标签： Africa

As Sudan’s brutal civil war enters its fourth year, a new wave of overnight drone strikes carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s main paramilitary group, has left at least 15 people dead and dozens more injured in the central Sudanese city of el-Obeid, health officials confirmed Thursday. The rising reliance on unmanned aerial attacks has become one of the most dangerous and destabilizing features of the ongoing conflict, which has already plunged the nation into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The assault began late Wednesday, hitting multiple locations across el-Obeid including an area adjacent to a Sudanese military position, according to two health workers from el-Obeid Hospital, the main facility receiving casualties from the strikes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, as they lack official authorization to engage with media outlets. They added that more than 10 people were wounded, with several suffering critical injuries that require urgent advanced care.

Dr. Mohamed Elsheikh, spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, an organization that monitors casualty figures across the country, told the Associated Press that RSF drones also targeted two additional civilian sites: a funeral gathering at a local cemetery, where four attendees were killed, and a functioning gas station. Dr. Elsheikh noted that he could not immediately confirm whether the casualties included only civilians, only combatants, or a mix of both.

Aid workers on the ground report that drone strikes have intensified sharply across el-Obeid in recent days, with public gatherings of any kind repeatedly targeted. An anonymous aid worker with the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, speaking out of fear of retaliation from armed groups, explained that the escalating violence has forced local schools to suspend all classes, while city markets only operate partially as residents stay home to avoid attack.

Emergency Lawyers, a Sudan-based aid and conflict monitoring group, released a statement Thursday warning that the final death toll is expected to rise, as drone sorties continued to fly over el-Obeid well into Thursday. The group documented that residential homes near the headquarters of the Sudanese military’s 5th Infantry Division were hit, alongside a truck transporting critical food supplies into the city. The truck’s driver was killed in the strike.

“This series of attacks indicates a widespread pattern of targeting civilian gatherings, neighborhoods and infrastructure, including during rescue operations and funerals,” the group said, adding that it has grave concerns over the indiscriminate nature of these strikes, which put non-combatant residents at constant lethal risk.

Sudan’s long-running conflict first erupted in April 2023, when decades of latent tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF boiled over into open civil war. To date, the conflict has killed at least 59,000 confirmed people, displaced more than 13 million Sudanese from their homes, and pushed large swathes of the country into catastrophic famine conditions. The United Nations estimates that more than 30 million Sudanese — over two-thirds of the country’s total population — require urgent life-saving humanitarian assistance.

As the conflict has dragged on, military control has become geographically split: the Sudanese military holds power across northern, eastern, and central Sudan, including strategic Red Sea ports and the country’s critical oil refining and pipeline infrastructure. The RSF and its allied militias control the entire Darfur region and large portions of Kordofan along Sudan’s border with South Sudan, both resource-rich regions holding major oil reserves and gold deposits.

Security and conflict experts confirm that drone warfare has now overtaken other forms of attack as the deadliest threat to civilian populations in Sudan, with both warring parties receiving shipments of drones and other military equipment from multiple countries across the Middle East and beyond. Humanitarian workers add that the recent surge in drone attacks across Kordofan has severely hampered already fragile aid operations in the region, leaving vulnerable communities cut off from critical food, water, and medical support.

JOHANNESBURG and LAGOS — In a move that underscores deepening tensions over immigration and xenophobic violence across Southern Africa, the first planeload of Nigerian citizens touched down in Lagos on Thursday, the start of a government-ordered repatriation effort for people fleeing deadly anti-foreign unrest in South Africa.

Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the incoming flight carried 262 returning passengers plus three government officials. Prior to the arrival, authorities had announced that more than 1,000 Nigerians residing in South Africa had already registered to take advantage of the voluntary repatriation program, which was launched after a wave of violent anti-immigration demonstrations swept across parts of South Africa starting in April.

