and “counting dead bodies”.

He demanded that the government “stop killing our protesters” and called for a transitional government to pave the way for free and fair elections. “Stop police brutality. Respect the will of the people which is electoral justice,” Kitoka said.

The Guardian has approached the government for comment.

Tanzanians went to the polls on Wednesday in an election in which President Samia Suluhu Hassan was expected to strengthen her grip on the country amid rapidly intensifying repression and the exclusion of key opponents from the presidential contest.

In April, Tundu Lissu, the vice-chair of Chadema, was arrested and charged with treason and cybercrime offences. His party, which had led calls for a boycott of the election unless electoral systems were reformed, was later disqualified from participating.

Last month, Luhaga Mpina, the leader of ACT-Wazalendo, another opposition party, was also disqualified, meaning Hassan will contest only lesser-known opponents from minor parties.

Government critics were also abducted and arrested in the run-up to the election.

Since Wednesday, huge crowds of protesters have attacked police and destroyed property belonging to businesses connected to the ruling party.

The demonstrations were focused mainly in the port city of Dar es Salaam but have since spread across the country.

The government reacted by imposing a curfew. Internet disruption was also reported, with the global monitor NetBlocks saying it was countrywide.

On Thursday, the army chief, Gen Jacob John Mkunda, condemned the violenceand called the protesters “criminals”. He said security forces would try to contain the situation.

Demonstrators on Friday faced a heavy police and military presence.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it was “alarmed” by the deaths and injuries in the protests, noting it had received reports that at least 10 people had been killed by security forces.

The OHCHR said it had received credible reports of deaths in Dar es Salaam, in Shinyanga in the north-west and Morogoro in the east, with security forces firing live ammunition and teargas to disperse protesters.

An OHCHR spokesperson, Seif Magango, said the office had urged security forces to refrain from using unnecessary or disproportionate force and for protesters to demonstrate peacefully.

Tito Magoti, a human rights lawyer, said it was “unjustified” for security agencies to use force, adding that the country’s president “must refrain from deploying the police against the people”.

He said: “She must listen to the people. The mood of the country is that there was no election … We cannot vote for one candidate.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this story.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim to have arrested several of their fighters after outrage over the extent of killing in the city of El Fasher continues to build.

But the paramilitary group’s move has been met with scepticism from human rights campaigners and the Sudanese who see it as an attempt to temper criticism over the violence.

Much of the outrage has been focused on a single individual, Abu Lulu, whom RSF media outlets showed under arrest and taken to a jail cell. Lulu, a commander in the RSF, featured in numerous videos that emerged after Sunday’s attack on El Fasher of fighters executing people in civilian clothing.

“The detention of Abu Lulu appears to be a PR stunt to deflect global anger and shift attention away from the militia’s responsibility for this massacre,” said Mohamed Suliman, a Sudanese researcher and writer based in Boston. “However, many Sudanese did not buy into this and launched a hashtag: ‘You are all Abu Lulu’ – meaning the entire militia acts like him.”

Since the fighter’s arrest, images have been shared on social media of various RSF leaders, including the chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, as well as politicians considered to be tied to him, with the name Abu Lulu written underneath each of their faces.

Hala al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese activist focusing on violence against women with the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, said the focus on arresting one man was a “painful joke” intended to deflect from the scale of the violence inflicted by RSF forces in El Fasher and elsewhere.

“There is absence of accountability and indifference to our humanity. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have perished daily, and young girls and women have been ruthlessly raped during the past three years. Still, all they do is try to silence our suffering,” she said.

Karib said the RSF could not be trusted to investigate itself, saying that it had not changed since its origins as a collection of ethnic-based militias known as the Janjaweed, who carried out massacres in Darfur during the 2000s on behalf of the Sudanese government.

A civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese army began in April 2023 after a power struggle between the two forces and the conflict quickly spread across the country.

The UN human rights office spokesperson Seif Magango told reporters in Geneva on Friday that hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters could have been killed while trying to leave El Fasher.

“Witnesses confirm RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint, forcing the remaining displaced persons – around 100 families – to leave the location amid shooting and intimidation of older residents,” he said.

There is concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people after Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) raised alarm about only a few thousand arriving in the Tawila displacement camp west of El Fasher, which has previously been a key destination for displaced people in the area.

“[The arrivals are] far fewer than the 250,000 civilians estimated to be in El Fasher until last month. Reports from those who fled, as well as credible sources, indicate mass killings, indiscriminate violence and ethnic targeting inside the city and on the roads to escape it,” MSF said.

MSF added they had detected malnourishment in 100% of children under five, who are all being screened as they arrived. “They are victims of torture, gunshots on the road, travelling by night, they were forced in El Fasher to eat animal feed, which has caused really bad abdominal problems, especially in children,” said Giulia Chiopris, an MSF paediatrician in Tawila. “Our surgical teams are working non-stop.”

An activist who fled to Tawila after the RSF’s attack on the Zamzam displacement camp in April said those who had arrived had to walk for at least two days to arrive. “Many men were killed and some women were tortured,” he said. “Everyone is ill or injured.”

Sudanese civil society groups have reported that displaced families are also arriving in nearby villages in north Darfur.

Another devastating chapter in Sudan’s brutal civil war has taken place as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured El Fasher from the army after an 18-month siege that trapped tens of thousands of civilians in the city in Darfur. The RSF now controls all major urban centres in Darfur, a development that raises the possibility the country could face partition.

A vast $1bn museum billed as the world’s largest archaeological facility dedicated to a single civilisation will open outside Cairo on Saturday, after countless delays over the course of its two-decade construction.

The Grand Egyptian Museum, located a mile away from the pyramids of Giza, covers an area of 470,000 sq metres. The complex was announced in 1992 but it was not until 2005 that construction began. Some areas of the museum opened in a soft launch in 2024.

More than 50,000 items will be housed in the museum, including an 83-ton, 3,200-year-old colossus of Ramesses II and a 4,500-year-old boat belonging to Khufu, the pharaoh credited with building the pyramids.

The museum includes 24,000 sq metres of permanent exhibition space, a children’s museum, conference and educational facilities, a commercial area and a large conservation centre. The 12 main galleries, which opened last year, exhibit antiquities spanning from prehistoric times to the Roman era, organised by era and theme.

Many of the artefacts were moved from the Egyptian Museum, a packed, century-old building in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Others were recently unearthed from ancient cemeteries, including the Saqqara necropolis, another complex of pyramids and tombs about 14 miles south of the museum.

Ahmed Ghoneim, the museum’s CEO, told reporters that the halls have advanced technology and feature multimedia presentations, including mixed-reality shows, to merge its timeless heritage with 21st-century creativity for new generations.

“We’re using the language that gen Z uses,” he said. “Gen Z doesn’t use the labels that we read as old people and would rather use technology.”

The grand opening was postponed several times, most recently in July because of conflicts in the Middle East, including the Gaza crisis. World leaders are expected to attend the opening ceremony alongside the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Before the opening, firework displays were reportedly tested at the Giza pyramids, which have a new connecting walkway to the museum.

The complex is part of a big infrastructure push in Egypt that includes a metro system under construction and an airport that began operations in 2020.

Aside from being a showcase of ancient heritage, the museum represents a strategic cultural-tourism investment for Africa’s second largest economy after years of disruptions. There was a drop in numbers during the 2011 Arab spring uprising and the coronavirus pandemic. A record 15.7 million people visited Egypt in 2024, according to official figures, and the government aims to attract double that number by 2032.

The government hopes the museum will draw more tourists who will stay for a while and provide the foreign currency Egypt needs to shore up its economy.

Hassan Allam, the CEO of Hassan Allam Holding, the firm administering the museum, said it is expecting between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a day. “The world has been waiting … everyone’s excited,” he said.

Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister, Sherif Fathy, said: “It is a gift from Egypt to the world and we are proud to finally share it.”

The museum opens as questions are being asked about the safety of artefacts in Egypt. In recent weeks, two artefacts have been stolen, including a 3,000-year-old gold pharaoh’s bracelet taken from a conservation lab in a Cairo museum. During the Arab spring, looters also raided archaeological sites, leading to the loss of several artefacts.

Associated Press contributed to this report

Diplomats and senior UN figures speaking at the UN security council have condemned mass killings by the Rapid Support Forces in El Fasher after the Sudanese city “descended into an even darker hell” following the paramilitary group’s takeover at the weekend.

Widespread reports of ethnically targeted killings in recent days prompted the UK, as the UN penholder on Sudan, to call an emergency session of the security council in New York on Thursday.

“The situation is simply horrifying,” Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, the assistant secretary general of the UN for Africa, told the meeting. “In the past week, the UN human rights office has documented widespread and serious human rights violations in and around El Fasher. These include credible reports of mass killings in various locations and summary executions during house-to-house searches and as civilians have tried to flee the city.

“Communications have been cut off. The situation is chaotic. In this context, it is difficult to estimate the number of civilians killed. Despite commitments to protect civilians, the reality is that no one is safe in El Fasher. There is no safe passage for civilians to leave the city.”

