SUDAN – At least 30 people have been killed following the collapse of a dam in Sudan’s northwest Red Sea State, according to the United Nations’s emergency relief agency. Hundreds more are believed missing, Reuters reported.

Flash flooding decimated 20 villages and damaged a further 50 after the Arba’at Dam collapsed Sunday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. It estimated 50,000 people had been “severely affected” by the disaster. In the villages of Khor-Baraka and Tukar, residents were reportedly forced to flee for safety, OCHA also said, citing local officials. It added that the final death toll could rise significantly.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) footage of the aftermath shows industrial trucks buried in mud and debris, some laden with crates and personal belongings. Other vehicles are almost unrecognizable on the silty riverbank. One resident who lived near the dam, Moussa Mohamad Moussa, described in another video from AFP how “the dam broke and… the water swept away around 40 people.”

“In the area where I’m from, the Tabub area… they told me that all the houses and everything was swept away,” he said. Another resident, Ali Issa, was pictured saying he had helped to rescue families, elderly people, and children who were trapped in their cars when the floodwaters rose. “We came to the area to check out the situation but we couldn’t reach the Arba’at Dam because there was so much water,” he said.

Initial reports indicated torrential rains had caused the dam to breach, OCHA said, adding this had resulted in the reservoir behind it “being fully drained.” (CNN)…[+]

KYIV – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his troops’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is part of a “victory plan” that he will present to US President Joe Biden next month.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, President Zelensky said the success of the plan would depend on President Biden and on whether the US would give Ukraine “what is in this plan or not, [and] whether we will be free to use this plan, or not”.

“It may sound too ambitious for some, but it is an important plan for us,” he added, saying that he would also show the plan to both US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

A number of Ukrainian troops made an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, and Russia has so far seemingly been unable to repel them.

Speaking at the same forum, Ukraine’s Kyiv’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine now controls 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of Russian territory and 100 settlements – although these figures have not been verified by the BBC.

Gen Syrskyi said Ukraine had no intention of holding on to the territory and that one motivation for the incursion was to distract Russia’s forces away from their own offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia is seeking to capture the town of Pokrovsk, which is an important hub and home to a key railway station.

President Zelensky also revealed that Ukraine had recently carried out the first successful test of a domestically-produced ballistic missile. He congratulated his country’s defense industry, but declined to share any more details of the missile.

Although Ukraine has already used some ballistic missiles against Russia that were provided by the US, it has been working to develop the domestic production of military hardware to diminish its dependency on Western aid.

However, for now, Ukraine mostly relies on military supplies from abroad to fight Russia and repel its attacks. At the forum, President Zelensky said that Ukraine had used some newly arrived F-16 fighter jets sent by Western countries in order to intercept some of the missiles fired by Russia in recent days – but that the country would need more jets.

For the past two nights, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with a barrage of drone and missile attacks which have left several people dead and caused blackouts in various areas of the country.

Such attacks show that Moscow has no intention to stop the war, President Zelensky said: “When they want [peace talks], they don’t launch 230 air strikes.”

Since the Kursk incursion, however, Russia has signalled it will not engage in any peace talks with Ukraine.

“The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. (BBC)…[+]

ROME – The Casamonica crime family, a mafia-style organized crime syndicate that operates in and around Rome, has been blamed for a black coffin that was left in front of an anti-mafia activist’s home last Sunday, police said.

The activist, Tiziana Ronzio, is president of the Toripiubella anti-mafia group, named after the Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood where the Casamonica’s main family villas were based until they were destroyed by the city in 2018 and 2019.

Police found garish decorations, including life-sized porcelain tigers used to hide cash, diamond encrusted swimming pools lined with golden horses and gilded mirrored ceilings in many of the rooms during the demolition. They also found several tons of drugs, police said, including heroin and cocaine. In 2022, two members of the family were convicted of attempting to traffic seven tons of cocaine from Colombia.

The coffin was found last Sunday outside Ronzio’s Rome residence in the Tor Bella Monaca district.

Ronzio said Sunday afternoon that she had seen the coffin and that people had sent her photos of it, but that she did not immediately realize that it was meant as a threat to her until her security detail informed her.

While she called the threat “stupid” and said it would not stop her, she also said that it “destabilized” her group, which regularly reports members of the group for crimes against local residents and often testifies in court on behalf of them.

“I’m not afraid, I’m moving forward,” Ronzio told local media. “These are stupid gestures which make us even more angry and want to fight.”

Meanwhile, Rome police told CNN that the coffin is being examined for fingerprints. Toripiubella, Ronzio’s group, told CNN that they would not be making a public statement as the investigation is ongoing.

Ronzio has denounced several clan members in the past.

“There have been many things that one always lets slide,” she told Italy’s Sky24 news last Sunday evening, noting that she has experienced previous acts of intimidation, including written threats and feces left by her door by her own neighbors.

“I try to live it with detachment but it’s not easy – I live these things as if they didn’t concern me, to move forward,” she said, adding: “It’s difficult to live in the same place as the people you report to police,” she said.

While Ronzio’s home and office have been broken into multiple times, she told La Repubblica newspaper that “it’s not every day that you find a coffin under your house.”

“It can happen that an uncivilized person leaves a piece of furniture, a sofa, but not a coffin,” she said in the article, which was published last Monday. Several political groups have condemned the act of intimidation.  (CNN)…[+]

GEORGETOWN – A section of Hogg Street in the Pont Trench area, Albouystown has been without water for about a month, leaving residents frustrated and struggling to cope.

Despite assurances from Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) that water distribution issues in Central Georgetown were being addressed, a few residents remain without water.

Ms. Hubbard, a resident of the affected area, described how the lack of water has severely disrupted her daily life. “It’s been extremely challenging…with hardly any rainfall, we’re hoping for a quick resolution. It’s frustrating to be without water while others around us have their supply restored,” she said.

Another resident, Crystal Allicock who returned from a trip to find the water situation unchanged, shared her struggles. “There was a guy down the street who used to help by running his hose and filling up the tanks for us. I’ve had to purchase bottles of water daily. Not a single drop of water is coming out of the pipes, even in the yard,” the woman shared.

The prolonged dry spell has only worsened the situation, with residents noting that the lack of rain has left them without alternative water sources. “It’s been two weeks now that I’ve had to send my clothes to the laundromat because I can’t wash them at home,” Allicock lamented.

Notably, the issue was brought to the attention of GWI, who acknowledged that a blockage in the system is preventing water from reaching the affected residents. It was stated too that the water situation is expected to be fixed sometime this week. However, the residents expressed their disappointment with what they perceived as the slow response from the utility company.

“We haven’t even heard from them about distributing water to us or offering any assistance while they work to fix the issue,” Ms. Hubbard said.

The residents are now calling on GWI to expedite their efforts and provide immediate relief as the water shortage continues to impact their daily lives. (Kaieteur News)…[+]