• Prime Minister Kamil Idris directs extending university applications by ten additional days and opening additional centres for issuing the Sudanese certificate in Khartoum, Bahri and Omdurman, stressing that issuing the certificate is an ongoing process. (Source: Sudan News Agency (SUNA)) • Sovereignty Council Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan reassures from Wadi Halfa that Egyptians present in Sudan are safe, and calls for the continuation of border trade with Egypt and the continued supply of Egyptian electricity to Sudan. (Source: Al-Dostor News newspaper) • Egypt: The Al-Amal Committee for Free Voluntary Return runs today 10 buses carrying 490 general education students and their families from the Al-Matbaa area in Faisal to Sudan, in a convoy described by its supervisor Abdel Mahmoud al-Nour as the penultimate one for general education students, to catch up with the new school year. (Source: Atheer News and Nabd Sudan) • Egypt: Discontent among Sudanese journalists after an altercation with journalist Ibrahim Owais while he was covering the Faisal Al-Matbaa dispatch and was asked to leave the field, with media professionals demanding an investigation and clarification of the circumstances, and no official clarification from the Al-Amal Committee was included in the available information. (Source: Akhir Khabar) • South Sudan: About 16,000 registered Sudanese refugees in Qurm camp face a shortage of clean drinking water and medicines, the absence of a dedicated health centre, and overcrowding reaching about 300 pupils in a single classroom, according to the testimony of refugee Abdullah Tutu. (Source: Radio Dabanga) • Geneva hosts today the sixth consultative meeting to coordinate peace initiatives in Sudan, with the participation of representatives of 22 countries and regional and international organisations, and the Secretary-General's Personal Envoy Pekka Haavisto stresses a firm commitment to ending the war and supporting a Sudanese-led political process, without the participation of the government or the Rapid Support Forces in the deliberations of the mediators' mechanism. (Source: UN News) • Switzerland, co-host of the Geneva meeting, warns through State Secretary Alexandre Fasel that Sudan's war has become a "drone war that kills civilians for the most part", and that famine-like conditions continue in Darfur and Kordofan, stressing that the protection of civilians and access for aid do not wait for a ceasefire. (Source: UN News) • UN Secretary-General António Guterres strongly condemns the drone attacks on October 19 on the Abyei area near Amiet market and Todash, which killed dozens of civilians including women and children, and calls for accountability, the protection of civilians and preserving Abyei's demilitarised status, while UNISFA continues to verify the victims and the missing. (Source: UN News) • UNICEF announces the killing of at least 12 children in two separate incidents: nine children in an attack on a camp for displaced people east of Sanakit in West Kordofan on October 17, and three children along with their father by a drone in a residential neighbourhood in Khartoum on October 19, and calls on all parties to protect children everywhere and at all times. (Source: UNICEF) • The Sudanese pound falls today to a new record level of 10,000 pounds to the dollar in the parallel market, compared with 4,200 officially, after it was about 600 before the April 2023 war, with the customs dollar raised to more than 5,600 this week and import pressures and gold smuggling, exacerbating the rising cost of basic food. (Source: Reuters) • South Sudan: A patrol by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) lasting four days to Duk County in Jonglei State monitors the effects of repeated clashes between the youth of Duk and Twic East and the fear and displacement they have left in local communities. (Source: United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)) • The United Nations allocates more than $50 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to support 11 countries on the front line of the El Niño phenomenon, including South Sudan, warning that the phenomenon may be unprecedented and that 50 million people are threatened with increasing levels of hunger, while the World Food Programme's Country Director in Sudan says that two out of every five Sudanese suffer from hunger and the Programme requests $134 million for urgent anticipatory interventions. (Source: UN News and Sudanese News on the World Food Programme Country Director in Sudan)
— Editorial Team