Pobee added: “External support is enabling the conflict. Weapons and fighters continue to flow into Sudan, further contributing to the already desperate situation.”

Tom Fletcher, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told the meeting: “El Fasher, already the scene of catastrophic levels of human suffering, has descended into an even darker hell.”

Fletcher condemned the reported killing of nearly 500 people at the Saudi Maternity hospital and said tens of thousands were fleeing to Tawila, where civilians, mostly women and children, faced extortion, violence and abduction.

In a statement, the security council said recent developments in El Fasher have had a devastating impact on the civilian population and that council members “condemned reported atrocities being perpetrated by the RSF against the civilian population, including summary executions and arbitrary detentions”.

The UN session was likely to be uncomfortable for the United Arab Emirates, the RSF’s key external backer, but diplomatic calls for the UN to recognise it had a responsibility to protect people from a deliberate genocide, as opposed to merely condemning a breach of international humanitarian law, were sparse.

In the UK, the foreign office minister Stephen Doughty told MPs in the House of Commons: “The reports of mass atrocities against civilians and the forced displacement caused by the RSF advances in El Fasher are both horrifying and deeply alarming.”

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, called for a ban on all UK arms sales to the UAE until it was proven that any such previous exports had not been transferred to Sudan from the UAE for use by the RSF.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that British military equipment used by the RSF had been found on battlefields in Sudan, according to documents seen by the UN security council.

Doughty admitted UK-made military equipment had been found in Sudan but distinguished “items” from “weaponry”, telling MPs: “We are aware of reports of a small number of UK-made items having been found in Sudan, but there is no evidence in the recent reporting of UK weapons or ammunition being used in Sudan.”

The UAE has repeatedly denied allegations it gives military support to the RSF.

Kate Ferguson, the co-director of Protection Approaches, a UK charity working to tackle identity-based violence and mass atrocities, said: “We need an emergency coalition of conscience to drive an immediate global effort to protect civilians and end the atrocities – and demonstrate to the UAE that enabling deliberate destruction of populations is not tolerated.

“In the face of countless warnings, the international community has failed to uphold its collective responsibilities to protect El Fasher from genocide.”

Human Rights Watch called for targeted sanctions to be imposed on the UAE leadership, while the US Democrat senator Chris Van Hollen called on his fellow senators to pass his bill banning US arms sales to the UAE.

Last month, the Quad – an external group, comprising the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, responsible for overseeing diplomacy surrounding the conflict – outlined a roadmap for peace, but it has not been implemented. It called for an initial three-month humanitarian truce to allow for rapid aid delivery, followed by a permanent ceasefire, and concluding with a nine-month transitional period leading to “an independent, civilian-led government with broad-based legitimacy and accountability”.

Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a nurse for three years at El Fasher South hospital when the city was captured on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was busy treating patients, including an elderly woman who needed a blood transfusion, when the attack began.

“They killed six wounded soldiers and civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she says. “I don’t know what happened to my other patients. I had to run when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, was shot in the right foot and thigh as RSF fighters took control of the nearby military headquarters. She fled the city and walked for a day, injured and without food, to reach the town of Garney. “On the way, they took my phone and money. I was left with nothing,” she says.

More than 1,000 people – including women and children – walked for two days to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which was captured after an 18-month siege.

Tawila, about 34 miles (55km) west of El Fasher, is under the control of the Sudan Liberation Army faction led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

On Tuesday, the Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – accused the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. The UN said there were videos showing “dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, surrounded by RSF fighters”.

According to witnesses, thousands more civilians remain trapped by the RSF and allied militias in Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Many are former soldiers from the Sudanese army, the Joint Forces and other armed groups that had been fighting alongside the army. They are reportedly being held because they cannot afford ransom demands of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), according to survivors who made it to Tawila. Those unable to pay have been detained for days, and in some cases released only after becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has reportedly allowed government troops fleeing El Fasher to enter Tawila on condition they surrender their weapons.

Adam Yagoub, 28, a driver from Sennar in central Sudan, narrowly escaped being killed after being captured by three militiamen on camels near Garney.

“They wanted to cut my head off with a knife,” he tells the Guardian, showing his arm, which one of the fighters hit with the butt of an AK-47 rifle. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and begged them not to kill me. We were 18 people who left El Fasher together, but only eight made it to Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub says he saw 22 bodies near what he called a “fake well” used by the RSF and allied militias between Garney and Tawila. “It’s a trap,” he says. “People walk all day without water, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They killed 22 men there and took the bodies away to hide them.”

Another nurse who escaped El Fasher South hospital after the attack on Sunday said RSF fighters entered through one gate and opened fire on patients in the emergency ward, killing at least eight. “We fled through another gate, but they hit me on the head with a rifle,” he says.

In a video statement on Wednesday, the head of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, said that any soldier or officer who had “violated the right of any person” would be held accountable.

Many of those who escaped El Fasher spent hours hiding near the army’s artillery unit before fleeing west under cover of darkness. Already displaced families from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were forced to move again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before eventually heading for Tawila.

Those captured by the RSF in Garney were reportedly given water mixed with flour to revive them after they had walked for a day without supplies. Survivors said people were then separated by gender and perceived affiliation: men suspected of being fighters were detained, while some civilians were released or freed after paying ransoms.

The SLA-AW has deployed additional fighters around Tawila “to protect those fleeing El Fasher and to prevent clashes if the RSF pursues armed groups who have retreated with their weapons”, a local commander said.

It is understood that elements of the Sudanese army and allied groups continue to resist in the Jebel Wana area, north-west of El Fasher, after losing control of the city.

Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it is facing a large influx of people to its clinic in Tawila hospital.

“More than 1,000 people arrived [from El Fasher] at night on foot and in trucks, after an extremely dangerous journey. Many were in a state of great weakness suffering from malnutrition and dehydration,” says MSF project coordinator Sylvain Penicaud.

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces killed hundreds of patients and staff inside a hospital in El Fasher, according to the World Health Organization and the Sudan Doctors Network, after the paramilitary group claimed control of the city on Sunday.

The WHO secretary general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “appalled and deeply shocked” at reports that more than 460 people had been killed at the Saudi maternity hospital, without assigning blame, in a post on X.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group monitoring the civil war, said: “The Rapid Support Forces yesterday … killed in cold blood everyone they found inside the Saudi hospital.”

Fighting has been raging between the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF since April 2023, when a power struggle within the military regime broke out into open conflict in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread across the country.

Sudan’s army controls most of the country’s north and east, having recaptured Khartoum in March 2025, while the RSF holds territory in the west and south-west. With the army having abandoned El Fasher, the RSF now holds all five of Darfur’s regional capitals, while fighting continues in the southern region of Kordofan.

El Fasher, once a city of more than 1 million people, has been under siege by the RSF since May 2024. In August that year, famine was declared in Zamzam camp for displaced people, south of the city. In April, the RSF killed as many as 2,000 people when it seized the camp, which at the time housed 500,000 people.

Experts had also been warning that an RSF takeover of El Fasher would most likely be a repeat of its capture of Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, in 2023. The group killed as many as 15,000 civilians then, mostly from non-Arab groups.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed Arab militias, which were accused of committing genocide of African ethnic groups under the orders of former president Omar al-Bashir in Darfur in 2003.

In January, the US government formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide. Many Sudanese people still refer to the RSF as the Janjaweed.

On Tuesday, the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups allied with Sudan’s military, said the RSF had executed more than 2,000 unarmed civilians since taking El Fasher.

The RSF’s leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, admitted there had been “abuses” by his forces, in his first comments since the fall of El Fasher, posted on Wednesday on Telegram. Dagalo said an investigation had been opened, without providing further details.

The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab analysed satellite imagery of the hospital on Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 October. On Tuesday, three clusters of white objects and “reddish discoloration on the ground” appeared next to the hospital, having not been there the day before. In two of the clusters, the objects were 1.1-1.9 metres long, while the size of the objects in the third group couldn’t be measured, the lab said in a report.

The report also found “evidence consistent with mass killing” at an RSF detention site at a former children’s hospital in the east of El Fasher, as well as continued “systematic killing” at the east of the city’s earth walls, originally built as a defence mechanism by the army and then reinforced by the RSF.

It isn’t yet possible to determine exactly how many people have been killed by the RSF in El Fasher, said Caitlin Howarth, the director of conflict analytics at the Yale lab. She added: “We’re not looking at small numbers, we’re looking at dozens and hundreds and, eventually, there will be thousands.”

Civilians who made it out of El Fasher have reported being stripped of belongings and extorted for ransom by RSF fighters, with many women reporting being sexually assaulted. It is likely that many have died in the desert, trying to reach displacement camps, Howarth said, adding that the true number may never be known.

The Associated Press spoke to witnesses who said RSF fighters went house to house, beating and shooting at people, including women and children. Many died of gunshot wounds in the streets, some while trying to flee to safety, they said.

