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Cairo (AFP) – The head of the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces admitted in a speech to fighters on Sunday that the group had withdrawn from the capital Khartoum which rival army forces have retaken.

The comment from RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo came three days after the group said there would be "no retreat and no surrender" and that its forces had "repositioned", despite the army's declaration on Thursday that the capital was "free" of the paramilitaries after nearly two years of war.

"I confirm to you that we have indeed left Khartoum, but... we will return with even stronger determination," Daglo said in the speech posted to social media.

"All those who think that there are negotiations or agreements in process with this diabolical movement are mistaken," he continued, in reference to the army. "We have neither agreement nor discussion with them -- only the language of arms."

Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Saturday also vowed not to back down, after a decisive blitz in which the army reclaimed the presidential palace, the war-damaged airport and other key sites in the city centre.

"We will neither forgive, nor compromise, nor negotiate," Burhan said, adding that victory would only be complete when "the last rebel has been eradicated from the last corner of Sudan".

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday said Washington hoped to do more diplomatically to end the war in Sudan.

Tehran (AFP) – Iranian police have dispersed a weeks-long sit-in by demonstrators supporting the mandatory head covering for women, state media reported, after authorities deemed the gathering illegal.

The demonstrators -- largely women in black full-body robes -- staged the sit-in since last month outside the parliament building in Tehran.

Since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, women have been required to conceal their hair in public. However, increasing numbers, particularly in major cities including the capital Tehran, have pushed the boundaries by allowing the covering to slide back.

The protesters were calling for the implementation of a bill imposing tougher penalties on women who refuse to wear the covering, known as a hijab.

Parliament approved the bill in September 2023. It triggered heated debate in the country, was not submitted to the government for final approval, and has since been shelved.

"After numerous negotiations with the relevant authorities and the protesters, they were requested to disperse and refrain from causing disruption, blocking roads, and creating traffic congestion for citizens," the judiciary's Mizan Online website said late Saturday.

"A large number of the protesters complied with the police order and left the area but unfortunately a small number (around 30 individuals) resisted", Mizan added.

It published a video showing an altercation between the demonstrators and security forces ordering them to leave the area.

The official IRNA news agency said the "illegal" sit-in had been in place for around 48 days.

Officially known as the "Law on Supporting the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab", the bill would have imposed tougher penalties on women who refuse to wear the mandatory hijab.

It also required significant fines and prison sentences for those deemed to be promoting "nudity" or "indecency".

Parliament passed the bill around a year after mass demonstrations began in Iran triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd. She had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.

Increasing numbers of women have flouted the law since then.

Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani in January said the bill was shelved as it "could have had serious social consequences".

Seoul (AFP) – South Korean police have launched a probe into a man suspected of accidentally igniting the country's worst wildfires in history while cleaning his relatives' gravesites, an investigator said Sunday.

More than a dozen fires have been fanned by high winds and dry conditions, killing 30 people and burning more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) of forest, the worst of its kind recorded in South Korea, according to the interior ministry.

In North Gyeongsang province's Uiseong -- the hardest-hit region with 12,800 hectares of its woodland affected -- a 56-year-old man was suspected of mistakenly starting a fire while tending to his grandparents's gravesites on March 22, an official from the provincial police said.

"We booked him without detention for investigation on Saturday on suspicions of inadvertently starting the wildfires," the official, who declined to be named, told AFP.

Investigators will summon him for questioning once the on-site inspection is complete, which could take more than a month, the official said.

The suspect's daughter reportedly told investigators that her father tried to burn tree branches that were hanging over the graves with a cigarette lighter.

The flames were "carried by the wind and ended up sparking a wildfire," the daughter was quoted as saying to the authorities, Yonhap news agency reported.

The police, who have withheld the identities of both, declined to confirm the account to AFP.

The fires have been fuelled by strong winds and ultra-dry conditions, with the area experiencing below-average rainfall for months, following South Korea's hottest year on record in 2024.

Among the 30 dead is a helicopter pilot, who died when his aircraft crashed in a mountain mountainous area.

The blaze also destroyed several historic sites, including the Gounsa temple complex in Uiseong, which is believed to have been originally built in the 7th century.

The inferno has also laid bare South Korea's demographic crisis and regional disparities, as rural areas are both underpopulated and disproportionately elderly.

