Day: October 18, 2023

Experts claim that the Wagner Group is in Sudan to provide Russia with access to resources and help it fund the war in Ukraine.

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Russia’s Wagner Group has been present in Sudan since 2017. And amid the unfolding power struggle in the country, some have expressed fears that the mercenary group is fuelling the conflict and possibly acting on behalf of the Kremlin.

“It’s so striking that anywhere there is instability or an attack on democracy in Africa, that Wagner group is involved and more often than not they are on the side of the militia,” said Emmanuel Kotin, a security expert and executive director of the Africa Centre for Security and Counterterrorism think tank.

“Look at Burkina Faso, for instance, all of the country’s mines are taken over by proxies of the Wagner group. The same thing that is happening in Sudan and in Mali,” he added. 

According to a number of international investigations, the Wagner Group’s goal in Sudan is to provide Moscow access to resources, which, Russia then uses to finance the war in Ukraine. One of its main objectives is acquiring gold, as Sudan is the third largest producer of the mineral in Africa.

Who is the Wagner Group working for in Sudan?

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime [GI-TOC] estimates that the Wagner group’s structures are deeply embedded in Sudan and the neighbouring Central African Republic, developing significant political influence, extensive commercial interests and a mercenary role. GI-TOC notes that “the main objective of the Russians in Sudan is not to protect the Khartoum political power, but essentially to benefit immensely from the country’s mineral resources.”  

Concession agreements between the Ministry of Mineral Resources of the Republic of Sudan and M Invest, owned by the founder of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin, were signed in late 2017. 

Meroe Gold, a Sudanese subsidiary of M Invest, has received privileges from the country’s authorities, and in return, it gave up 30% of its stakes in several of its projects. The US and EU have imposed sanctions on these companies. Prigozhin claims he is not a beneficiary of them. 

Commenting on the activities of the Wagner group in the Central African Republic, Jelena Aparac, an independent expert for the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, said: “We know that this is a very complicated process, so it is very difficult to determine who is behind it? How does it work? Who is giving the orders? Who is even potentially criminally responsible for human rights violations? Who is responsible for the financial transactions? But we see that it is a very complex financial and logistical system.” 

US network CNN recently published an investigation that revealed that the Wagner Group supplied Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces [RSF] with missiles to help in the conflict. RSF denies receiving help from Russia and Libya, while the Wagner Group did not comment on the findings of this investigation.

Prigozhin said that there has not been a single fighter of his group in Sudan for more than two years. “I can tell you with absolute certainty, and you can put my words in any protocols, in any highest instances, today there is not a single soldier of the PMC [private military company] “Wagner”, I emphasise – not a single one, not in Sudan,” he said on Telegram.

“And so it is more than two years. Not a single Wagner PMC soldier is present in Sudan for two years. And today there is not a single one. I think that this is the main thing that you need to know.”  He added he has been involved in Sudan for a long time, and “communicated with all the decision-makers in the Republic of Sudan.” 

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a UN press conference on Tuesday that the Sudanese authorities have the right to use the Wagner Group.

Russian media previously reported that the founder of the mercenary group took part in almost all meetings between Russian officials and Sudanese representatives starting from 2014-2016. Sudan was one of the first countries to recognise the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Since then, gold has proven to be an effective way to accumulate and move funds, replenish the Russian state treasury and circumvent international financial monitoring systems.

“The Wagner Group’s interests represent primarily the Wagner Group as opposed to a specific Sudanese entity. What we’ve seen over the past several years is that Wagner keeps on switching its allegiances,” Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, explained. He added that the Wagner Group is going to places where the Western community has previously failed to establish stability, and Russia is looking for ways to expand its presence in Africa.

Russia and Sudan’s military ties

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia is the main arms supplier to Sudan. Russian military equipment makes up around 87% of the Sudanese army’s armament. 

One of the main results of this cooperation is the opening of a Russian Navy base in Sudan, which will allow the Kremlin to control access to the Suez Canal and access to the Indian Ocean.

The agreement will allow Russia to establish a naval base of up to 300 Russian soldiers and maintain up to four naval ships, including nuclear ones, at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, which is of strategic importance.

In return, Russia agreed to provide Sudan with arms and military equipment. The agreement is for 25 years with an automatic extension for a 10-year period if none of the parties objects.

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Lavrov announced in February that the Sudanese military approved the agreement during his visit to Khartoum. Lavrov last visited Sudan in 2014.

An agreement to establish a Russian Navy supply point in Sudan was signed in November 2020.

But it will only come into force after the establishment of a civilian government and legislative body in Sudan, which will ratify the document.

On Tuesday, the 17th of October, a bomb ripped through the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City, killing hundreds of people. Palestinian officials blamed the blast on an Israeli air strike, but the Israeli military says it was caused by a failed rocket attack by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the militant group denies, reports the BBC.

Gaza’s health ministry said 500 people had been killed and hundreds more are feared trapped under the rubble.