“It was a like a killing field. Bodies everywhere and people bleeding and no one to help them,” Tajal-Rahman, a man in his late 50s, said by phone from Tawila, a displacement camp about 37 miles (60km) west of El Fasher that now houses more than 650,000 people.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tanzania’s president looks on course to strengthen her grip on the country as it holds a general election on Wednesday against the backdrop of rapidly intensifying repression and the exclusion of opposition candidates.

Samia Suluhu Hassan, a former vice-president who took office after the death of her predecessor, John Magufuli, in 2021, has left nothing to chance for her first presidential and parliamentary electoral test.

Candidates from the two main opposition parties in the east African country have been disqualified, opposition gatherings have been banned and government critics have been abducted, killed or arrested.

Analysts say they expect voter apathy, possible unrest over the stifling of opposition voices, and the further entrenchment of Hassan and the ruling CCM party.

“Tanzania will never be the same after this election,” said Deus Valentine, the chief executive of the Center for Strategic Litigation, a non-profit organisation based in Dar es Salam, a commercial port city on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. “We are either entering a completely new paradigm or level of impunity, or we are entering a completely new level of civil defiance. Something is going to give.”

Hassan started her tenure by undoing some of Magufuli’s authoritarian and repressive policies, including ending a ban on political rallies and making reconciliatory moves with the opposition. Along the way, she gained local and international approval.

But she later backtracked and her administration has been accused of overseeing a grim return to the repression of the past, dashing hopes of lasting change.

In June, after the reported disappearance and torture of two activists, Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda, UN experts called on the Tanzanian government to “immediately stop the enforced disappearance of political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists”.

The UN experts said more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance had been recorded in Tanzania since 2019.

A wave of abductions in the lead-up to this election has increased public anger against Hassan. One of those taken was Humphrey Polepole, a CCM insider who had resigned from his role as ambassador to Cuba and become a vocal critic of the government, CCM and Hassan’s leadership. His family said he was abducted by unknown individuals early this month.

In June, Tanzanian police dismissed claims of increasing abductions and disappearances, claiming some were staged. Hassan has in the past ordered an investigation into abduction reports but the findings have not been made public.

A crackdown on opposition parties has intensified in recent months. In April, Tundu Lissu, the vice-chair of the leading opposition party, Chadema, was arrested and charged with treason and cybercrime offences. His party, which has led calls for a boycott of the election unless electoral systems are reformed, was later disqualified from participating.

Last month Luhaga Mpina, the leader of ACT-Wazalendo, another opposition party, was also disqualified, meaning Hassan will contest only lesser-known candidates from minor parties.

Nicodemus Minde, a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, said at a seminar organised by the institute: “The political landscape going into the election remains sharply polarised, with opposition leaders facing legal harassment and civic space that has been constrained.”

He said the absence of Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo from the ballot had made this election “arguably the least competitive” since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1992.

CCM and its predecessor TANU have ruled the country since independence in 1961, making it one of the longest-ruling political forces in Africa.

Hassan’s administration has pointed to plaudits for Tanzania’s economic growth and low inflation under her watch. She is campaigning on promises to focus on strengthening healthcare and education and provide economic empowerment to uplift lives and foster inclusive growth.

“In our current and forthcoming manifestos, we are focusing on the people,” Hassan said at a campaign rally in the eastern district of Temeke last week. “Our goal is to make sure that every Tanzanian has a chance to participate meaningfully in the nation’s economic growth.”

Among those being allowed to run against CCM is Salum Mwalimu, a running mate of Lissu during the 2000 presidential election. He is running for the Chaumma party, which is made up of many Chadema defectors.

Mwalimu’s campaign promises include reforms to government systems, including delivering a new constitution. “Tanzanians should expect great change from our party, which is committed to transforming the country,” he said at the national electoral commission last month when he went to collect presidential nomination forms.

Observers say Hassan’s opponents lack the resources and name recognition to compete with the countrywide party machinery that CCM has built over the decades and benefited from to entrench its rule.

In the 2020 presidential election, Magufuli won with 84.4% of the vote and Lissu was second with 13.04%.

More than 37 million people are eligible to vote. The election encompasses separate votes for the president, MPs and local politicians.

Tanzania’s president looks on course to strengthen her grip on the country as it holds a general election on Wednesday against the backdrop of rapidly intensifying repression and the exclusion of opposition candidates.

Samia Suluhu Hassan, a former vice-president who took office after the death of her predecessor, John Magufuli, in 2021, has left nothing to chance for her first presidential and parliamentary electoral test.

Candidates from the two main opposition parties in the east African country have been disqualified, opposition gatherings have been banned and government critics have been abducted, killed or arrested.

Analysts say they expect voter apathy, possible unrest over the stifling of opposition voices, and the further entrenchment of Hassan and the ruling CCM party.

“Tanzania will never be the same after this election,” said Deus Valentine, the chief executive of the Center for Strategic Litigation, a non-profit organisation based in Dar es Salam, a commercial port city on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. “We are either entering a completely new paradigm or level of impunity, or we are entering a completely new level of civil defiance. Something is going to give.”

Hassan started her tenure by undoing some of Magufuli’s authoritarian and repressive policies, including ending a ban on political rallies and making reconciliatory moves with the opposition. Along the way, she gained local and international approval.

But she later backtracked and her administration has been accused of overseeing a grim return to the repression of the past, dashing hopes of lasting change.

In June, after the reported disappearance and torture of two activists, Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda, UN experts called on the Tanzanian government to “immediately stop the enforced disappearance of political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists”.

The UN experts said more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance had been recorded in Tanzania since 2019.

A wave of abductions in the lead-up to this election has increased public anger against Hassan. One of those taken was Humphrey Polepole, a CCM insider who had resigned from his role as ambassador to Cuba and become a vocal critic of the government, CCM and Hassan’s leadership. His family said he was abducted by unknown individuals early this month.

In June, Tanzanian police dismissed claims of increasing abductions and disappearances, claiming some were staged. Hassan has in the past ordered an investigation into abduction reports but the findings have not been made public.

A crackdown on opposition parties has intensified in recent months. In April, Tundu Lissu, the vice-chair of the leading opposition party, Chadema, was arrested and charged with treason and cybercrime offences. His party, which has led calls for a boycott of the election unless electoral systems are reformed, was later disqualified from participating.

Last month Luhaga Mpina, the leader of ACT-Wazalendo, another opposition party, was also disqualified, meaning Hassan will contest only lesser-known candidates from minor parties.

Nicodemus Minde, a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, said at a seminar organised by the institute: “The political landscape going into the election remains sharply polarised, with opposition leaders facing legal harassment and civic space that has been constrained.”

He said the absence of Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo from the ballot had made this election “arguably the least competitive” since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1992.

CCM and its predecessor TANU have ruled the country since independence in 1961, making it one of the longest-ruling political forces in Africa.

Hassan’s administration has pointed to plaudits for Tanzania’s economic growth and low inflation under her watch. She is campaigning on promises to focus on strengthening healthcare and education and provide economic empowerment to uplift lives and foster inclusive growth.

“In our current and forthcoming manifestos, we are focusing on the people,” Hassan said at a campaign rally in the eastern district of Temeke last week. “Our goal is to make sure that every Tanzanian has a chance to participate meaningfully in the nation’s economic growth.”

Among those being allowed to run against CCM is Salum Mwalimu, a running mate of Lissu during the 2000 presidential election. He is running for the Chaumma party, which is made up of many Chadema defectors.

Mwalimu’s campaign promises include reforms to government systems, including delivering a new constitution. “Tanzanians should expect great change from our party, which is committed to transforming the country,” he said at the national electoral commission last month when he went to collect presidential nomination forms.

Observers say Hassan’s opponents lack the resources and name recognition to compete with the countrywide party machinery that CCM has built over the decades and benefited from to entrench its rule.

In the 2020 presidential election, Magufuli won with 84.4% of the vote and Lissu was second with 13.04%.

More than 37 million people are eligible to vote. The election encompasses separate votes for the president, MPs and local politicians.

The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka revealed on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.

According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, seen by Agence France-Presse, officials have cancelled his visa, citing US state department regulations that allow “a consular officer, the secretary, or a department official to whom the secretary has delegated this authority … to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion”.

Reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre, he jokingly called it a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”, while telling any organisations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.

“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

The Trump administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.

“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been awarded honours from top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka described the book as his “gift to Nigeria” in an interiview with the Guardian.

In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.

Soyinka left the door open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to criticise the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

Trump’s crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.

Reports of ethnically motivated mass killings and other atrocities are emerging from El Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took control of the city in Sudan’s western Darfur region last week.

Video released by local activists showed a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range.

Different footage shared by pro-democracy activists purportedly showed dozens of people lying dead on the ground alongside burnt-out vehicles. The footage has not been verified.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – accused the RSF of having executed more than 2,000 unarmed civilians in recent days.

The claim could not be verified but Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been monitoring the war in Sudan using open-source intelligence and satellite imagery, said on Monday it had found evidence consistent with alleged mass killings by the RSF.

On Tuesday the Yale lab said the city “appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti Indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution”. This included what appeared to be “door-to-door clearance operations” in the city, it said.