Sydney (AFP) – Sky-high tobacco prices in Australia have created a lucrative black market, analysts say, sparking a violent "tobacco war" and syphoning away billions in potential tax revenue.

Faced with a pack of 25 cigarettes costing up to Aus$50 (US$32) or more -- including Aus$1.40 in tax on each stick -- many smokers have instead turned to readily available illicit tobacco.

At the same time, authorities have cracked down on vapes, restricting legal sales to pharmacies and opening up another illegal market for people in search of affordable nicotine.

In March, the government cut its budget forecast for tobacco tax revenue in the period to 2029 by Aus$6.9 billion.

"We've got a challenge here and too many people are avoiding the excise," Treasurer Jim Chalmers conceded after revealing the figures.

He announced an extra Aus$157 million for a multi-agency force battling organised crime groups involved in the market and a string of "tobacco war" fire-bombings.

The situation was a "total disaster", said James Martin, criminology course director at Deakin University in Melbourne.

"We have taken a public health issue, smoking, and our tobacco control policies have transformed it into a multi-fronted crisis," he told AFP.

"It is a fiscal crisis, so we are losing billions and billions of dollars in tobacco tax excise but also, more concerning for me as a criminologist, it has turned into a major crime problem."

Since the start of 2023, there had been more than 220 arson attacks targeting either black-market retailers or store owners who refuse to stock illicit tobacco products, Martin said.

"This is really serious organised crime, extortion and intimidation of otherwise law-abiding citizens."

Alleged crime figures named in local media as big players include convicted heroin trafficker Kazem Hamad, who was deported to Iraq in 2023, and an infamous Melbourne crime family.

Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief Heather Cook said criminals fighting over the "lucrative" illegal market were associated with "violence and dangerous behaviour".

"This is impacting communities," she told Melbourne's Herald Sun in February.

Law enforcement alone could not solve the problem, Martin said.

"If we just keep making nicotine harder to get to, people are going to turn to the black market."

Australia had made two mistakes, he said: pricing legal cigarettes so high that a pack-a-day habit cost about Aus$15,000 a year and at the same time heavily restricting sales of vapes, which were predominantly sold on the black market.

"The government needs to lower the tobacco tax excise to stop the bleed to the black market, and they need to legalise consumer vaping products."

New Zealand was the only country that had successfully introduced a similar tobacco taxation policy to Australia's, Martin said.

"But they did it by legalising vaping back in 2020," he added.

"So, New Zealand used to have a higher smoking rate than we did back just four years ago. It's now substantially lower than Australia's."

Illicit cigarettes are flowing into Australia from China and the Middle East, with vapes predominantly being sourced from Shenzhen in China, the criminologist said.

And the black market still thrives despite the Australian Border Force saying it detected huge volumes of illicit tobacco in the year to June 30, 2024 -- 1.8 billion cigarettes and more than 436 tonnes of loose leaf tobacco.

Daily tobacco smoking in Australia has fallen sharply over the past decades: from 24 percent of those aged over 14 in 1991 to 8.3 percent by 2023, according to a national household survey.

But monitoring of nicotine in Australian wastewater -- whether from cigarettes, vapes, or nicotine replacement products -- showed consumption per person had remained "relatively stable" since 2016, according to the government's health and welfare institute.

Edward Jegasothy, senior lecturer in public health at the University of Sydney, said smoking rates in Australia fell just as fast during periods of sharp price increases as they did when prices were stable.

The black market had undermined government policy by providing a cheaper alternative, he told AFP.

To address the problem, authorities would probably need to lower taxes on tobacco and strengthen law enforcement, he said.

Broader nicotine restrictions in Australia had left people with fewer less harmful alternatives to tobacco, Jegasothy said.

People switching to vapes were going to the unregulated market where concentrations of nicotine and other adulterants were unknown, he said.

"So that's another risk that's unnecessarily there because of the black market."

The high tobacco tax policy also hit people in the lowest socioeconomic groups the hardest, Jegasothy said, both because they were spending a higher proportion of their incomes on it, and because they had higher rates of smoking.

Australia's "disproportionate" focus on cutting nicotine supply rather than reducing demand and harm echoed the "War on Drugs", Jegasothy argued in a joint paper with Deakin University's Martin.

"As with Australia's broader War on Drugs, there is little evidence to suggest that our de facto War on Nicotine is an optimal strategy for reducing nicotine-related harms," it warns.

