World
Sudan’s Military Recaptures Key City From Paramilitary Accused of Genocide
The Sudanese military recaptured a key city in Sudan’s breadbasket region on Saturday, chasing out a paramilitary group that the United States accused last week of genocide.
Sudan’s information minister said the army had “liberated” the city, Wad Madani, while the military said that its troops were working to “clear the remnants of the rebels” from the area.
If the army can hold on to the city, it would be its most significant victory since the war started nearly two years ago. Experts said it would most likely shift the focus of the war northward to Khartoum, the capital.
Videos circulating online showed the army entering Wad Madani, which lies about 100 miles south of the capital. Local media reported that fighters with the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., were fleeing the city.
The group’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, admitted defeat but vowed to soon recapture the city. “Today we lost a round; we did not lose the battle,” he said in an audio address to his fighters and the Sudanese people.
The victory brought joyous scenes in army-held parts of the country among Sudanese who hoped it might signal a turning point in a ruinous civil war that has led to massacres, ethnic cleansing and a spreading famine in one of Africa’s largest countries.
People massed on the battle-scarred streets of Khartoum, while church bells pealed in Port Sudan, the wartime de facto capital where many Sudanese have fled the fighting. Celebrations also erupted among exiled Sudanese in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The R.S.F. defeat came just over a year after the group seized Wad Madani in a victory that forced tens of thousands of people to flee and sent shock waves across Sudan. The group’s fighters went on to capture swaths of the country, far from their stronghold in Darfur in western Sudan.
But much of the most brutal fighting was in Darfur, where R.S.F. fighters massacred members of rival ethnic groups, according to human rights groups and the United Nations. Last week the United States formally determined that those killings constituted genocide, and it imposed sanctions on the R.S.F.’s leader, General Hamdan, who is widely known as Hemeti.
The United States also imposed sanctions on seven companies in the United Arab Emirates that it accused of trading gold and buying weapons on behalf of the R.S.F.
In recent months, the tide of the fight appeared to turn as the R.S.F. ceded territory in Khartoum and in parts of the east of the country. The military launched a counteroffensive in the area around Wad Madani, culminating in the recapture of the city on Saturday.
Still, it was too early to say if the victory would fundamentally change the course of the conflict. Since the first shots were fired in April 2023, the momentum of the fighting has swung back and forth, sometimes wildly.
The army and the R.S.F. were once allies, and their leaders joined to mount a military coup in 2021. But in the war between them, they have enjoyed the backing of different foreign powers.
The R.S.F. is supported by the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf sponsor that has supplied it with weapons and powerful drones, mostly smuggled into Sudan from neighboring countries.
The Sudanese military has obtained or bought weapons from Iran, Russia and Turkey. Both sides mine the country’s vast reserves of gold to finance the fight.
For ordinary Sudanese, the war has brought only misery, death and destruction, killing tens of thousands of people, scattering 11 million from their homes and setting off one of the world’s worst famines in decades.
The global authority on hunger, known as the I.P.C., reported last month that famine had spread to five areas in Sudan and was expected to reach another five in the coming months. In all, 25 million Sudanese suffer from acute or chronic hunger.
Both sides have committed atrocities and war crimes, according to the United Nations and American officials, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing.
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Hezbollah has begun unleashing “game changing” waves of “lethal” nighttime drones against Israel, a defense expert warns, with the attacks contributing to casualties, defense breaches and plunging parts of the border region into chaos, according to reports.
Escalating deployments by Hezbollah had also prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene an emergency security meeting on May 30 following a surprise Hezbollah strike, amid reports of “utter chaos” as Israeli forces scrambled to respond.
“These nighttime drones are the very small Category 1 and Category 2 drones,” defense expert and Draganfly CEO Cameron Chell told Fox News Digital.
“They are generally used by squads on the ground to go and conduct tactical lethal missions or surveillance missions right in theater immediately. What they are able to do is use thermal sensors to be able to fly at night and use heat signatures to spot IDF troops,” he said.
ISRAEL SAYS IT IS STRIKING HEZBOLLAH TARGETS IN LEBANON
Rockets are launched from Lebanon towards Israel amid escalating tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from the Israeli side of the border. (Gil Eliyahu/Reuters)
“Hezbollah now has nighttime capabilities, which is game changing,” Chell added.
“What you will see is an escalation of the use of drones and the innovation of asymmetric warfare in that particular area by Hezbollah,” he warned.
Chell’s comments came amid reports of makeshift defenses with nets being deployed against the backdrop of a significant shift in the conflict.
Israeli soldiers have resorted to buying commercial fishing and soccer nets to entangle the incoming aerial threats, according to reports.
“This means that there is a whole other set of countermeasures that the IDF has to put in place, whether it is electronic jamming, net guns or the use of netting just to put in front of installations or in front of vehicles to try to stop the final impact of the drone if it is a strike drone,” Chell added.