The RSF said on Sunday it had seized control of the army’s main base in the city and released a statement saying it had “extended control over the city of El Fasher from the grip of mercenaries and militias”.

The Sudanese army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said on Monday that his forces had withdrawn from El Fasher “to a safer location”, acknowledging the loss of the city.

The RSF has been engaged in a bloody civil war with the army since April 2023 after a power struggle between the two sides. More than 150,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million displaced due to the fighting.

Fears had been mounting in recent weeks for the safety of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city by an 18-month RSF siege.

The UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Monday there was a growing risk of “ethnically motivated violations and atrocities” in El Fasher. His office said it was “receiving multiple alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions”.

The UN Human Rights Office said there were reports of “summary execution of civilians trying to flee, with indications of ethnic motivations for killings”, as well as videos showing “dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, surrounded by RSF fighters who accuse them of being [Sudanese army] fighters”.

News agencies have been unable to contact civilians in the city, where the Sudanese Journalists’ Syndicate says communications, including satellite networks, have been cut off by a media blackout.

Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist at Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities, one of the groups closely in touch with Darfur civilian society, accused the RSF of massacring civilians. She said: “Residents of El Fasher who previously left the city are finding out about the death of their loved ones through footage of executions that are widely circulating on social media.”

There are grave fears of a repeat of the RSF massacres that took place in West Darfur’s capital, Geneina, after it captured the city in 2023, when up to 15,000 civilians – mostly from non-Arab groups – were killed.

According to the UN, more than 1 million people have fled El Fasher since the start of the war and about 260,000 civilians, half of them children, remain trapped without aid. Many have resorted to eating animal fodder.

The UN’s migration agency said more than 26,000 people had fled the fighting in El Fasher since Sunday, either seeking safety in the outskirts of the city or heading to Tawila, 45 miles to the west.

In Tawila, teams from Médecins Sans Frontières said they were facing a massive influx of wounded coming from El Fasher to the town’s hospital. Since Sunday evening, 130 had been hospitalised, including 15 in critical condition, MSF said.

The RSF’s capture of El Fasher, the last remaining major city in Darfur controlled by the army, gives the paramilitary group control over all five state capitals in Darfur and marks a significant turning point in the war.

The army is now excluded from a third of Sudanese territory, a development that experts say raises the possibility the country could face partition.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

British military equipment has been found on battlefields in Sudan, used by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused of genocide, according to documents seen by the UN security council.

UK-manufactured small-arms target systems and British-made engines for armoured personnel carriers have been recovered from combat sites in a conflict that has now caused the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe.

The findings have again prompted scrutiny over Britain’s export of arms to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has been repeatedly accused of supplying weapons to the paramilitary RSF in Sudan.

They also raise questions for the UK government and its potential role in fuelling the conflict.

Months after the UN security council first received material alleging that the UAE may have supplied British-made items to the RSF, new data indicates that the British government went on to approve further exports to the Gulf state for military equipment of the same type.

British engines made specifically for a type of UAE-manufactured armoured personnel carrier also appear to have been exported to the Emirates, despite evidence that the vehicles had been used in Libya and Yemen in defiance of UN arms embargos.

The UAE has repeatedly denied allegations it gives military support to the RSF.

Now in its third year, the war between the RSF and Sudan’s military has killed at least 150,000 people, forced more than 12 million to flee their homes and left nearly 25 million facing acute hunger. Both sides are accused of war crimes and the targeting of civilians.

The UK military equipment found in Sudan features in two dossiers of material, dated June 2024 and March 2025, and seen by the security council. Both were compiled by the Sudanese military and claim to present detailed “evidence of UAE support” for the RSF.

Evidence that the UK continued supplying military equipment to the UAE, despite the risk it could end up fuelling Sudan’s ruinous conflict, has prompted deep concern.

Mike Lewis, a researcher and former member of the UN panel of experts on Sudan, said: “UK and treaty law straightforwardly obliges the government not to authorise arms exports where there is a clear risk of diversion – or use in international crimes.

“Security council investigators have documented in detail the UAE’s decade-long history of diverting arms to embargoed countries and to forces violating international humanitarian law.”

Lewis added: “Even before this further information about British-made equipment in Sudan, these licences should not have been issued, any more than to other governments responsible for arming the Sudan conflict.”

Abdallah Idriss Abugarda, chair of the UK-based Darfur Diaspora Association, which represens Sudanese from the western region of Darfur, called for an investigation into the issue.

“The international community, including the UK, must urgently investigate how this transfer occurred and ensure that no British technology or weaponry contributes to the suffering of innocent Sudanese civilians. Accountability and strict end use monitoring are essential to prevent further complicity in these grave crimes,” he said.

Images contained in the two dossiers of material seen by the security council – of which the UK is a permanent member – suggest that British-made small-arms target devices were recovered from former RSF sites in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman.

Although difficult to verify without metadata or precise geolocation information, several photographs are marked with labels indicating they were made by Militec, a manufacturer of small-arms training and target systems based in Mid Glamorgan, Wales.

Databases indicate that the UK government granted a number of licences to Militec to export items to the UAE as far back as 2013.

New information also reveals that between January 2015 and September 2024, the UK government issued 26 licences for the permanent export to the UAE of military training devices in the “ML14” category, which covers Militec’s products.

These licences were issued to 14 companies, including Militec. The government has refused to disclose which licences were granted to which companies.

The licences indicate that on 27 September 2024 – three months after the UN security council received images alleging the presence of ML14 rated small-arms equipment in Sudan – the UK government issued an “open individual export licence” for the same category of products to the UAE.

Such open licences allow Britain to export unlimited quantities of the equipment over the agreement’s lifespan, but without the need to monitor where it ultimately ends up.

By September 2024 there was growing concern that the UAE was arming Sudan’s RSF.

Nine months earlier in January 2024, a report by the UN panel of experts on Sudan – appointed by the security council to monitor Darfur’s arms embargo – stated that claims the Emirates were supplying weapons to the RSF were “credible”.

Years earlier, the UK government had also received evidence that UAE-based firms could be a diversion risk for small arms accessories. Three years earlier, the UK authorised exports of UK-made night-vision sights to a UAE business, which were subsequently procured by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Militec was contacted, but declined to comment. It is understood that all of its exports are licensed by the relevant UK authorities and there is no wrongdoing by the company.

Images in the dossiers seen by UN diplomats show Nimr Ajban-series armoured personnel carriers (APCs) allegedly captured or recovered from RSF positions.

The Nimr Ajban APCs are manufactured in the UAE by the Edge Group, a primarily state-owned arms conglomerate.

A photograph in the 2025 document shows the data plate from the engine of a Nimr APC marked “Made in Great Britain by Cummins Inc” and indicates it was manufactured on 16 June 2016 by a UK subsidiary of Cummins, a US firm.

By 2016 the UK government was aware that the UAE had supplied Nimr APCs in violation of a UN arms embargo to armed groups in Libya and Somalia.

Evidence published by the security council stated that the UAE had supplied armoured vehicles to Zintani militias in Libya in 2013.

There appears to be no UK licence data to indicate when the British-made engine for the Nimr vehicles was exported because they are not solely designed for military equipment and do not require a special licence.

A Cummins spokesperson said: “Cummins has a strong compliance culture as evidenced by our 10 ethical principles set out in our code of business conduct. Our code explicitly covers compliance with applicable sanctions and export controls in the jurisdictions in which Cummins conducts business, and in some cases our policies go even further than applicable legal requirements.

“Cummins also has a strong policy against participating in any transaction – direct or indirect – with any arms embargoed destination without full and complete authorisation from the relevant governmental authorities.

“Cummins has a process to thoroughly review all defence transactions to evaluate legal and policy considerations, and under that program we have regularly obtained export licenses where legally required, as well as applied other compliance measures.

“With respect to Sudan specifically, we reviewed all our past transactions and did not identify any military transactions where Sudan was indicated as the end-use destination.”

A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “The UK has one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world. All export licences are assessed for the risk of diversion to an undesirable end user or end use.

“We expect all countries to comply with their obligations under existing UN sanctions regimes,” the FCDO said.

Sources said licensing decisions were made on a case-by-case basis and the UK was aware of the risk of diversion to the conflict in Sudan and that export licences, including those to the UAE, were regularly refused.

The UAE declined to comment.

Alassane Ouattara has been declared the winner of the presidential election in Ivory Coast by a landslide.

According to provisional results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (CIE) on Monday evening, the 83-year-old won a fourth term as head of the west African country with 89.77% or 3.75m votes.

Ouattara ran against four less well-known candidates after the opposition heavyweights Laurent Gbagbo and Tidjane Thiam were barred from contesting. But those who appeared on the ballot on Saturday – the former first lady Simone Gbagbo and three former ministers Jean-Louis Billon, Ahoua Don Mello and Henriette Lagou Adjoua – were unable to make headway.

The result trumps Ouattara’s winning margins in his previous three victories, including his 2015 win, when he secured 83% of the vote. Lagou Adjoua, who also contested in 2015, improved her previous record of 0.89% by getting 1.15%.

