Saudi crown prince, Egypt congratulate Salam on government gaining parliament’s confidence

CAIRO: A parallel government being set up by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) aims to grab diplomatic legitimacy from its army-led rival and ease access to advanced weaponry, politicians who back it and paramilitary sources told Reuters.
The move could prolong a devastating war in which the paramilitary RSF has recently been losing ground, and effectively splinter Africa’s third largest country by area.
Since conflict between the army and the RSF erupted in April 2023, the army-led government has retained wide international recognition, despite being forced by the fighting to move to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
But in a bid to challenge that status, the RSF on Saturday signed a political charter in Kenya with political parties and armed groups. The signatories said a “Government of Peace and Unity” would be formed within weeks from inside Sudan.
Politicians and RSF officials participating in talks in Nairobi last week said their government would seize legitimacy from an army they said had pursued “divisive” tactics including air strikes and aid blockages while rejecting peace talks.
“We are not a parallel government and we are not a government in exile, we are the legitimate government,” Al-Hadi Idris, head of an armed faction backing the planned government, told Reuters.
Politician Ibrahim Al-Mirghani, another backer, said the new government would go to the United Nations and other forums to block the army’s participation.
“If you secure your country and stop the bloodshed, displacement, and terrorism ... neighbors will recognize you,” he said.

MILITARY SUPPORT
The Port Sudan-based government has foreign backers including Egypt and membership of international bodies, though it has been suspended from the African Union since the army and RSF jointly led a coup in 2021, upending a transition toward civilian rule.
Foreign states view the RSF’s planned government as an effort to control the flow of humanitarian aid, access arms markets, and gain leverage at any future peace negotiations, said Jonas Horner, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The RSF has received a stream of military support, including drones and air defenses, as both sides have obtained more advanced weaponry from abroad.
“Militias are not given advanced weapons but governments are ... Our priority is peace but the government must defend its citizens and we have the right to acquire aircraft and defense systems,” Idris said.
Asked for comment, the RSF, long overpowered by the army in the air, denied it wanted a government in order to import weapons but said it would have the authority to do so to defend its population.
The army, which denies blocking aid or targeting civilians, condemned the RSF’s charter as an attempt to expand the war at a time when the paramilitary force was on the back foot.
The UN secretary-general’s office expressed concern, stressing “Sudan’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” while the US called the move “unhelpful for the cause of peace and security in Sudan.”
The US has placed sanctions on leaders from both the army and the RSF in connection with the war, which has led to bouts of ethnically charged killings, displaced more than 12 million people, and spread famine and disease.

’NEW SUDAN’
In recent months the army, previously struggling militarily, has pushed the RSF out of much of the capital and central Sudan. The RSF retains control of most of the Darfur region, battling the army for control of the North Darfur, capital Al-Fashir.
It also controls most of West Kordofan, while much of South Kordofan is controlled by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu’s SPLM-N rebel group, the largest to align itself with the RSF.
Observers were surprised to see the SPLM-N side with the RSF, which has been accused of abuses in areas under the group’s control.
But the SPLM-N’s goal of a secular, pluralist country is a core theme in the charter signed over the weekend, which describes a federalist “New Sudan.”
SPLM-N leaders told Reuters that the alliance was a route to peace after decades of tribal attacks, allowing them to confront ideological foes in the army, which has long harbored Islamist influence.
They also said, speaking on condition of anonymity, that the alliance would provide access to much needed funds, aid, and resupply of weapons.

JENIN: Watching her granddaughter sleep in cramped quarters for displaced Palestinians, Sanaa Shraim hopes for a better life for the baby, born into a weeks-long Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces searching for suspected militants have long carried out limited incursions into Jenin refugee camp, where Shraim and about 24,000 other Palestinians normally live.
But with no end in sight to the ongoing military operation across the northern West Bank, “I worry about what will happen, when the children grow up in this reality of constant raids,” said Shraim.
She had already lost her militant son Yusef in a previous Israeli raid, in 2023. More recently, forced to flee the escalating Israeli assault since late January, Shraim has watched her daughter give birth in displacement.
“There have been so many repeated raids, and they won’t stop,” said the stern-faced grandmother, speaking to AFP in a crowded room at a community center in Jenin city where the family have been sheltering for the past month.
The sweeping military operation was launched around the time a ceasefire took hold in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, a separate Palestinian territory.
Israel has since announced that its troops would remain in Jenin and neighboring camps for up to a year.
’Nothing left’ back home
Shraim and her family are among about 80 displaced residents of Jenin camp sharing the building in the city.
Thaer Mansoura, confined to a wheelchair due to osteoporosis, said he had to be rescued in a cart after army bulldozers tore through the streets around his home.
“We endured it as much as we could, but with so many children — my brothers’ kids, our neighbors’ children, my cousins’ children — we had no choice but to leave,” he told AFP.
Mansoura said his family had remained home for three days as electricity and then phone lines were cut, engulfed by the sound of bombs, gunfire and helicopters, as well as army drone broadcasting calls for residents to “evacuate your homes.”
Now, in the relative safety of the community shelter, he feels “stuck here — there’s no place to return to, nothing left.”
Back in the camp, just five kilometers (three miles) away, the rubble-strewn streets are devoid of people as Israeli soldiers patrol the perimeter on foot or in armored jeeps and personnel carriers.
An AFP correspondent walls riddled with bullet holes, narrow streets littered with concrete slabs and facades torn by army bulldozers, and twisted metal storefronts barely hanging from their hinges.
Awnings blackened by fire stand as a reminder of life in the camp that came to a standstill a little over a month ago, when the Israeli operation began.
In the city center, life has returned despite military presence, with some shops cautiously reopening — a sign of pressing economic concerns for many residents.
“Normally, after an operation, everything shuts down. But this time it is different,” said the manager of one apparel shop who declined to be named.
’The same occupation’
The ongoing Israeli raid is unusual not only in its duration, but also in the rare deployment of tanks to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Nathmi Turkman, 53, once jailed by Israel, carries a constant reminder of the last time Jenin saw such relentless military activity during the second Palestinian intifada, or “uprising” — a bullet from 2022 still in his flesh.
While Israel maintains that its offensive targets militant groups long active in the northern West Bank, Turkman said that “their bullets don’t differentiate between civilians and fighters.”
Before leaving the camp, he grabbed just one item from his home, a small Eiffel Tower figurine which he chose for its sentimental value.
Now at the community center in Jenin city, Turkman said that for people who did not witness the events of the second intifada, the current Israeli operation “was shocking.”
“But for us, we lived through 2002 with tanks and warplanes,” he said.
“There’s no difference between 2002 and 2024 — it’s all the same occupation.”
In this reality, Shraim fears that her grandchildren will grow up knowing only war and displacement.
On edge, she was startled when the stroller carrying her granddaughter tipped over in a park near the shelter, reacting as though the infant was in mortal danger before realizing she was fine.
“The fear is inside me, and I can’t shake it,” said the grandmother.