Damascus (AFP) – Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday announced a new transitional government dominated by close allies and including one woman, replacing caretaker authorities in place since the ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

The announcement, initially scheduled for earlier this month, comes amid international calls for an inclusive Syrian transition following recent sectarian bloodshed, as the country's new leaders seek to reunite and rebuild Syria and its institutions after Assad's December 8 overthrow brought an end to 14 years of civil war.

Close associates of Sharaa held on to key positions, with Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shaibani and Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra retaining their cabinet posts, while Anas Khattab, the head of general intelligence, was appointed interior minister.

Veteran opposition figure Hind Kabawat, a member of Syria's Christian minority and longtime Assad opponent, was named social affairs and labour minister, the first woman to be appointed by Sharaa.

The leader of the White Helmets, the Syrian rescuers who worked in rebel-held areas, Raed al-Saleh, was appointed minister of emergency situations and disasters.

The Islamist-led authorities who now dominate Syria have vowed to protect minorities, especially after fighting earlier this month between gunmen from Assad's Alawite community and militia linked to the Sunni rebel forces that overthrew him led to civilian massacres.

In December, a caretaker government headed by Mohammad al-Bashir was appointed to steer the country until a new cabinet was formed, an announcement initially scheduled for March 1.

In late January, Sharaa, leader of Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded Assad's overthrow, was appointed interim president.

This month, Sharaa signed into force a constitutional declaration regulating the country's transitional period, set for five years.

Some experts and rights groups have warned that it concentrates power in Sharaa's hands and fails to include enough protections for minorities.

Doha (AFP) – A top Hamas official said on Saturday the group approved a new Gaza ceasefire proposal put forth by mediators, urging Israel to back it but warning the Iran-backed group's weapons were a "red line".

"Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediating brothers in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and approved it. We hope that the occupation (Israel) will not obstruct it," Khalil al-Haya said in a televised address for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

"The weapons of the resistance are a red line," he added.

Netanyahu's office confirmed it had received a proposal from mediators.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday, held a series of consultations pursuant to the proposal that was received from the mediators," his office said in a statement.

"A few hours ago, Israel conveyed to the mediators a counter-proposal in full coordination with the US," it said without elaborating.

A day earlier, senior Hamas official Bassem Naim had said talks between the Palestinian Islamist movement and mediators over a ceasefire deal were gaining momentum as Israel continues intensive operations in Gaza.

Palestinian sources close to Hamas had told AFP that talks began Thursday evening between the militant group and mediators from Egypt and Qatar to revive a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The fragile truce that had brought weeks of relative calm to the Gaza Strip ended on March 18 when Israel resumed its bombing campaign across the territory.

The talks in Doha started a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to seize parts of Gaza if Hamas did not release hostages, and Hamas warned the captives would return "in coffins" if Israel did not stop bombing the Palestinian territory.

Le Parquet national financier a conclu ses réquisitions en réclamant une peine exemplaire de sept ans de prison contre Nicolas Sarkozy pour sanctionner le pacte de corruption scellé avec la dictature libyenne pour le financement de sa campagne de 2007.

Port Sudan (Sudan) (AFP) – The Sudanese army said on Saturday it had taken control of a major market in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, long used by its rival Rapid Support Forces as a staging ground for attacks.

It is the latest conquest in the army's major offensive this month to wrest back control of the entire capital region, which includes Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri -- three cities split by branches of the River Nile.

The blitz saw the army recapture the presidential palace on March 21, followed by the war-damaged airport and other key sites in the city centre.

In a statement, army spokesman Nabil Abdullah said forces extended "their control over Souq Libya in Omdurman" and seized "weapons and equipment left behind by" the RSF as they fled.

Souq Libya, one of the largest and busiest in the Khartoum area, had for months been an RSF stronghold and a launchpad for attacks on northern and central Omdurman since the war with the army began on April 15, 2023.

While the army already controls much of Omdurman, the RSF still holds ground in the city's west, particularly in Ombada district.

Late Thursday, the military spokesman said that the army had "cleansed" Khartoum itself from "the last pockets" of the RSF.

Sudan's war began almost two years ago during a power struggle between the army and the RSF, a paramilitary force that was once its ally.

Bangkok (AFP) – Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modelling suggesting thousands could be dead.

Automatic assessments from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses.

"High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread," it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people.

Myanmar's ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had passed 1,000, with more than 2,000 injured.

However, the USGS analysis said there was a 35 percent chance that possible fatalities could be in the range of 10,000-100,000 people.