On Sunday evening, Billon, a former trade minister, congratulated Ouattara in a concession statement on social media, saying his decision had been informed by partial results he had seen. Billon ended up being runner-up with 3% of the tally.

Barring any surprise from the Constitutional Council during the stipulated five-day period, the octogenarian, who has been in office since 2011, will lead the world’s largest cocoa producer until 2030. Ouattara has supervised high economic growth rates and vast infrastructural development, but has been accused of crony capitalism and a clampdown on opposition to his rule.

Despite 8.7 million people being registered to vote, the election was marked by low turnout in urban areas, especially within the commercial capital of Abidjan. At multiple polling units in the densely populated communes of Yopougon and Cocody, officials said fewer than 50 voters had come in by midday.

The CIE said turnout was approximately 50%.

Some observers said the low turnout inadvertently led to what has been the country’s most peaceful election in years. In 2010, after the former president Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Ouattara, a deadlock ensued that led to the death of an estimated 3,000 people in the months that followed. Ten years later, more than 50 people were killed as Ouattara secured a controversial third mandate.

Before the vote, there had been tensions as youths ransacked the electoral commission’s office in Yamoussoukro, the political capital, leading the authorities to declare a curfew from 10pm to 6am on the eve of the election and after voting ended. Earlier this month, more than 250 protesters were arrested, with 32 handed three-year sentences, leaving the country on edge.

Human rights groups had also noted the heavy deployment of security personnel before and during the election, raising alarm about the sidelining of prominent opposition figures and a clampdown on dissent.

Paul Biya, the world’s oldest serving head of state, has been declared the winner of Cameroon’s election, granting him an eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.

The country’s constitutional council said Biya won 53.66% of the vote, while his former ally turned challenger, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, got 35.19%.

Biya, 92, took office in 1982 and has held a tight grip on power ever since, doing away with the presidential term limit in 2008 and winning re-election by comfortable margins.

Cameroon has been on edge in recent weeks while the country waited for the official results. Four people were killed on Sunday in clashes between security forces and supporters of the opposition in the economic capital, Douala.

Tchiroma had claimed victory two days after the election, which took place on 12 October, publishing a tally that showed he had secured 54.8% of the votes, to Biya’s 31.3%. His team said his victory was based on results representing 80% of the electorate that they had collated.

He also called for protests if the constitutional council were to announce “falsified and distorted results”. The ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement dismissed his claims, urging him to wait for the official results.

The situation has been particularly volatile in the northern city of Garoua, Tchiroma’s home town, , where youths on motorcycles gathered with crude weapons outside his residence in anticipation of a possible arrest.

There have also been protests in the capital, Yaoundé, as well as in neighbourhoods in other parts of Cameroon including Bafoussam and Douala, two of the country’s most populous cities. In a video posted on social media at the weekend, Tchiroma claimed security personnel had attempted to breach his residence to arrest him.

Biya is only the second head of state to lead Cameroon since independence from France in 1960. He has ruled with an iron fist, repressing all political and armed opposition, and holding on to power through social upheaval, economic disparity and separatist violence.

Fears are growing for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said it had captured the city, which it has been besieging for more than a year in Sudan’s civil war.

The group said on Sunday that it had seized control of the army’s main base in the city in Darfur, where famine was declared in a displacement camp last year. It then released a statement saying it had “extended control over the city of El Fasher from the grip of mercenaries and militias”.

The Popular Resistance, a local pro-army militia, responded on Sunday that the army was in “more fortified positions” and that residents were still “resisting in the face of terrorist militias”.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said he was “deeply alarmed” by reports of fighters pushing further into the city and cutting off escape routes, calling for an immediate ceasefire, access for humanitarian aid and safe passage for civilians who wanted to leave.

However, the RSF said it was committed to providing “safe corridors for all those who wish to move to other locations, as well as the necessary protection for all those in the city”.

Sudan has been torn apart by civil war since April 2023, when a power struggle between the military and the RSF descended into open warfare in the capital, Khartoum, and spread rapidly across the country.

On the two-year anniversary of the conflict, more than 13 million people had been displaced and half the 51 million population needed food aid.

Although Sudan’s army recaptured Khartoum in March 2025, enabling many residents to return, fighting has continued to rage in the country’s south and west. In May 2024, the RSF laid siege to El Fasher, in the western Darfur region.

In August, the UN said more than 600,000 people had been displaced from the city, while 260,000 still trapped there were cut off from aid.

A telecommunications blackout and Starlink satellite internet outages are preventing access to independent information from El Fasher.

If the RSF’s capture of the city is confirmed, it would mean the militia – led by the warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – controls all five of Darfur’s states. Analysts have warned that this could herald the effective partition of Sudan.

Dagalo was sworn in as head of the RSF’s parallel government in August, in the city of Nyala. The militia also increased the intensity of the siege of El Fasher.

This month, RSF drone and artillery strikes killed at least 60 people in a displacement shelter in the city.

Sudan’s army and the RSF have been accused of committing war crimes in the civil war. The RSF and allied militias have attacked non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, with fighters saying they would force women to have “Arab babies”, according to a UN report published in November 2024.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed Arab militias, which were accused of committing genocide under the orders of former president Omar al-Bashir in Darfur in 2003.

In January, the US government formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide.

Agence France Presse contributed to this report.

Turkey will probably be excluded from the 5,000-strong stabilisation force that is to be set up inside Gaza after Israel made clear it did not want Turkish troops taking part.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said it was a requirement that Israel is comfortable with the nationality of the multinational force, set up to prevent a security vacuum when the massive task of reconstruction in Gaza starts. Turkey has said it is willing to offer troops, but Israel has let it be known that it disapproves of Turkish troops taking part in the force.

Tensions between Israel and Turkey have grown over Syria and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seen by the Israeli government as too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Hamas itself. But the exclusion of Turkey from the stabilisation force would be controversial since it is one of the guarantors of the Trump 20-point ceasefire agreement, and is seen as one of the most capable Muslim armed forces.

The force is still likely to be led by Egypt.

Other contributors to the stabilisation force, such as Indonesia and the Emiratis, would still prefer the force to be given a UN security council mandate, even if it is not itself a UN peacekeeping force.

Instead it will coordinate with a US-led military cell, known as the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC), based in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat. The cell, which includes a small number of British, French, Jordanian and Emirati advisers was inaugurated on Tuesday by the US vice-president, JD Vance. The CMCC also appears to be taking on an aid coordination role in Gaza, although key aid crossings remain closed.

The force will be tasked with disarming Hamas and securing a transitional Palestinian government, the formation of which is still being contested. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ruled out Palestinian Authority involvement in postwar Gaza, although on Friday the main Palestinian factions agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of the strip.

In a sign of the tensions between Turkey and Israel, Turkish disaster response specialists sent to help locate Palestinian and Israeli bodies inside Gaza remained near Egypt’s border with the strip on Thursday, awaiting Israeli authorisation to enter.

The 81-member team from Turkey’s AFAD disaster management authority are waiting to enter with life-detection devices and trained search dogs.

Erdoğan told reporters on Friday that the US should do more to put pressure on Israel, including through sanctions and arms sales bans, to abide by its commitments in the Trump plan.

Rubio also said there could be no role for the UN’s Palestinian relief works agency, Unrwa, in Gaza due to the agency being a “subsidiary of Hamas”.

His remarks will put him at odds with many European countries, the UN itself, and the international court of justice (ICJ), which said in an advisory opinion this week that the Unrwa was an irreplaceable vehicle to distribute aid inside Gaza.

The ICJ did not accept that Israel had provided incontrovertible evidence that Unrwa had been irretrievably infiltrated by Hamas.

Joint US-Israeli opposition to Unrwa presents a dilemma since Donald Trump, in his 20-point plan, has accepted a role for the UN in distributing aid in Gaza, but seems intent on excluding Unrwa, the main relevant aid agency. The UN faces a choice over whether or not to confront Trump over Unrwa.

Norway, the country that initiated the action at the UN general assembly last December that led to the ICJ opinion this week, had said it was drafting a resolution incorporating the key ICJ findings about the need for Israel as the occupying power not to restrict aid supplies into Gaza. Under the Trump ceasefire plan, accepted by Israel, 600 aid trucks were due to enter Gaza daily. But since the agreement, the daily average has been 89 trucks a day on average – only 14% of the agreed amount.

Unrwa criticised Israel, saying: “Since the start of the war in Gaza, the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has also seen a sharp escalation of violence.

“Families know only fear and uncertainty. The growing annexation of the West Bank continues unabated, in flagrant violation of international law. This must stop. The future of Gaza and the West Bank are one.”

The head of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, Tom Fletcher, speaking to the BBC, said of his recent visit to Gaza: “It felt to me like I was driving through the ruins of Hiroshima, or Stalingrad, or Dresden”.

Delegations from Hamas led by Khalil al-Hayya, and its rival, Fatah, led by Hussein Al-Sheikh, met in Egypt on Friday to discuss post-war arrangements in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas said it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended”.