The repatriation effort has already sparked a public disagreement between the two African nations. South African officials assert that all the Nigerians processed for return were staying in the country without valid immigration documentation, a direct contradiction of Nigerian officials’ framing that the evacuees are escaping life-threatening xenophobic attacks. As of Thursday, Nigerian officials had not issued any formal response to the South African claim in response to inquiries from the Associated Press.

The current unrest stems from long-simmering frictions between native South African workers and foreign migrants. Since April, recurring anti-immigration protests have escalated into targeted attacks on foreign-owned businesses and foreign residents, with demonstrators arguing that migrant workers are taking scarce job opportunities from local South African citizens. South African national authorities have publicly condemned the violence as explicitly xenophobic, though the attacks have continued to prompt panic among foreign communities across the country.

Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu said the repatriation order came directly from the Nigerian presidency, authorizing the “evacuation of imperiled Nigerian citizens who consider their lives at risk by continued stay in South Africa.” In a public address to people preparing to return home, the minister emphasized that personal safety far outweighs material loss: “The price of your peace, and the safety of your children is worth any sacrifices you have to make, or any assets you have to leave behind when fleeing a conflict zone or hate-infused environment.”

Nigeria is not the first African nation to organize large-scale repatriation from South Africa amid the current wave of unrest. Ghana previously evacuated roughly 1,000 of its own citizens from South Africa, and South African officials similarly noted that most of the returning Ghanaians were undocumented. Liberia has also raised urgent alarms over the safety of its citizens living in South Africa, with local media quoting President Joseph Boakai as saying the Liberian government is prepared to take all necessary steps, including arranging similar repatriation flights for any Liberians who wish to return.

In a further development that complicates cross-border relations, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs has announced that all Nigerians processed for repatriation will face a five-year ban on re-entering the country. To date, the department says 586 Nigerians have completed processing for repatriation after being found to lack valid immigration status, with the next group of returnees scheduled to depart for Nigeria on Monday.

South African Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber explained that the Nigerian High Commission issued emergency travel documentation for the returnees, after which they were formally declared “undesirable persons” barred from re-entry for a half-decade. “Foreign nationals must ensure that their immigration status remains compliant with South African immigration laws at all times and to regularize their stay,” Schreiber said.

Associated Press reporter Mogomotsi Magome contributed on-the-ground reporting from Johannesburg for this story.

A wave of mounting anti-migrant hostility across South Africa has pushed multiple African nations to organize emergency repatriations of their citizens, leaving thousands of migrant households living in constant fear of xenophobic attacks.

Nigeria is the most recent country to launch this evacuation effort. The first charter flight carrying 268 Nigerian nationals departed Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport early Thursday and touched down safely in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. This flight is the first of planned operations to bring home roughly 1,000 Nigerians who have registered with the Nigerian consulate in South Africa to request repatriation. Neighboring states including Ghana, Zimbabwe and Malawi have already completed similar evacuation flights ahead of a controversial 30 June deadline set by anti-migrant campaigners for all undocumented migrants to leave the country.

The roots of the current crisis stretch back to 1994, when the end of apartheid-era white-minority rule opened South Africa’s borders to thousands of economic migrants from across the continent, who arrived seeking greater economic opportunity and a higher quality of life. But decades of stagnant growth have left South Africa grappling with an official unemployment rate that exceeds 32%, creating fertile ground for resentment toward foreign-born workers. In recent months, anti-migrant protests have swept through major urban centers, and targeted xenophobic assaults have left multiple migrants dead, forcing many to flee their homes and communities.

One Nigerian repatriate, Justin, who had lived in South Africa for 26 years after moving there in 1998, described the constant fear that drove his decision to leave. “I’m leaving because of the conditions they’ve given us here. They say we must leave on or before 30th June. And because of the way they are killing people, killing our brothers, so I’m not safe,” he told reporters at Johannesburg’s main airport. Justin shared that he had already survived one attack, escaping a violent assault on a public taxi by fleeing without his phone or personal belongings. “They call us names and say you must leave this country. When we tried to beg them, they started insulting us,” he added.