The USGS offered a similar likelihood that the financial damage could total tens of thousands of millions of dollars, warning that it might exceed the GDP of Myanmar.

Weak infrastructure will complicate relief efforts in the isolated, military-ruled state, where rescue services and the healthcare system have already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London (UCL), said it was "probably the biggest earthquake on the Myanmar mainland in three-quarters of a century".

A 6.7-magnitude aftershock struck minutes after the first and McGuire warned that "more can be expected".

Rebecca Bell, a tectonics expert at Imperial College London (ICL), suggested it was a side-to-side "strike-slip" of the Sagaing Fault.

This is where the Indian tectonic plate, to the west, meets the Sunda plate that forms much of Southeast Asia -- a fault similar in scale and movement to the San Andreas Fault in California.

"The Sagaing fault is very long, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles), and very straight," Bell said. "The straight nature means earthquakes can rupture over large areas -- and the larger the area of the fault that slips, the larger the earthquake."

Earthquakes in such cases can be "particularly destructive", Bell added, explaining that since the quake takes place at a shallow depth, its seismic energy has dissipated little by the time it reaches populated areas above.

That causes "a lot of shaking at the surface", Bell said.

Myanmar has been hit by powerful quakes in the past.

There have been more than 14 earthquakes with a magnitude of 6 or above in the past century, including a magnitude 6.8 earthquake near Mandalay in 1956, said Brian Baptie, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.

Ian Watkinson, from the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway University of London, said what had changed in recent decades was the "boom in high-rise buildings constructed from reinforced concrete".

Myanmar has been riven by years of conflict and there is a low level of building design enforcement.

"Critically, during all previous magnitude 7 or larger earthquakes along the Sagaing Fault, Myanmar was relatively undeveloped, with mostly low-rise timber-framed buildings and brick-built religious monuments," Watkinson said.

"Today's earthquake is the first test of modern Myanmar's infrastructure against a large, shallow-focus earthquake close to its major cities."

Baptie said that at least 2.8 million people in Myanmar were in hard-hit areas where most lived in buildings "constructed from timber and unreinforced brick masonry" that are vulnerable to earthquake shaking.

"The usual mantra is that 'earthquakes don't kill people; collapsing infrastructure does'," said Ilan Kelman, an expert in disaster reduction at UCL.

"Governments are responsible for planning regulations and building codes. This disaster exposes what governments of Burma/Myanmar failed to do long before the earthquake, which would have saved lives during the shaking."

Strong tremors also rocked neighbouring Thailand, where a 30-storey skyscraper under construction was reduced to a pile of dusty concrete, trapping workers in the debris.

Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype, from ICL's civil and environmental engineering department, said the nature of the ground in Bangkok contributed to the impact on the city, despite being some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the epicentre in Myanmar.

"Even though Bangkok is far from active faults, its soft soil amplifies the shaking," he said. "This affects especially tall buildings during distant earthquakes."

Malaga-Chuquitaype said the construction techniques in Bangkok favouring "flat slabs" -- where floors are held only by columns without using strengthening beams, like a table supported only by legs -- were a "problematic design".

He said that initial video analysis of the collapsed tower block in Bangkok suggested this type of construction technique had been used.

Roberto Gentile, a catastrophe risk modelling expert from UCL, said the "dramatic collapse" of the Bangkok tower block meant that "other tall buildings in the city may require a thorough assessment".

Bangkok city authorities said they will deploy more than 100 engineers to inspect buildings for safety after receiving more than 2,000 reports of damage.

Istanbul (AFP) – Waving flags and chanting slogans, hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied in Istanbul Saturday calling for democracy to be defended after the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey's worst street unrest in over a decade.

Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP which organised the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but AFP was unable to independently confirm the figures.

The mass protests, which began with Imamoglu's March 19 detention, have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.

Widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the opposition CHP's candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed.

He was resoundingly re-elected mayor last year for the third time. The anger over his arrest quickly spread from Istanbul across Turkey.

Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall drew vast crowds and often degenerated into running battles with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters.

Opposition chief Ozel told French newspaper Le Monde the Saturday rallies would from now on be a weekly event in cities across Turkey, alongside a weekly Wednesday night demo in Istanbul.

Student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked, in the face of a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.

The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.

Eleven journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.

Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who flew into Turkey on Thursday to cover the demonstrations, was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP.