A joint statement published on the Hamas website said the groups had agreed during a meeting in Cairo to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage the affairs of life and basic services in cooperation with Arab brothers and international institutions”.

At least two people have been killed and dozens of protesters arrested in Cameroon as the government cracks down on dissent before the announcement of final results in this month’s presidential elections.

Local media reports, citing preliminary data from the electoral commission (Elecam), suggest that victory for the 92-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, is all but certain. That prospect has provoked anger and disbelief among his opponents, leading to unrest across several regions.

Biya, who has been in power since 1982 and is president of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), is the world’s longest-ruling head of state.

In a statement released earlier this week, Clément Atangana, head of the Constitutional Council, confirmed the official results would be published on 27 October. The council has already dismissed 10 petitions alleging electoral malpractice, including several filed by opposition parties, in decisions that have only deepened public distrust in the process.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary a former long-time Biya ally turned foe who leads the Cameroon National Salvation Front, declared himself the winner earlier this week, claiming to have secured 54.8% of the vote against Biya’s 31.3%.

Tchiroma said the Constitutional Council would be “complicit in a breach of trust” if it upheld results that he said had been manipulated. “The vast majority of the Cameroonian people will never accept that the council validates the historic scale of ballot stuffing and falsification,” he said.

Biya’s ruling party has denounced Tchiroma’s victory claim as “a grotesque hoax” and an “unacceptable fraud in a state of law”, saying in a statement it was “calmly awaiting the official results”.

Protesters clashed with security officers who threw teargas canisters on Wednesday in Tchiroma’s hometown of Garoua, in the north. At least two people were killed, including a teacher who died after stray bullets hit her. There were also demonstrations in the capital, Yaoundé, where crowds who gathered in key administrative areas were quickly dispersed by security forces.

In the city of Maroua, in the Far North region, one of Cameroon’s poorest and Tchiroma’s political stronghold, the anger has taken on a deeply personal tone. Outside the office of the regional governor, a group of young people left a handwritten letter expressing desperation over poverty and political exclusion.

“The young people of Maroua are writing to you today to inform you that we are fed up with this country because the Far North region is the poorest region,” it read. “All the citizens voted for Issa [Tchiroma], but the government wants to rig it. It’s better to go join Boko Haram in Sambisa [in Nigeria near the border with Cameroon] than to stay for another seven years. If you let us go, you and the CPDM activists will pay with blood in Maroua.”

Authorities have moved quickly to try to quash dissent. In a televised address, the minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, said more than 20 people detained during the protests would face trial before a military tribunal.

“They face serious charges, including incitement to rebellion and insurrection,” he announced, warning that the government would not tolerate actions that threatened public order.

There were reports of internet restrictions in the commercial capital of Douala and other parts of the country on Wednesday and Thursday, confirmed by the internet monitor NetBlocks. Camtel, the state operator, blamed connectivity disruptions on “a technical incident involving Wacs cable” and said service was gradually being restored in “certain areas”.

The respected National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon has called for calm. “It is our prayer that, with the help of God and the commitment of all, our country will experience peace and stability in truth and will emerge stronger,” Andrew Fuanya Nkea, the archbishop of Bamenda and president of the NECC, said on Tuesday.

Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, has quietly scrapped support for a fleet of aircraft providing “life-saving” humanitarian aid to some of the world’s poorest countries.

The decision further reduces the distribution of vital aid to countries facing serious humanitarian crises, including South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

BAE Systems announced record profits this year of more than £3bn, buoyed by increased defence spending linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The decision to scrap support for the aid aircraft is thought to have been made in order for the defence firm to pursue projects related to Nato members’ 5% increase in spending on arms.

Several major humanitarian contracts have been cancelled since the decision, including one with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to fly aid to 12 destinations across Somalia where almost 5 million people face “crisis” levels of hunger.

The developments follow a decision by BAE Systems to voluntarily surrender the type certificate issued by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority for the Advanced Turbo-Prop (ATP), thereby revoking the airworthiness of its last commercial aircraft model.

BAE informed the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that these models were “no longer produced and that, to their knowledge, only few aircrafts are being operated”.

Though several countries have the ATP still registered, the last known operator was EnComm Aviation, a Kenyan air-cargo operator that specialised in delivering humanitarian aid across east Africa.

Jackton Obuola, EnComm Aviation’s director, said: “The aid our aircraft delivered provided a lifeline to the people of South Sudan, Somalia and the DRC at a time of great global instability.

“BAE’s decision to suddenly withdraw support for all our planes has grounded the fleet and cut off vital supplies to those most in need. Now, the people of east Africa face an increasingly perilous situation while BAE prioritise their own commercial interests.”

Between March 2023 and last month, EnComm Aviation’s aircraft delivered 18,677 tonnes of aid to Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Chad.

The WFP estimates that one tonne of food – usually cereals, pulses and oil – can meet the daily needs of about 1,660 people.

BAE’s ATP was considered ideal for humanitarian missions because it could operate on the shorter airstrips that are common in remote locations. Each aircraft could carry a payload of 8.2 tonnes (18,077lb).

A pre-action letter sent by lawyers acting for EnComm to BAE Systems, dated 13 October 2025, says that, since the decision, its 12 aid aircraft “cannot be operated” and are now “worthless for their intended purpose”.

The letter references emails and meetings between BAE’s senior leadership and EnComm Aviation that the Nairobi-based firm claims shows that it was led to believe BAE would provide continued support for its ATP for at least five years.

Sent by the London lawyers White & Case, the correspondence adds that the decision was taken “without any consultation with or formal notice to EnComm”.

A BAE Systems spokesperson said: “We do not comment on potential litigation.”

Correspondence from BAE Systems, meanwhile, shows that its decision to withdraw the airworthiness certificate for the ATP is “permanent and irreversible”.

A letter from the defence firm’s head of regional aircraft programmes, dated 27 May 2025, said the firm intended to inform the UK Civil Aviation Authority it wanted to “start the process to voluntarily surrender the aircraft type certificate for the BAE ATP. The objective being to complete this activity by December 2026.”

Among several humanitarian contracts that EnComm has had to cancel is a 10-year agreement to operate in the DRC.

Another involves WFP Somalia, with EnComm’s aircraft due to be based at two airports and four airstrips, where they would transport food to regions where the country’s food shortage is officially classed as a crisis. The contract, seen by the Guardian and agreed to run from 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026, has been cancelled.

According to the UN, 4.6 million people are facing crisis levels of hunger in Somalia, while 1.8 million children aged under five are suffering from acute malnutrition.

In South Sudan – where EnComm flew to 12 different destinations – the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that some regions are sliding into famine.

In total, 7.7 million people across South Sudan face acute food insecurity – more than half the entire population – with 2.3 million children malnourished.

Farther south – in the DRC – a record 27.7 million people are experiencing acute hunger amid conflict linked to huge displacement, climate crisis and rising food prices.

The situation is worst in its eastern provinces – North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika – where families have lost access to their livelihoods after prolonged conflict in the region.

EnComm’s contract for the country involved flights to 11 destinations including the city of Goma, which was seized by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels at the start of the year.

Since BAE signalled its intention over the aircraft, EnComm Aviation has closed operations in Kenya. It is now seeking £187m in losses and damages claiming “negligent misrepresentation and misstatement” by BAE.

Analysts expect BAE system’s profits to increase further this year as it benefits from increased military spending globally amid growing instability.

A Cuban man deported by the Trump administration to the southern African country of Eswatini has started a hunger strike against his detention there, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

Roberto Mosquera del Peral was among five third-country nationals deported from the US to Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, in July.

They have been held in a maximum-security prison along with 10 others deported in October, after a broader ramp-up in third-country removals under the US president’s immigration crackdown.

US officials have said the men deported to Eswatini are convicted criminals. Their lawyers say all of them had finished serving their sentences in the US and that there was no legal basis to imprison them again.

“My client is arbitrarily detained and now his life is on the line,” Alma David, Mosquera del Peral’s US-based attorney, said in a statement, adding that had begun the hunger strike on 15 October.

A spokesperson for Eswatini’s correctional services department had no immediate comment but said he would review the information.

The US Department of Homeland Security wrote on X in June that Mosquera del Peral, 58, had been arrested by immigration authorities in Miami. It said his criminal history included convictions for homicide, aggravated assault on a police officer and aggravated battery.

His attorney David said this was incorrect. She said he had been convicted of attempted murder, not murder, and had finished his sentence before he was deported. She demanded that he be permitted to meet his lawyer in Eswatini.

A local attorney acting on behalf of the deportees has been engaged in a legal battle to gain access to them, which the Eswatini government has so far refused.

Slashed contributions from wealthy countries to an anti-malaria fund could allow a resurgence of the disease, costing millions of lives and billions of pounds by the end of the decade, according to a new analysis.

The fight against malaria faces new threats, including extreme weather and humanitarian crises increasing the number of people exposed, and growing biological resistance to insecticides and drugs, the report warns.

Gareth Jenkins, of Malaria No More UK, said: “Cutting funding risks the deadliest resurgence we’ve ever seen.”