Authorities have yet to release an official death toll for recent xenophobic violence. South African police have confirmed that two Mozambican men were killed in the Western Cape province earlier this month, but have not publicly linked the killings to xenophobic motives. Mozambican officials, however, have pushed back on this account, asserting that the number of fatalities among their citizens is far higher, and that all deaths are directly tied to anti-migrant hostility.

Anti-migrant protesters have centered their rhetoric on the claim that migrants are responsible for South Africa’s crippling unemployment and strained public services, from public schools to public hospitals. But Nigeria’s Consul General in South Africa, Ninikanwa Okey-Uche, rejected this narrative, arguing that migrants are being unfairly scapegoated for systemic government failures. “Migrants made up less than 10% of South Africa’s population, and could not be blamed for broken systems in education, health care, policing, unemployment,” she told the BBC. “They are not and cannot be the problem. So, migrants are basically being scapegoated.”

Okey-Uche also noted that while all of the repatriated Nigerians were classified as undocumented by South African authorities, delays and backlogs in South Africa’s immigration application process have left many migrants without legal status through no fault of their own. She added that South African officials have failed to take meaningful action to crack down on organizers of xenophobic violence, even though many of these leaders are well known to law enforcement. “There are a lot of top South African politicians who have spoken up against what’s happening, saying it’s absolutely wrong. But down on the street, we need to see arrests. We know the people in charge, they’re not hiding. They’ve caused mayhem in people’s lives, but they’re walking free, some of them are running for election,” Okey-Uche said.

The rising tensions come as South Africa prepares for nationwide local government elections in November, and many political analysts have observed that opportunistic politicians have elevated migration to a divisive wedge issue to mobilize voters. Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the unrest in a national televised speech, announcing a new package of policy measures targeting undocumented migration. The new rules include criminal penalties for employers that hire undocumented workers, the creation of special dedicated courts to speed up deportation proceedings, and the development of a national biometric identity database intended to reduce identity theft. Even as he cracked down on unauthorized migration, Ramaphosa warned South Africans against vigilante violence, urging citizens not to take the law into their own hands by targeting people suspected of being in the country illegally.

As the 30 June campaign deadline approaches, more African countries are expected to organize additional repatriation flights to extract their vulnerable citizens from the escalating violence, while the South African government faces growing international pressure to rein in xenophobic attacks and protect migrant communities within its borders.

In its 2025 annual Global Trends Report released Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has delivered a mixed update on the global forced displacement crisis: for the first time in 10 years, the total number of people displaced by conflict, violence and persecution has declined — yet the overall figure remains at a devastatingly high level that demands urgent global action.

By the end of 2025, the global count of forcibly displaced people stood at 117.8 million, encompassing refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other groups requiring international protection. Tarek Abou Chabake, UNHCR’s chief statistician, outlined two key drivers behind the historic drop: a rise in the number of people returning to their regions of origin, and growing numbers of refugees gaining citizenship in their host countries. Even with this milestone decline, UNHCR leadership stressed that the scale of displacement is far too high to ignore, with ongoing conflicts continuing to uproot millions of vulnerable people globally.

Breaking down the report’s key demographic and geographic data, children made up 39% of the world’s 41.6 million total refugee population in 2025. While Colombia, Germany and Turkey each hosted more than 2 million refugees, the vast majority of the global refugee population resides in low- and middle-income nations. Even with a 3% drop from 2024 levels, 5.4 million people crossed international borders in 2025 to seek safety from persecution and violence.

A deeply concerning long-term trend highlighted in the report is the persistence of protracted displacement: seven out of every 10 refugees worldwide have lived in exile for five years or more, many trapped in overcrowded, under-resourced camps in low-income countries. “Humanitarian assistance has saved lives,” said UNHCR High Commissioner Barham Salih. “But it was never intended to sustain generations of people indefinitely.” To address this systemic issue, UNHCR has set a target to cut by half the number of refugees in protracted displacement who rely on humanitarian aid by 2035.