First footages after the shelling of a hospital in the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/ToLQqgTb5n

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 17, 2023

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) initially insisted it had not targeted hospitals and warned against “unverified claims”. Later, the IDF’s chief spokesman, Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, said in a video message that “following additional checks of operational and intelligence systems, the IDF did not attack a hospital in Gaza”. He explained that the attack on the hospital was related to a rocket fired unsuccessfully by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation.

He said that 450 of the thousands of rockets fired at Israel since the start of the war had landed in Gaza, endangering civilians.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad denied any use of its rockets and said it had not carried out any operations in the Gaza City area during this period.

The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed shock and horror at the reports, stressing that hospitals should be places of refuge to preserve human life and calling for their protection in accordance with international humanitarian law.

“No patient should be killed in a hospital bed. No doctor should lose their life trying to save others,”

the Red Cross said in a statement.

The World Health Organization (WHO) called for the immediate protection of civilians and health facilities, while urging the Israeli army to lift evacuation orders for 20 hospitals in northern Gaza due to ongoing insecurity and the critical condition of patients.

First pictures in daylight of the Al-Ahly hospital.

It looks like the parking lot in front of the hospital took the main hit. pic.twitter.com/xyS02vblbG

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 18, 2023

The hospital bombing threatens efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Jordan cancelled a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, the 18th of October, with US President Joe Biden, King Abdullah and the Palestinian and Egyptian leaders.

Biden is still on his way to Tel Aviv to reiterate his country’s “solidarity with Israel” and “firm commitment to its security”.

Read also: Biden to visit Israel and Jordan to address the ground offensive and humanitarian crisis

GAZA, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Gaza’s health ministry spokesman said an Israeli air strike on Tuesday killed hundreds of people at a hospital in the Palestinian enclave, but Israel said a Palestinian barrage had caused the blast.

The death toll was by far the highest of any single incident in Gaza during the current violence, triggering protests in the occupied West Bank, Istanbul and Amman.

The Palestinian Authority’s health minister, Mai Alkaila, accused Israel of “a massacre” at Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital. The strike killed hundreds of people and occurred during Israel’s intense 11-day bombing campaign in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “barbaric terrorists” in Gaza had attacked the hospital, not Israel’s military.

The health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said early on Wednesday that hundreds were killed and that rescue workers were still removing bodies from the rubble. In the first hours after the blast, a Gaza civil defence chief said 300 people were killed, while health ministry sources put the figure at 500.

Israeli Military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters rockets fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group passed by the hospital at the time of the strike, which he said hit the facility’s parking lot.

Another spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told CNN the military intercepted a conversation in which militants acknowledged a misfire. He said the military would release a recording of the conversation.

Islamic Jihad denied that any of its rockets were involved in the hospital blast, saying it did not have any activity in or around Gaza City at that time. Iran-backed Islamic Jihad took part in the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7 and, like Hamas, has fired numerous salvoes of rockets into Israel.

News of the hospital strike and high death toll prompted condemnation from many countries on the eve of U.S. President Joseph Biden’s visit to Israel. Russia and the United Arab Emirates demanded a U.N. Security Council meeting and clashes erupted in the West Bank.

Earlier on Tuesday the United Nations said an Israeli strike had hit one of its schools where at least 4,000 people were sheltering. The agency said six people were killed and dozens injured by the strike. Israel’s military said it was looking into that report.

While briefing reporters, Hagari cast doubt on the Palestinian death count in the hospital strike and claimed there was no direct hit on the facility. He said military drone footage showed “a kind of hit in the parking lot.”

He said the military did have an Israeli air force operation in the area around the time of the hospital blast, “but it was with a different kind of ammunition that does not … fit the footage that we have (of) the hospital.”

On the death count, Hagari said: “I don’t know how many people (were) hit here, even. Nobody can verify it yet.”

STRIKE DRAWS CONDEMNATION

Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion” at the hospital and loss of life. In a statement, he said he spoke with the leaders of Jordan and Israel and “directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened.”

Health authorities in Gaza said prior to Tuesday’s incident at least 3,000 people had been killed in Israel’s 11 days of bombing since Hamas militants rampaged into Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,300 soldiers and civilians.

Displaced people fleeing the Israeli bombardment have flocked to hospitals, seeking refuge around them in hopes they will be safer.

Last week Israel ordered all people living in the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which is only 45 km (25 miles) long and home to 2.3 million people, to leave their homes and go south.

However, the air strikes have pounded targets throughout the enclave and despite expectations of an Israeli ground offensive, some displaced people have started returning north.

The World Health Organisation said the attack on the hospital was “unprecedented in its scale”. It said earlier on Tuesday there had been 115 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza and the majority of its hospitals were not functioning.

Israel has cut off all power, water, food, fuel and medicine supplies into Gaza since the Hamas attack, intensifying an existing blockade of the enclave.

Countries including Canada, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar condemned the strike on the hospital.

