Thursday, October 1, 2026
• In his latest address to the United Nations General Assembly (Tuesday, September 29), Secretary-General António Guterres said Sudan's war is "a war for power fuelled by external parties that has become a war on civilians", pointing to millions of displaced people and the targeting of hospitals and homes, sexual violence and ethnically based attacks, describing a country "being torn apart while the world looks away" — as part of a broader condemnation of international diplomacy's failure to keep pace with armed conflicts (Source: The Eastleigh Voice — October 1, 2026)
• The Sudanese Armed Forces rejected (statement of September 27) accusations by the Chief of the General Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, Marshal Birhanu Jula, that Khartoum supports an armed Ethiopian alliance and a political opposition seeking to overthrow the Addis Ababa government, describing them as "baseless", and affirming its respect for international law and non-interference in the internal affairs of states — and responded by accusing Ethiopia of allowing its territory to be used to train the Rapid Support Forces, supply them, and conduct military operations from it, including long-range drones, accusations Addis Ababa has previously denied — amid escalating fighting in northern Ethiopia after the formation of the "Alliance of Ethiopian Peoples' Forces for Survival", which includes seven armed groups and political parties, among them the Tigray People's Liberation Front (Sources: The Sudan Times via Sudan News Agency (SUNA), Addis Standard, The Eastleigh Voice)
• A human rights conference held in Geneva on the sidelines of the 63rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (September 28) called on the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send an independent investigation mission to Sudan to look into allegations that the Sudanese army used chemical weapons in its war against the Rapid Support Forces — allegations revealed by Washington Post and New York Times investigations (September 5) about a secret programme to build and store bombs filled with chlorine, which spoke of 290 shells stored at Merowe Air Base, 106 of which were used — while the Sudanese Armed Forces described the allegations as "baseless"; the United States had imposed additional sanctions on Sudan in July 2026 under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (Sources: eureporter, europesays, eabusinesstimes)
• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said (Geneva briefing, September 25) that more than 55,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to eastern Chad since the beginning of this year, and that the pace of arrivals accelerated sharply during the past week to more than 400 people a day — about 20 times the daily rate in previous months — fleeing fighting in Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile, while the agency has received only 18% of the $1.6 billion it needs in 2026 to meet the needs of refugees linked to the Sudanese crisis in the region — and warned that failure to meet basic needs pushes many to continue the journey towards Europe (Sources: UNHCR via ReliefWeb, Reuters)
— Editorial Team