IDPs make up the largest single segment of the displaced population, totaling 68.7 million globally in 2025. The ongoing conflict in Sudan drove the world’s largest single new wave of displacement, pushing 9.1 million people to flee their homes within the country. Colombia, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan follow Sudan with some of the world’s largest IDP populations.

Looking ahead to 2026, projections offer little reason for optimism. Following the outbreak of conflict in Iran in February 2026, 3.2 million Iranians had been internally displaced by March, and an additional 1 million people were displaced within Lebanon by mid-May. “This is truly unacceptable and we must make sure this doesn’t become a new normal,” Salih emphasized.

The report also tracked returns of displaced people in 2025: 4.4 million refugees returned to their home countries, the second-highest annual number since UNHCR began record-keeping six decades ago. Ninety percent of these returns were concentrated in just three nations: Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan. An additional 10.3 million IDPs also returned to their regions of origin last year. But Salih issued a stark warning that many returns were not voluntary, with returnees facing a lack of basic infrastructure and livable conditions to rebuild their lives. “Voluntary returns to post-conflict Syria and returns under pressure to Afghanistan are not the same thing,” he noted.

Statelessness remains another unresolved crisis, with 4.5 million people around the world currently lacking citizenship of any nation. Myanmar’s Rohingya community make up the largest single stateless group, with most stateless people residing in Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Thailand and Myanmar. Just 46,000 stateless people gained citizenship in 2025, a tiny fraction of the total population in need of this legal status.

Finally, the report highlighted steep cuts to global refugee resettlement: only 82,000 refugees were resettled to new host countries in 2025, down sharply from 188,000 in 2024. Salih noted that this number represents only a tiny fraction of the millions of refugees in need of resettlement, and urged national governments to expand legal pathways for refugee relocation. “Every dangerous sea crossing and every death in the desert represents a failure of the international community,” Salih said. “The human cost of the failure is measured not with statistics but with lives.”

MILAN – A high-profile $350 million American consulate construction project in Milan has become the center of a major labor exploitation investigation that has already led to the arrest of two senior managers, casting a shadow over U.S. diplomatic contracting practices in Europe.

Based on interviews with five former foreign construction workers, combined with reviews of employment correspondence and payroll records, the Associated Press has confirmed that workers on the site were paid less than $2 an hour, a fraction of the fair wages promised to them when they were hired. The contractor at the heart of the scandal, Caddell Construction, an Alabama-based firm that is one of the largest U.S. diplomatic mission builders globally, is the formal target of the probe led by Italian public prosecutor Paolo Storari, an official who has previously led high-profile investigations into illegal sweatshop operations that supply luxury fashion brands.

Authorities launched the investigation roughly six months ago, with the probe covering approximately 70 workers, the vast majority of whom migrated from India and Kenya to work on the project. Two Caddell site managers were taken into custody earlier this month. Prosecutors confirmed that one manager was arrested while attempting to board an outbound flight to leave Italy, while the second was taken into custody just before his planned escape from the country. To date, only Caddell Construction has been named as an official target of the investigation, with no subcontractors facing formal action at this stage.

Prosecutors detailed multiple alleged violations: the firm illegally deducted excessive housing and meal costs from worker wages, forced staff to work 60-hour weeks spread over six days, and left some workers with monthly take-home pay of less than 580 USD after deductions – a rate that works out to under $2 an hour, far below Italian minimum wage standards.

The AP conducted interviews with the five former workers at a Milan trade union center, where they are receiving support including legal aid and emergency housing. All workers requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation and to avoid disrupting the ongoing investigation. Four of the workers interviewed are from Kenya, and one is from India; all five stated they were hired by Caddell after previously working on a major expansion project for the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Multiple workers provided formal employment letters on Caddell company letterhead, signed by a company representative, that promised annual salaries of nearly $29,000, equal to more than 2,400 euros a month. In practice, none of the workers received anything close to that agreed-upon rate, and multiple workers reported being threatened by site human resources staff after they questioned the missing pay.

