The Sudanese government is indiscriminately bombing civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held Darfur, a leading human rights group has said.
Sudanese government forces on Aug. 28 launched a major offensive believed to involve thousands of troops backed up by bomber aircraft and helicopter gunships in a bid to flush out rebel strongholds in the troubled western region.
"Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for civilian lives," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
"A penalty for indiscriminate bombing in Darfur is UN Security Council sanctions, which should be imposed now," he said.
Human Rights Watch said that firsthand sources report flight crews rolling bombs out the back ramps of Antonovs, a means of targeting that was often practiced by government forces in their 21-year civil war with rebels in southern Sudan.
This method is so inaccurate that it cannot strike at military targets without a substantial risk of harm to civilians, the New York-based rights group said in a statement posted on its Web site late on Wednesday.
"Deliberately attacking civilians is in all circumstances prohibited and a war crime," it added.
Sudan has said it would send some 10,000 troops to Darfur, in the west of the country, to fight rebel groups that had not signed a peace agreement in May.
According to international observers in northern Darfur where the offensive is taking place, a woman was killed and seven children were wounded last week in Hassan, 5km southeast of Kulkul, when a bomb was dropped on her house, Human Rights Watch said.
Sudan earlier this week said it would expel African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Darfur if they insist on transferring their mission to the UN when the AU mandate expires at the end of the month.
The understaffed and cash-starved AU force of 7,000 troops has been unable to halt the violence in Darfur, a vast region the size of France, since a conflict began in 2003.
The conflict erupted when non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government.
In response, the government mobilized Arab militias known as Janjaweed, who have been accused of murder, rape and looting.
In the past few months, various rebel groups and bandits have committed similar atrocities.
Fighting, disease and hunger have killed some 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million into squalid camps.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant