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Last week, international headlines focused on Israeli forces intercepting a sea-bound pro-Palestinian aid flotilla heading to Gaza. What gained less immediate attention, however, was a parallel disruption 2,000 kilometers to the west, where a land-based wing of the same Global Sumud solidarity movement saw its journey to the besieged enclave collapse into detention and chaos.

More than 200 activists with the Global Sumud Convoy pushed into the 5+5 security zone outside the Libyan city of Sirte, a buffer zone established under the country’s 2020 ceasefire agreement that has remained a contested flashpoint. The group’s goal was simple: negotiate safe passage through eastern Libya to Egypt’s Rafah crossing, the primary entry point for aid into blockaded Gaza.

After days of camping in the zone, armed forces arrived at the encampment and broke up the convoy. Most participants were forcibly escorted back to the capital Tripoli under armed guard, but 10 international activists from Spain, Poland, the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Portugal, Tunisia and Italy were taken into custody and remain held by Libyan authorities.

Speaking to Middle East Eye from her home in Johannesburg, South Africa, activist Jessica Breakey, who returned after the dismantling, described the group’s reluctance to leave their detained comrades behind. “We just didn’t want to leave without them,” she said. “It was always like we were in this together, like this convoy was moving together – and I think the worst part about the camp being dismantled and us having to go back was that we were going back without them.”

Libya has been fractured along political and geographic lines since the 2011 NATO-backed overthrow of former ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Eastern Libya is controlled by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) led by commander Khalifa Haftar, backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, while a UN-supported unity government governs the western half of the country, including Tripoli.

The Global Sumud Convoy, launched by North African activists and later joined by hundreds of international participants, set out from Mauritania with a clear mission: deliver tangible, practical aid to Gaza that would go beyond the largely symbolic impact of previous sea-based flotillas. The convoy carried seven ambulances, 10 aid trucks, 20 mobile homes, and a team of medical professionals, engineers, educators and legal observers. Its progress across North Africa was largely uneventful until it reached the Sirte security zone.

Negotiations for onward passage hit a breaking point on Sunday, when the convoy’s negotiating team was arrested. The following day, security forces arrived at the camp, forced the remaining activists onto buses at gunpoint, and even fired tear gas into a nearby mosque where some activists had taken shelter. It remains unclear which authority the security forces were directly affiliated with.

Breakey noted that the treatment in Sirte stood in sharp contrast to the warm welcome and widespread public support the convoy received from Libyan civilians on its journey from Tripoli westward. She also criticized the Libyan Red Crescent, which had publicly expressed support for the convoy but failed to attend planned negotiations with Haftar’s representatives, effectively going “missing in action” as the crisis unfolded. “It’s crazy looking back at a time when we actually were very, very hopeful,” she added.

Shortly after the raid, the eastern Libyan government’s foreign ministry announced new restrictions barring non-Libyan and non-Egyptian travelers from moving onward to Egypt. The ministry defended its actions, saying it handled the situation “within the framework of legal and humanitarian responsibility,” and claimed all detainees “are receiving the necessary care and medical and humanitarian follow-up.” It also reaffirmed Libya’s formal support for the Palestinian cause, but stressed that “respect for national sovereignty and the legal regulations governing the movement of individuals across borders is non-negotiable.”

Human rights monitors have repeatedly documented widespread abuses in areas controlled by Haftar’s LAAF. Amnesty International reports that the LAAF and its affiliated armed groups severely restrict freedom of expression and association, targeting anyone perceived as a critic or opponent of Haftar. “Libyans, as well as refugees and migrants, detained by LAAF, which exercises government-like functions in areas under its control, risk torture and other ill-treatment, as well as prolonged detention amid flagrant due process violations,” explained Sara Hashash, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Despite repeated reassurances from eastern Libyan officials, friends and fellow activists have grown increasingly anxious about the conditions and extended detention of the 10 activists. The coinciding timing of Eid al-Adha has reportedly slowed diplomatic progress and limited contact with detainees.

On Thursday, Italy’s consul general in Benghazi confirmed he had visited the two Italian detainees held at a police barracks in eastern Libya. Following the visit, eastern Libyan authorities agreed to minor improvements to detention conditions, allowing access to showers, clean clothes and better accommodation, but have not released any information about possible deportation or release procedures.

Not all criticism of the incident has come from outside the convoy: some participating activists say the mission suffered from fatal planning flaws from its start. Felipe, a 29-year-old Chilean-Palestinian activist with experience on previous sea-based aid flotillas, argues the convoy’s leadership bore partial responsibility for the outcome.