“When you go to the office to ask any question, you are being told, ‘Either you work or you will be returned to your country. That’s the amount you are supposed to be paid,’’’ one Kenyan electrician told the AP. He added that he was promised 2,300 euros a month, but only took home 800 euros after deductions. A second Kenyan electrician said he was threatened with defamation charges after sharing an AI-generated summary of Italian minimum wage laws with management. He was told the 25,000 euro annual salary listed on his employment contract was “for visa purposes,” not an actual binding pay promise.

The Indian worker, a veteran electrician with more than 10 years of experience on major construction projects across the Persian Gulf, reported a similar experience: he was promised 2,500 euros a month, but his pay stub shows he took home just 500 euros a month, equal to an hourly rate of 1.80 USD. All five former workers, aged between their late 20s and early 50s, said they were fired without any formal cause earlier this year. One worker said he returned to Milan from a family visit to Kenya only to find he had lost both his job and his company-provided housing. Two of the former workers are currently homeless and sleeping in Milan parks, while another is staying temporarily with a friend. One worker turned down a new job offer from Caddell at a site in another country after his experience in Milan.

Both the U.S. State Department and Caddell Construction have stated they are investigating the allegations and are fully cooperating with Italian law enforcement. “The U.S. government does not tolerate labor exploitation,” the State Department said in an official statement. Caddell released its own statement saying it is conducting an internal inquiry to confirm that all subcontractors and consulting partners comply with local labor laws and legal standards. “Caddell is committed to treating and paying workers fairly. We will continue to work with authorities in good faith to ensure the welfare of those who work on this important project,” the company said.

This is not the first controversy to hit the firm: more than 10 years ago, Caddell paid millions of dollars in a settlement with the U.S. government to resolve allegations that it submitted false claims to access government contracting incentives. The firm did not respond to requests for comment on this prior case.

The Milan consulate project is a major part of a 20-year construction boom that has reshaped Milan’s skyline and boosted the international profile of Italy’s capital of fashion and finance. Caddell grew to become the leading contractor for U.S. diplomatic facilities after the State Department launched a massive global security upgrade program following the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed more than 250 people. On its website, the firm noted that very few contractors can meet the strict security requirements to bid on diplomatic facility projects, and as of 2023, the firm had completed 39 embassy and consulate projects valued at a total of $7.4 billion, with four additional projects added since that time.

The new Milan consulate campus is being built on 10 acres of land that was once a public shooting range. The project includes restoration of a historic 100-year-old building, a new five-story main consulate building, restored public gardens, a reflecting pool, and a large outdoor community gathering space. The State Department initially projected the project would employ roughly 500 local workers, though the majority of the workers named in the probe are foreign migrant workers.

Construction work on the site is continuing, but it is now under court supervision. Following the launch of the investigation, the illegal wage deductions have been ended, workers are limited to a 45-hour work week, and they are guaranteed two full days off per week.

Pay stubs provided by the workers confirm the alleged excessive deductions, with monthly charges of roughly 590 USD for housing and more than 350 USD for food, even these large deductions do not account for the full gap between the promised wages and the actual pay workers received. Laura Malguzzi, a labor representative for the Fillea Cgil construction union federation that is supporting the workers, said the union is seeking full damages to recover all unpaid wages owed to the workers. She added that investigators were struck by how the pay stubs openly documented the alleged exploitation, with no attempt to hide the violations, suggesting the firm believed it would face no consequences. “They probably had in their minds the absolute certainty that they were untouchable,” Malguzzi said.

Many of the workers had accepted low pay in their home country of Kenya, where widespread unemployment leaves workers with few other options, but they said they expected far better treatment from a major American contractor working in Western Europe. “They can just hire you, and you just go running,” one worker said. “Because you are poor you have nothing. And you have nothing you can do.” Despite their hardships, the former workers are calling on current employees at the site to speak out about any abuses they have faced. “I believe in justice,” one worker said. “Also the workers there should not be afraid. They should come and speak up.”