Analysts said the cost to sub-Saharan Africa would be substantial, and the region’s leaders have appealed to the G7 to maintain investment. They have also asked the private sector and high-net worth individuals to step in, saying better control of the disease would fuel economic growth and trade.

Joy Phumaphi, of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (Alma), which co-commissioned the research with Malaria No More UK, said: “African countries are stepping up to the plate, and we are appealing to the rest of the world to accompany us on this journey, because all of us need to be part of the end story of malaria.”

The report estimated the impact of funding cuts to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria – which is seeking donations to cover costs from 2027 to 2029. The fund provides nearly 60% of all international financing for malaria controls, such as mosquito nets and preventive drugs.

If funding was 20% lower than in the last round, researchers said there would be an additional 33 million cases and 82,000 deaths, and $5.14bn (£3.83bn) in lost GDP by 2030, according to the report.

However, funding cuts look likely. Germany pledged $1bn to the fund last week, a figure 23% lower than its last promise. The UK government is reportedly looking at a figure 20% down on its previous commitment, although it says no final decision has been made.

If a funding vacuum led to preventive malaria control collapsing entirely, the report estimates there would be 525 million more cases, 990,000 more deaths and $83bn in lost GDP. About 750,000 of those deaths would be of children under five, representing “the loss of a generation to malaria”, the report’s authors warned.

Conversely, they said that if the Global Fund received the full $18bn it was asking for, there would be a $230bn boost to GDP, 865 million fewer cases and 1.86 million fewer deaths.

Phumaphi said there had been “marked increases in [domestic] budget allocation not just to health, but specifically to malaria, particularly since the beginning of this year.

But she added: “I think we need to appreciate the enormity of the challenge and exactly how much is required in funding in order for countries to be able to catch up.”

African countries heavily burdened by servicing debt and the economic aftershocks of Covid-19 were facing not only infectious diseases but also a growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer, she said.

It was worrying, Phumaphi said, that donor countries were considering pledging less than in the last round, “but we are grateful that countries like Germany have pledged substantial amounts – a billion is quite a substantial amount.”

The former Botswana health minister said she was hopeful that wealthy individuals, the private sector and foundations would step up “because when we talk about productivity, jobs [and the] economic potential that Africa tends to lose, we are talking about potential investments and markets for the private sector”.

One of those individuals, the Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, encouraged others to join him in filling the funding gap: “Malaria is not just a health crisis; it is an $83bn brake on Africa’s growth and enterprise. Business cannot thrive in sick communities.”

Malaria’s impact on GDP was measured using factors including disrupted schooling, employee absences, and the impact on tourism and agriculture.

“This is worth several more terms,” the Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, joked while opening a bridge named after him in the country’s commercial capital, Abidjan, in 2023.

The appearance in recent years of several new bridges in west Africa’s second most populous city has been hailed by the president’s supporters as symbolic of an era of modernity and stable leadership under his watch.

Infrastructure building has ramped up around the country and the economy has grown rapidly since Ouattara first took office in 2011 – proof, his camp says, that decades of violent crises have been left in the past.

A sense of deja vu

On a Saturday earlier this month more than 200 protesters were teargassed and arrested across Abidjan, including in neighbourhoods within a mile of the bridge opened by Ouattara two years earlier.

It was the latest in a series of demonstrations by young people against Ouattara’s decision to run for a fourth term in the presidential election taking place on 25 October.

All protests have now been banned by the government.

In another sign of a crackdown on free speech and dissenting voices, leaders of two opposition parties alleged that security personnel ransacked their homes this month, without a search warrant.

“These elections can be won without bloodshed,” said the main opposition candidate, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo. Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s first lady from 2000 to 2011 when she was married to the former president Laurent Gbagbo, was once known to her supporters as “the Hillary Clinton of the tropics”. Others gave her the nickname “the iron lady” due to her tough reputation.

“The right solution is not to march or boycott,” she said. “The right solution is to vote.”

For older citizens, there is a sense of deja vu: Ouattara, 83, is almost the same age as his mentor Félix Houphouët-Boigny – the country’s first president – was when an uprising in 1990 led to the country’s first multiparty elections.

In July, he confirmed what people everywhere from roadside maquis (open-air restaurants) to diplomatic dinners had suspected: he was standing for yet another term. In 2020 he reached the same decision, initially declining to run for a third term but changing his mind when his party’s designated candidate died during the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that a 2016 constitutional amendment had reset the clock. The main opposition boycotted the vote and Ouattara won a controversial victory.

More controversy beckons when the country goes to the polls on Saturday.

Two leading opposition figures have been sidelined. Laurent Gbagbo, now 80, is entangled in a past legal conviction linked to the 2010-11 post-electoral conflict. The former Credit Suisse banker Tidjane Thiam, 63, was disqualified after a court ruled he was a French national when he registered to contest, in contravention of Ivorian laws.

Ouattara will face an array of lesser-heralded contenders including Simone Gbagbo, and an array of former ministers.

There are rumours about his health and claims that some of the elite – used to the trappings of power – are encouraging him to stay on. Nevertheless some supporters have called on him to step down to make way for a new generation.

In June, the front-page headline in the weekly Le Sursaut carried a plea from a self-described “allassaniste”: “Dear Papa Ouattara, don’t be a candidate.”

The communication minister, Amadou Coulibaly, brushed off any criticism. “The president is exercising his legal right under the constitution,” he told the Guardian. “He meets all criteria. Citizens are free to vote for or against him. That is democracy.”

Disinformation and disenfranchisement

Officials claim the nationwide infrastructure drive, including a rural electrification programme, has transformed many parts of the country and raised the standard of living.

“This government is committed to fighting poverty,” said Coulibaly. “In 2011, the poverty rate was 55%. In 2024, it dropped to 37%. Our goal for 2030 is to halve that again to around 18%.”

However, the cost of living has soared, especially in Abidjan, inequality levels remain high, and the average life expectancy is only 59.

“A beautiful Ivory Coast with roads is good, but happy Ivorians are better … Ivorians are not happy,” Simone Gbagbo said after a rally in the central city of Gagnoa. “It is important that if we do politics, it is for the people.”

While Ouattara remains a beloved figure in the north and parts of the centre, his approval ratings have plummeted in Abidjan. The former colonial ruler France has become public enemy No 1 in the region, and Ouattara, like his Nigerian counterpart, Bola Tinubu, are seen as Parisian puppets and adversaries of the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States.

That perception has been fuelled by a deluge of disinformation, including fake rumours of a coup d’etat earlier this year, that analysts say fits a pattern.

“Most of the campaigns, most of the fake news we’ve observed, come mainly from Burkina Faso,” said Vanessa Manessong, a data analyst at Code4Africa and the African Digital Democracy Observatory. She said the accounts were often pro-Russia and anti-France, and sought to discredit France and sabotage its relations with Ivory Coast.

Ouattara’s popularity dipped more after the treatment of Thiam, who leads a party founded by his great-uncle, Houphouët-Boigny. Thiam’s disqualification is seen as continuing the exclusionary identity politics that has plagued Ivory Coast for decades and was a major factor in the civil wars of 2002 to 2007 and 2010-11.

A tense situation

Ahead of the election, things are tense: more than 44,000 security personnel have been deployed nationwide. Diplomats and some expatriates are sending their families abroad briefly.

In October last year, the influential Student Federation of Ivory Coast, which has allegedly been involved in organised crime since it was established during the 1990 uprisings, was banned after two student murders and caches of weapons were found. There are fears that the group’s many factions could intervene to support their preferred candidates.

Ouattara’s rivals have called for daily protests, hoping for an audit of the electoral register and reinstatement of their leaders.

Coulibaly dismissed concerns of possible voter apathy if the disbarred candidates were not reinserted. “It’s everywhere in the world that people are losing interest in elections … so I don’t want people to stigmatise our continent,” he said. “There’s a global kind of democratic fatigue.”

On a recent trip across one of Abidjan’s new bridges, Kouakou, a taxi driver who asked for his last name not to be used, said he was glad his compatriots were taking to the streets, but that he had resigned himself to another Ouattara victory.

“It’s like an episode of 24,” said Kouakou. “You know Jack Bauer will win but you don’t know what happens before then.”

Four people have been killed in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, after security forces fired shots and teargas to disperse huge crowds at a stadium where the body of opposition leader Raila Odinga was lying in state.

Odinga, a major figure in Kenyan politics for decades who was once a political prisoner and ran unsuccessfully for president five times, died on Wednesday aged 80 in India, where he had been receiving medical treatment.

With thousands of his supporters on the streets from early morning, chaos erupted when a huge crowd breached a gate at Nairobi’s main stadium, prompting soldiers to fire in the air, a Reuters witness said.

A police source told Reuters that two people were shot dead at the stadium. KTN News and Citizen TV later said the death toll had increased to four, with scores injured. After security forces fired shots, police used teargas to disperse thousands of mourners, the two broadcasters reported, leaving the stadium deserted.

Earlier in the day, thousands of mourners briefly stormed Nairobi’s international airport, interrupting a ceremony for president William Ruto and other officials to receive Odinga’s body with military honours. The incident prompted a two-hour suspension of airport operations.