Reporters Without Borders' Turkey representative Erol Onderoglu said Medin had been charged with "insulting the president" -- a charge often use to silence Erdogan's critics.

"The judicial pressure systematically brought to bear on local journalists for a long time is now being brought to bear on their foreign colleagues," he told AFP.

Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him for posing "a threat to public order", the broadcaster said.

Turkish officials said it was due to "a lack of accreditation".

Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, a legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities "seem to be very determined on limiting coverage of the protests".

He added: "We fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase."

Conakry (AFP) – Guinea's ex-dictator Moussa Dadis Camara, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison over a 2009 massacre, was pardoned Friday for "health reasons" by the West African country's junta head, according to a decree read out on national television.

"Upon the proposal of the Minister of Justice, a presidential pardon is granted to Mr. Moussa Dadis Camara for health reasons," said the decree, read out on television by presidential spokesperson General Amara Camara late Friday.

Following a landmark trial, a court found Dadis Camara guilty of crimes against humanity last July and sentenced him to 20 years behind bars over what is considered one of the darkest pages of Guinea's history.

On September 28, 2009, at least 156 people were killed by gunfire, knives, machetes, or bayonets in a massacre at an opposition rally, according to a UN-mandated international commission of inquiry.

Hundreds more were wounded and at least 109 women were raped.

The abuses continued for several days against women who were held captive, and detainees were tortured.

Only 57 bodies out of at least 156 were recovered, according to families and human rights organisations, and the toll is believed to be far higher.

Dadis Camara was found guilty "on the basis of superior responsibility", a judge said, and was also guilty of "his intention to suppress the demonstration" and for failing to punish the perpetrators of the massacre.

Seven other people were also sentenced to prison terms of up to life imprisonment for their role in the massacre.

The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had welcomed the verdict, calling it a "landmark moment in establishing the truth... and bringing to account those bearing the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed".

Dadis Camara's pardon came after the junta's head General Mamadi Doumbouya announced Wednesday that the compensation costs for the victims of the September 28, 2009, incident would be covered.

The junta would implement the reparations ordered by the judge for the victims, ranging from 200 million Guinean francs ($23,100) to 1.5 billion Guinean francs ($173,300), depending on the case.

The junta, which came to power through a coup in 2021, had allowed this historic trial to take place.

This week's decrees come amid severe restrictions on freedoms in Guinea.

Many opponents of the junta have disappeared or are being questioned by the courts, demonstrations demanding the departure of the military are regularly banned, and several media outlets have been closed across the country.

Mandalay (Myanmar) (AFP) – The death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Myanmar and Thailand passed 1,000 on Saturday, as rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings in a desperate search for survivors.

At least 1,002 people were killed and nearly 2,400 injured in Myanmar, the ruling junta said in a statement. Around 10 more deaths have been confirmed in Bangkok.

But with communications badly disrupted, the true scale of the disaster is only starting to emerge from the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.

It was the biggest quake to hit Myanmar in decades, according to geologists, and the tremors were powerful enough to severely damage buildings across Bangkok, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away from the epicentre.

Guards at Mandalay Airport turned away journalists.

"It has been closed since yesterday," said one. "The ceiling collapsed but no-one was hurt."

Damage to the airport would complicate relief efforts in a country whose rescue services and healthcare system have already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid on Friday, indicating the severity of the calamity. Previous military governments have shunned foreign assistance even after major natural disasters.

The country declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions after the quake, and at one major hospital in the capital, Naypyidaw, medics were forced to treat the wounded in the open air on Friday.

Offers of foreign assistance began coming in, with President Donald Trump on Friday pledging US help.

An initial flight from India carrying hygiene kits, blankets, food parcels and other essentials landed in the commercial capital Yangon on Saturday.

China said it sent an 82-person team of rescuers to Myanmar.

Aid agencies have warned that Myanmar is totally unprepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude. Some 3.5 million people were displaced by the raging civil war, many at risk of hunger, even before the quake struck.

Across the border in Bangkok, rescuers worked through the night searching for survivors trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed, reduced in seconds to a pile of rubble and twisted metal by the force of the shaking.

Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt told AFP that around 10 people had been confirmed killed across the city, most in the skyscraper collapse.

But up to 100 workers were still unaccounted for at the building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market that is a magnet for tourists.

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https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20250329-myanmar-quake-what-we-know