In the West Bank, where the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority operates, Palestinian protesters clashed with Palestinian security forces, who fired tear gas to disperse them. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cancelled a meeting with Biden.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — President Joe Biden vowed to show the world that the U.S. stands in solidarity with Israelis during his visit there Wednesday, and offered an assessment that the deadly explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital apparently was not carried out by the Israeli military.

“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting. But Biden said there were “a lot of people out there” who weren’t sure what caused the blast.

Biden didn’t offer details on why he believed the blast was not caused by the Israelis. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike caused the destruction and hundreds of deaths. The Israeli military denied involvement and blamed a misfired rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. However, that organization also rejected responsibility.

Biden had been scheduled to visit Jordan after the stop in Israel, but meetings there with Arab leaders were called off after the hospital explosion. And his remarks spoke both of the horrors the Israelis had endured, but also the growing humanitarian crisis for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

He told Netanyahu he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the hospital explosion. He stressed that “Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people. and it has brought them only suffering.”

Biden spoke of the need to find ways of “encouraging life-saving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent, caught in the middle of this.”

But he also said Hamas had “slaughtered” Israelis in the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 people. Biden described at length the horror of the killing of innocent Israelis, including children.

“Americans are grieving, they really are,” Biden said. “Americans are worried.”

Netanyahu thanked Biden for coming to Israel, telling him the visit was “deeply, deeply moving.”

“I know I speak for all the people of Israel when I say thank you Mr. President, thank you for standing with Israel today, tomorrow and always.”

Netanyahu said Biden had rightly drawn a clear line between the “forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism,” saying Israel was united in its resolve to defeat Hamas.

“The civilized world must unite to defeat Hamas,” he said.

Biden also planned to meet Israeli first responders and the families of victims and hostages. Netanyahu met Biden at Ben Gurion Airport and the two embraced. It was almost exactly a month ago that they sat together at the United Nations General Assembly, where Netanyahu marveled that a “historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia” seemed within reach.

The possibility of improved relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors appears to be dimming; Israel has been preparing for a potential ground invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’ attacks.

Roughly 2,800 Palestinians have been reported killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. Another 1,200 people are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, health authorities said.

Those numbers predate the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital on Tuesday. No clear cause has been established for the blast.

Protests swept through the region after the blast at the hospital, which had been treating wounded Palestinians and sheltering many more who were seeking a refuge from the fighting.

Hundreds of Palestinians flooded the streets of major West Bank cities including Ramallah. More people joined protests that erupted in Beirut, Lebanon and Amman, Jordan, where an angry crowd gathered outside the Israeli Embassy.

Outrage scuttled Biden’s plans to visit Jordan, where King Abdullah II was to host meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. But Abbas withdrew in protest, and the summit was subsequently canceled outright.

Jordan declared three days of mourning after the hospital explosion. Kirby said Biden understood the move was part of a “mutual” decision to call off the Jordan portion of his trip. He said Biden would speak to the Arab leaders by phone as he returned to Washington.

Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, told a state-run television network that the war is “pushing the region to the brink.”

Even without the Jordan summit, it’s possible Biden could make headway toward de-escalating the conflict. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, said Tuesday that Biden was “capable of telling Israel, Enough is enough.”

“You have to stop this carnage against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Let this stop. Let humanitarian assistance take place,” he said. “Do not displace two million Palestinians and push them in the direction of Jordan and then let’s begin a political horizon.”

There are also fears that a new front could erupt along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates. The Iran-backed organization has been skirmishing with Israeli forces.

Always a believer in the power of personal diplomacy, Biden’s trip will test the limits of U.S. influence in the Middle East at a volatile time. It’s his second trip to a conflict zone this year, after visiting Ukraine in February to show solidarity with the country as it battles a Russian invasion.

The visit to Israel coincides with rising humanitarian concerns in Gaza, where Israel has cut off the flow of food, fuel and water. Mediators have been struggling to break a deadlock over providing supplies to desperate civilians, aid groups and hospitals.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, bouncing back and forth between Arab and Israeli leadership ahead of Biden’s visit, spent seven and a half hours meeting Monday in Tel Aviv in an effort to broker some kind of aid agreement and emerged with a green light to develop a plan on how aid can enter Gaza and be distributed to civilians.

Although only a modest accomplishment on the surface, U.S. officials stressed that Blinken’s talks led to a significant change in Israel’s position going in — that Gaza would remain cut off from fuel, electricity, water and other essential supplies.

U.S. officials said it has become clear that already limited Arab tolerance of Israel’s military operations would evaporate entirely if conditions in Gaza worsened.

Their analysis projected that outright condemnation of Israel by Arab leaders would not only be a boon to Hamas but would likely encourage Iran to step up its anti-Israel activity, adding to fears that a regional conflagration might erupt, according to four officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration thinking.

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Long reported from Washington. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Associated Press writers Chris Megerian, Will Weissert and Darlene Superville in Washington and Edith M. Lederer in New York contributed to this report.