Crowds also flooded nearby roads and tried to breach parliament, where the government had originally scheduled the public viewing.

Though mainly known as an opposition figure, Odinga became prime minister in 2008 and also struck a political pact with Ruto last year in a career marked by shifting alliances.

He commanded passionate devotion among supporters, especially in his Luo community based in western Kenya, many of whom believe he was denied the presidency by electoral fraud.

Many of Odinga’s mourners, who were not yet born in 1991 when Kenya became a multi-party democracy, paid tribute to Odinga’s efforts as an activist.

Felix Ambani Uneck, a university student, said at the stadium: “He fought tirelessly for multi-party democracy, and we are enjoying those freedoms today because of his struggle.”

The niece of Agnes Wanjiru, who was killed in Kenya, said she hopes the former British soldier charged with her aunt’s murder will be extradited while the Labour government is still in power.

On her first trip outside Kenya, Esther Njoki travelled to London, where she was invited to parliament to meet the defence secretary, John Healey, whom she urged not to delay the potentially years-long extradition process.

“We are hoping that before his time ends and they get out of government he will have achieved what he wanted to achieve in Agnes’ case,” she said, “and it will be good for him, and also for [Wanjiru’s] family, and the whole world, because everyone is watching.”

Njoki, 21, who acts as the spokesperson for Wanjiru’s family, added that she has noticed “a big change” in the approach from the UK since Labour came to power last year, and fears that progress in the case may stall under a different government.

“Before it was it was very hard for us even to engage,” she said. “We even never got a chance to engage with the UK authorities, but now it is easy even to get to meet with the secretary of state for defence. We appreciate that, we don’t take it for granted.”

Wanjiru, a 21-year-old hairdresser, disappeared after a night out in Nanyuki, Kenya in 2012. Her body was found several weeks later in the grounds of the hotel where she was last seen.

Last month, a Kenyan court issued a warrant for the arrest of a suspect in the case, named as Robert James Purkiss, a former British soldier, who has been charged by a Kenyan court with a single count of murder.

In order for the suspect to face charges in Kenya, an extradition request will first have to be received and authorised by the UK courts.

“I’m hoping that whatever we discussed, it will be put into consideration, and things will be fast-tracked, because there’s the extradition process that is ahead,” Njoki said.

“I believe … his hands are tied. He can’t do much because he might prejudice the criminal matter. But again, if there is political will, things might go faster. So we’re just hoping that things will be taken seriously and they’ll keep us updated as the family, and ensure that justice is served.”

Healey, who had urged the previous government to act in Wanjiru’s case while in opposition, also met the family in Kenya in April, becoming the first UK government minister to do so.

“We appreciate it, because it’s the second time, he’s a senior official. It’s hard to meet such people, so I appreciate the support that he always gives, and being willing to meet us and to listen to our grievances,” Njoki said.

“We don’t take it for granted, and I appreciate him because we are seeing things changing, and then even he’s the first minister to meet us for over 13 years.”

During her five-day visit, Njoki, who is studying communications at the University of Nairobi, gave media interviews to raise the profile of the case, and also appeared on a panel at the House of Commons.

She sat alongside speakers including Ben Keith, a barrister specialising in international law and extradition, and Tessa Gregory, the UK lawyer acting for Wanjiru’s family.

Njoki said she hoped her advocacy work would not only bring justice for her aunt, but improve the lives of women in Kenya. “This is a way of changing things, just small steps,” she said. “It’s a sign of hope that everything is possible. Despite where you come from, your background doesn’t have to define you.”

Healey said: “Six months since our first meeting in Kenya, I was pleased to welcome the niece of the late Agnes Wanjiru, Esther Njoki, to London, to reiterate our government’s steadfast support for her family’s long and painful fight for justice.

“I want to pay tribute to Esther, who is an extraordinary spokesperson for her family, and for women who have suffered violence.”

He added: “We reflected on the significant progress made in recent months, with the case file being handed to the director of public prosecutions in April and a charging decision being made last month

“Our government will continue to do everything we can to support the Kenyan investigation, secure a resolution to this case and finally bring peace to Esther and her grieving family.”

Madagascar’s new military ruler will be sworn in as the country’s president on Friday, the military said on Wednesday, as the African Union suspended the island nation after a coup that ousted President Andry Rajoelina.

The Indian Ocean nation has been plunged into its worst political upheaval in years after the elite Capsat army unit assumed power on Tuesday, moments after parliament voted to impeach Rajoelina, who appeared to have fled the country as street protests escalated.

It becomes the latest former French colony to fall under military control since 2020, after coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Gabon and Guinea.

Capsat commander Col Michael Randrianirina, confirmed as president by the top court, said on Wednesday that the transition to civilian leadership would take under two years and include the restructuring of major institutions.

“It wasn’t a coup, it was a case of taking responsibility because the country was on the brink of collapse,” he said, having pledged elections in 18 to 24 months and told local media that consultations were under way to appoint a prime minister and form a new government.

The transition would be overseen by a committee of officers from the army, gendarmerie and police.

Randrianirina “will be sworn in as president of the refoundation of the Republic of Madagascar during a solemn hearing of the high constitutional court” on 17 October, the country’s military rulers said in a statement, published on social media by a state television station.

Randrianirina has long been a vocal critic of Rajoelina’s administration and was reportedly imprisoned for several months in 2023 for plotting a coup.

The swift takeover has drawn international concern. The African Union on Wednesday told AFP it was suspending Madagascar “with immediate effect”, while the UN said it was “deeply concerned by the unconstitutional change of power”.

France said in a statement that it was “essential that democracy, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law be scrupulously upheld”.

A spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said all actors needed to “act with caution in this currently somewhat confusing situation”, while Russia called for “exercising restraint and preventing bloodshed”.

The security body of regional SADC grouping – of which Rajoelina was holding the rotating presidency – also expressed concern.

The capital, Antananarivo, remained calm late on Wednesday, though uncertainty lingered over what might happen next.

A concert was held on the symbolic Place du 13 Mai square, in front of the city hall, where thousands of protesters and armed vehicles had clashed days earlier.

The youth-led Gen Z movement that initiated the protests on 25 September over lack of water and energy before they later swelled into broader anger at the political elite have welcomed the intervention of Randrianirina.

The colonel had said he was “ready to talk to the youth and we are ready to answer the call,” Gen Z said in a post on Facebook, reiterating its calls for “systemic change”.

“We’re worried about what comes next, but we’re savouring this first victory that gave us hope,” 26-year-old Fenitra Razafindramanga, captain of Madagascar’s national rugby team, told AFP.

In the northern city of Antsiranana, an entrepreneur who identified herself only as Muriella was relieved that Rajoelina was no longer in power.

“It feels like we’ve just been released from prison,” she told AFP, adding: “This is also a message to his successor: learn from this and don’t make the same mistakes.”

The veteran Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga, who ran five times for the presidency and had a profound influence on the country’s politics, has died aged 80 in India.

An Indian police source told Agence France-Presse he was walking with his sister, daughter, a personal doctor and two security officers “when he suddenly collapsed” and was taken to hospital where he was declared dead.

Devamatha hospital in Kerala state confirmed his death to the Associated Press, saying he had had a cardiac arrest and failed to respond to resuscitation attempts. Odinga was in India for treatment in the southern city of Kochi.

An enduring opposition figure in Kenyan politics, Odinga became an MP in 2002 and his most recent run for the presidency was in 2022.

His narrow loss to Mwai Kibaki in the disputed 2007 election triggered unrest that killed about 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. He became prime minister in 2008 in a national unity government headed by his former foe Kibaki, as a part of a deal to end the bloodshed.

His fight for democracy helped the country achieve two milestone political reforms: changing from a one-party state to a multiparty democracy in 1991, and enacting a new constitution in 2010.

A hugely popular figure, Odinga was able to mobilise massive crowds to attend his rallies, and supporters called him Baba – “father” in Swahili. As news of his death reached the streets, hundreds of supporters from the Nairobi slum of Kibera made their way in a procession to Odinga’s home.

In reaction to youth-led anti-government protests last year, he entered an agreement with the president, William Ruto, under which his Orange Democratic Movement party became part of a “broad-based government” and gained a role in policymaking.

The former chief justice and current presidential aspirant David Maraga said he was “shocked” by news of Odinga’s death. He described him as “a patriot, a pan-Africanist, a democrat and a leader who made significant contributions to democracy in Kenya and in Africa”.

“Kenya has lost one of its most formidable leaders who shaped the trajectory of our beloved country. Africa has lost a leading voice in pushing for peace, security and development. The world has lost a great leader,” he said on X.

Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the chair of the African Union Commission, said Odinga was “a steadfast champion of democracy, good governance, and people-centered development”. He posted on X: “His decades-long commitment to justice, pluralism, and democratic reform left an indelible mark not only on Kenya but across the African continent.”

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said Odinga was a “towering statesman”. Condolences were also offered by Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and Tanzanian president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who described Odinga’s death as a tragedy “not just for Kenya, but for all of us”.