HEZBOLLAH DISARMAMENT DEADLOCK RISKS CIVIL WAR, ANALYSTS SAY, AS US PREPARES FOR ISRAEL–LEBANON TALKS
Smoke rises following a projectile attack amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel near Shlomi in northern Israel on Oct. 19, 2024. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)
“The IDF will have to change a lot of their tactics regarding their ability to move around and conduct operations at night. Now they will have to factor in the fact that Hezbollah has nighttime capabilities to at least do observation using thermal cameras, as well as strike capabilities.”
Netanyahu called a meeting with top officials following an intense Hezbollah rocket and drone blitz that caught the military off guard on Saturday.
According to a report by Channel 13, the Israeli army was surprised by the scale of the fire as well as Hezbollah’s decision to shift its operational policy in response to the expansion of Israel’s ground operations beyond the Litani River.
IDF SOLDIERS ACCUSE UN PEACEKEEPERS OF ENABLING HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS AMID INCREASING CEASE-FIRE VIOLATIONS
Hezbollah terrorists holding rifles are shown in this image. A “terrorist network” funded and operated by Hezbollah and Iran was foiled in the United Arab Emirates, according to a report. (Fadel Itani/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Reports from the ground described “utter chaos” in parts of the north. While rockets were said to have hit the cities, Hezbollah simultaneously launched waves of drone strikes.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has also touted the militant group’s drone capabilities, calling them an effective weapon against Israeli forces operating near and inside southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu has also described Hezbollah’s drone capabilities as a major threat given the difficulty in detecting them.
“Hezbollah have got a supply line or supply chain of some sort set up,” Chell added before stating that they are not “using stuff that is groundbreaking; this is very old technology and tactics that they are using.”
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“That said, somebody is making the equipment available to Hezbollah — whether it is coming via Iran, China, Russia, Afghanistan or the black market, someone is getting enough product and feeding it into their supply chains,” Chell warned.
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At Frankfurt am Main’s central station, Deutsche Bahn also warns passengers on board the trains about pickpockets. Travellers leaving the station are confronted with the misery of drug addicts who congregate in Kaiserstrasse and the surrounding streets, whether they like it or not. Police are usually on the scene, but from the outside little seems to have changed in recent years.
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And the figures on violence at Germany’s railway stations are causing headaches for many officials. Since this weekend the federal police have stepped up their presence at stations in ten major German cities. Yet when it comes to crime at stations, Frankfurt does not sit at the top of the list.
The stations particularly affected by crime in 2025 were the central station in Leipzig, with 859 violent offences, the central station in Dortmund with 735 and the central station in Berlin with 654.
Most recently, the fatal attack on a conductor on a regional train in Rhineland-Palatinate last February caused widespread shock. It was followed by a debate about the scale of attacks on Deutsche Bahn staff.
Expert: “No railway station in Germany is a no-go area”
In total, according to police statistics, 27,800 violent offences were committed at railway stations last year. These included 980 recorded knife attacks and more than 2,200 registered sexual offences. Some 5,660 acts of violence were directed against federal police officers. According to the police, the suspected perpetrators were significantly more often non-Germans than Germans.
Criminologist Dirk Baier does describe stations as “hotspots of crime”. But in an interview with WELT the expert also explains that violence at stations is particularly visible precisely because the police presence there is higher and because it is reported on more frequently. “From my point of view there is no major station in Germany that is a no-go area.”
Indeed, directly opposite Frankfurt’s central station many people – including families and women – have no difficulty doing their shopping in the chemists and the supermarket.
Police officers at stations instead of at border controls
The deputy leader of the CDU group in the Bundestag, Günter Krings, wants to improve public safety at stations through technical measures such as more cameras, while at the same time relieving pressure on police officers. Discussions on this are currently taking place within the coalition parties.
The AfD describes Germany’s railway stations as “spaces of fear” and is calling for tougher sentences, more consistent deportations and an increased police presence.
However, the Greens’ domestic policy spokesman, Marcel Emmerich, believes that while video surveillance can be useful, it cannot replace officers on the ground. The government, he says, is deploying thousands of federal police officers for “expensive, pointless and unlawful border controls” instead of strengthening their presence at stations.
Weapons and alcohol bans at stations
As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, weapons bans now apply from Friday to Sunday at Munich’s central station and the Ostbahnhof in the Bavarian capital, as well as at the main stations in Nuremberg, Regensburg and Rosenheim. This means that knives and dangerous tools may not be carried there at weekends. According to SZ, officers can stop, question and search people even without a specific reason.
An alcohol ban has been in force at Cologne’s central station (Hbf) since April; it now also applies to the stations in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and Münster.
Deutsche Bahn has domiciliary rights at its stations and can therefore enforce its own rules there, such as an alcohol ban.
Violence at railway stations is by no means solely a German phenomenon, as the recent knife attack in Winterthur in Switzerland shows.
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