During a two-week wait in Tripoli, Felipe said it became clear that organizers had made no contingency plans for detentions or a confrontation with the LAAF. “If we were not able to go through east Libya, we should not have kept pressuring them because we were going to shift the narrative from Israel to Libya,” he said. “We were waiting in the desert for nine days doing nothing.”

He added that leadership sidelined critical voices ahead of the push into the security zone. “The day before [the raid], when they decided to go to the [eastern Libyan] border, I was not invited to the meeting because I was being critical. Their plan was basically to have a permanent camp or to do a hunger strike on the border,” he explained. Felipe added that the group was camped at an abandoned, bullet-riddled gas station that was once used by the Islamic State group, and many participants did not grasp the severity of their location or the risks. After the arrests, he argued, the convoy should have retreated to the western city of Misrata, as it had no resources or leverage to secure the detainees’ release. The entire experience, he said, left him disillusioned with land-based aid efforts: “Our people risked their lives to end the siege on Gaza… we came here and we risked our lives for nothing.”

Analysts and rights advocates warn the incident could mark the end of any future land-based aid convoys attempting to cross Libya to reach Gaza. In recent years, Haftar has repeatedly signaled his interest in building diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, including through reported secret visits to meet Israeli officials, though it is unclear whether this influenced the LAAF’s handling of the convoy.

Estelle Allemann, a legal researcher at the Mena Rights Group, called the new restrictions imposed by eastern Libyan authorities “a deeply troubling attempt to weaponise border control against humanitarian solidarity with Palestinians.” She added, “Restricting the movement of aid convoy activists under the guise of travel policy raises serious concerns about the criminalisation of civilian support for Gaza, and would fit a broader regional pattern of suppressing pro-Palestinian activism.”

Middle East Eye attempted to contact the eastern Libyan foreign ministry for additional comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication. In a formal statement released Thursday, the Maghreb Sumud Organisation, one of the convoy’s lead organizers, issued a clarification of recent events. It confirmed that all non-detained participants have been instructed to return to their home countries, with only a small team of senior officials remaining in Libya to continue diplomatic and legal efforts to secure the release of the 10 detainees and coordinate the delivery of the planned aid. The group emphasized that the Global Sumud Convoy was never intended as an act of confrontation, but rather an independent, civilian humanitarian initiative to show moral solidarity with Gazans facing ongoing siege, widespread starvation, and total humanitarian collapse.

Even as Palestinian residents of the blockaded Gaza Strip gathered to mark the holy Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, Israeli military operations did not pause, with local authorities documenting thousands of breaches of a months-old nominal truce.

The most high-profile strike of the holiday period hit a multi-story residential building in Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighborhood, carried out overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. Al Jazeera reports that as of initial casualty counts, six people have been confirmed dead in the attack.

Israeli military officials have confirmed the strike targeted Mohammed Odeh, the recently appointed leader of Hamas’s armed wing, who stepped into the role in mid-May following the death of his predecessor Izz al-Din al-Haddad. The killing of Odeh has not received official confirmation from Hamas as of Wednesday, but an anonymous Hamas source speaking to Agence France-Presse confirmed that Odeh’s wife and two children were also killed in the air raid, and that a formal funeral procession would be held Wednesday afternoon in central Gaza City.

The targeted strike is just one of thousands of truce violations that have occurred since a tentative ceasefire agreement first took effect in October, according to data from the Gaza Government Media Office. The office’s official statement released Wednesday pegs total confirmed violations at 3,005, with actions ranging from large-scale aerial bombings and deliberate strikes on civilian infrastructure to widespread home demolitions, repeated ground incursions into residential neighborhoods and ongoing small-arms fire against civilian populations.

Since the truce was signed, the ongoing Israeli operations have left a devastating toll on Gaza’s civilian population: more than 910 non-combatant Palestinians have been killed, another 2,747 have suffered injuries, and 82 additional people have been detained or abducted by Israeli forces during incursions into the enclave.

Compounding the humanitarian crisis, Israeli border restrictions have continued to block the vast majority of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, with more than 64 percent of all scheduled relief shipments denied entry as of this week. The blocked shipments include critical lifesaving supplies: food, clean drinking water, pharmaceutical products, fuel for medical generators and other basic necessities that Gaza’s population already suffers acute shortages of.

Local media reports, citing sources in Gaza’s overstretched health system, note that more than 12 additional people have been killed across the enclave in Israeli strikes over the 24-hour period ending Wednesday morning. Beyond the al-Rimal strike, Israeli forces launched new operations at dawn Wednesday: airstrikes hit areas east of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, while artillery shelling was reported in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

This reporting is part of independent coverage from Middle East Eye, which specializes in on-the-ground reporting and analysis of the Middle East and North Africa region.

Weeks after publicly breaking ranks with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces — the paramilitary group widely accused of perpetrating genocide in the country’s Darfur region — a top defector has appeared in new footage performing the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, triggering fierce divided debate across Sudanese digital communities.

Circulated publicly by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the video shows Ali Rizqallah, better known by his battlefield alias Savannah, standing at the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. He presses his palms against the structure’s iconic black kiswa cloth, offering public prayers for his war-ravaged homeland as thousands of fellow pilgrims circle the site behind him. In the audio recording of the clip, Savannah calls on God to grant unity to Sudanese forces, halt ongoing bloodshed, end the two-year civil war, lift the nation’s crippling crisis, and bring judgment against what he terms “every tyrant”.

Savannah’s defection from the RSF was first announced in a formal video statement on May 11. Just four days after that announcement, he reemerged in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, where he pledged to take up arms alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against his former comrades in the conflict zones of Kordofan and Darfur. Before his split from the group, Savannah stood among the RSF’s most powerful and high-profile field commanders. He led multiple operations that allowed the paramilitary force to seize key strategic territories across North Darfur and West Kordofan, including the critical town of al-Nahud, and has been linked to the recruitment of foreign fighters from neighboring Chad and Niger.

A former leader of an independent armed movement, Savannah was first integrated into the SAF with the rank of brigadier general under a 2013 peace deal with the government of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. He was stripped of that rank by a military court in 2021, following Bashir’s ouster from power, and only joined the RSF when the current civil war broke out in mid-April 2023. During a May 16 press conference in Khartoum, Savannah framed his initial decision to align with the RSF as one born of coercion, not ideology. He claimed he had no other option amid widespread intimidation and retaliatory campaigns targeting the families of anyone who refused to fight alongside the group, saying “I and my family were among the victims of the militia, like the rest of the Sudanese”. He has also stated he is willing to face legal accountability for any accusations brought against him.

In that same press briefing, Savannah alleged that dozens of field and tribal commanders are still being forced to fight for the RSF against their will, with the group holding their families hostage to guarantee compliance. He added that the RSF has carried out internal purges, executing several of its own commanders in recent days — naming Abdullah Hussein and senior adviser Hamid Ali as recent casualties, with additional killings documented across West Darfur. He also claimed that senior RSF figures, including operations chief Othman Mohammed Hamid (better known as Othman Amaliyat), have been placed under house arrest by the group’s leadership. Savannah predicted that a wave of large-scale defections will hit the RSF in the near future, and confirmed that he and his allied fighters are fully prepared to work toward dismantling the paramilitary organization entirely. He also noted that large stockpiles of weapons continue to flow into RSF-held territories in Darfur, though he declined to name the supplier. International observers have already documented substantial evidence pointing to the United Arab Emirates as the primary source of weapons, equipment and even Colombian mercenaries supporting the RSF.

Savannah is the fourth senior RSF commander to defect to the SAF since October 2024, following high-profile exits by Abu Aqla Keikel, Major-General al-Nour Ahmed Adam (known as al-Qubba), and field commander Bashara al-Huwaira.

The footage of his Hajj pilgrimage has split public opinion among Sudanese social media users. Some commentators have interpreted the act as a public gesture of repentance for his time with the RSF, while others have rejected any religious act as insufficient to atone for the paramilitary group’s well-documented atrocities. In a direct public message to Savannah, Sudanese journalist Sabah Ahmed wrote that the rights of RSF victims cannot be erased by performing Hajj or touching the Kaaba’s coverings, saying simply “Our rights against you have not been forgiven.”

The RSF has faced mounting international condemnation and legal consequences over atrocities committed primarily in Darfur, particularly after the group captured the North Darfur capital el-Fasher in October 2025 following a 500-day siege. The UN Security Council has already sanctioned four senior RSF commanders, with UN investigators concluding that the group’s actions carry “the hallmarks of genocide”. The United States formally recognized the RSF’s actions as genocide in January 2025, and imposed sanctions on RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The International Criminal Court based in The Hague is currently conducting investigations into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by commanders from both the RSF and SAF since the conflict began. To date, Savannah has not been personally sanctioned by any international body.

Sudan’s civil war, which has continued unabated since April 2023, has spawned what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis. Clashes between the SAF and RSF have killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced nearly 13 million more, and left more than 40 percent of Sudan’s population facing acute life-threatening food insecurity.