Algeria opposition figure released under judicial supervision

PORT SUDAN: Paramilitary shelling on Sunday on a strategic city in Sudan’s south, where the army broke a prolonged siege last month, killed seven civilians and wounded nearly two dozen others, a medical source said.

El-Obeid, the state capital of North Kordofan, came under attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, at war with the army since April 2023, said the source at the city’s main hospital and several witnesses.
Witnesses reported intense bombardment by the RSF on Sunday, with one shell striking a public transport bus carrying passengers, on the third consecutive day of attacks from the north and east.

The hospital source said that the shelling killed seven people and wounded 23 others, all civilians.
Last month, the army broke a nearly two-year RSF siege on El-Obeid, which sits at a crucial crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum to the country’s western region of Darfur.
The RSF has captured nearly all of Darfur while the army controls the country’s north and east and recently won back large swathes of Khartoum and central Sudan.
The war, pitting army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against his former deputy, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has claimed tens of thousands of lives, uprooted over 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
An international aid group, meanwhile, said nearly 100 people died of cholera in two weeks since the waterborne disease outbreak began in Sudan’s White Nile State,
Doctors Without Borders — also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF — said that 2,700 people had contracted the disease since Feb. 20, including 92 people who died.
Of the admitted cholera patients who died, 18 were children, including five children who were no older than 5, and five others who were no older than 9, said Marta Cazarola, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan.
The Rapid Support Forces group launched intense attacks last month in the White Nile State that killed hundreds of civilians, including infants.
The Sudanese military announced at the time that it made advances there, cutting crucial supply routes to the RSF.
During the RSF attacks in the state on Feb. 16, the group fired a projectile that hit the Rabak power plant, causing a mass power outage and triggering the latest wave of cholera, according to MSF.
Subsequently, people in the area had to rely mainly on water obtained from donkey carts because water pumps were no longer operational.
“Attacks on critical infrastructure have long-term detrimental effects on the health of vulnerable communities,” said Marta Cazorla, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan.
The cholera outbreak in the state peaked between Feb. 20-24, when patients and their families rushed to Kosti Teaching Hospital, overwhelming the facility beyond its capacity, according to MSF.
Most patients were severely dehydrated. MSF provided 25 tonnes of logistical items such as beds and tents to Kosti to help absorb more cholera patients.
Cazarola said that numbers in the cholera treatment center were declining and at low levels until this latest outbreak.
The White Nile State Health Ministry responded to the outbreak by providing the community access to clean water and banning the use of donkey carts to transport water.
Health officials also administered a vaccination campaign when the outbreak began.
Cholera was officially declared an outbreak on Aug. 12 last year by Sudan’s Health Ministry after a new wave of cases was reported starting July 22.

ANKARA: A key ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that all “affiliated groups” of the Kurdish militant group PKK must disarm as well, as part of a historic ceasefire deal with Ankara.
Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, last month called on his group to disband and end more than four decades of armed struggle against Turkiye.
But Ankara also wants all PKK fighters disarmed wherever they are, notably those in the Syrian Democratic Forces — the bulk of which is made up of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
The SDF leadership welcomed Ocalan’s call on Feb. 27 to disband but said it did not apply to its forces.
“The PKK terrorist organization and its affiliated groups must immediately and without preconditions lay down their weapons,” said Devlet Bahceli, head of the hard-line nationalist MHP party.
Bahceli is considered the key sponsor of the talks between Ankara and the PKK, after he offered a surprise peace gesture if Ocalan rejected violence.
“The fact that the YPG and other similar terrorist groups claim to be exempt from this call ... is completely contradictory to the leadership of the organization,” Bahceli said in a statement.
The PKK announced a ceasefire after the call by Ocalan, who has been imprisoned for the past 26 years, saying that “none of our forces will carry out any armed operation unless they are attacked.”
Since 2016, Turkiye has carried out three major military operations in northern Syria targeting PKK militants, which it sees as a strategic threat along its southern border.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkiye, the US, and the EU, has waged an insurgency since 1984.
Its original aim was to carve out a homeland for Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Turkiye’s 85 million people.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed, which has cost more than 40,000 lives.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said on Sunday that the president of the Syrian Arab Republic must hold the perpetrators of communal violence in coastal areas to account.
Abdi said in written comments to Reuters that Ahmed Al-Sharaa must intervene to halt “massacres.”
Turkey’s Defence Ministry declined to comment on Abdi’s remarks.
Abdi called on Sharaa to “reconsider the method of forming the new Syrian army and the behavior of the armed factions,” saying some of them were exploiting their role in the army “to create sectarian conflicts and settle internal scores.”