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For nearly two years, Al-Shubbak watched through ancient grey eyes as Tuti, the crescent-shaped island in the heart of the Sudanese capital she calls home, emptied of its inhabitants under a punishing paramilitary siege.She refused to leave."I didn't even move for the English when they colonised us," she told AFP through a toothless smile, a year after the army broke the siege, and 70 after the British occupation of Khartoum ended.She recited an old battle cry that her daughter, who doesn't know exactly how old her mother is, repeated: "Our fathers resisted the occupiers with stones. Though they met them with gunfire, they still could not take Tuti the green."Located where the White Nile, flowing from Uganda, meets the Blue Nile from Ethiopia, Tuti is across the river from where war first broke out in April 2023, between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.In recent months, many residents have returned home to the island, besieged from June 2023 until March 2025, when the army recaptured the capital.Shops have reopened and farmers have come back to their land, which historically supplied much of Khartoum's fresh produce from its fruit orchards and vegetable fields.On a Friday afternoon, villagers flocked to the old red-brick mosque, where a rusted sign reads "established 1480".In times past, crowds would gather in plastic chairs at the edge of the island, sipping tea with their feet in the Nile, the very first spot where it becomes one river flowing north to Egypt.Now, authorities say that same spot is a minefield, and the islanders are scarred by their days living in an open-air prison."Nothing could get in or out without the RSF saying so," said 34-year old day labourer Salaheldin Abdelqader, who escaped seven months into the siege and returned last year.To get anything in -- food, medicine, fuel to power water pumps -- islanders had to pay off RSF fighters who controlled the only bridge. And they could only leave after forking out a toll for safe passage.For Abdelqader, that was 350,000 Sudanese pounds (now around $90), more than double a doctor's monthly salary. 'Guard our soil' Sheikh Mohamed Eid, a local elder who sounded the alarm over Tuti's plight on social media, said that during the war residents were "forced to leave at gunpoint" and pay to do so "with our own money".In accordance with government media regulations, AFP was accompanied by an army officer, who stepped out of earshot during interviews.A stout man with a head wrap piled high on his brow, Eid spoke at length of the people's connection to their island, from which former president Omar al-Bashir's government repeatedly tried to relocate them to build luxury investments."We're like fish in the water, we can't survive outside Tuti," he told AFP in his home, the sky visible through a hole in the roof where an artillery shell tore through.After two months using donations to pay the RSF double or triple to get goods onto the island so people wouldn't starve, Eid was detained by the paramilitaries.Thrown into one notorious jail after another, he watched other incarcerated islanders die, one by one, before his release nine months later.The RSF's siege slowly choked the life out of Tuti. Eventually, of an estimated 30,000 people, only Shubbak's family remained, caring for the bedridden matriarch."We stayed to guard our soil," her daughter Najat al-Nour, a Quran professor in her fifties who lifted her chin high to admonish those who left."A mistake," she snapped.Bittersweet But Nosayba Saad had no choice. She and her family endured a year and a half of RSF rule, during which fighters repeatedly entered people's homes, demanding gold and phones and accusing them of spying for the army.When she tried to talk to the fighters, "they told me to keep quiet or they'd empty their guns at me," she said.At night, she would hear them in her neighbours' empty homes, firing seemingly at nothing. "A lot of people died from stray bullets," she said.By the time her family paid to leave in October 2024, the RSF had taken to stealing food and cash as well.She didn't think she would see her home again."Now our street is almost full, and more people are on their way," she said with an incredulous laugh, a bashful smile lighting up her face.But her joy was bittersweet. Two of her uncles are missing and presumed dead, while every family on the island has lost someone."Still, being together with our people again, coming home is such a blessing," she said, as the smell of incense wafted through her house, out towards jasmine trees in bloom.In the fields beyond, a squash farmer trudged home, a sack slung over his shoulder heavy with his harvest.To the south loomed the ruins of Khartoum, bombed out skyscrapers a constant reminder of the terror now past.But to the west, where the setting sun made the Nile glow orange, the island seemed as it once was.A fisherman packed up his rods next to a family picnicking on the waterfront.A couple, out for a stroll, asked an AFP journalist to take a photo of them, a memento of a nice date back on their island home. 

The International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza announced this morning that the Freedom Flotilla heading to the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli occupation forces. "The Israeli army attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, 120 nautical miles (220 km) from Gaza," the committee said in a post on X. This comes after the Israeli occupation seized 42 ships belonging to the Global Sumud Flotilla last Wednesday when they sailed in international waters toward Gaza. Hundreds of international activists were arrested on board and transferred to Ketziot Prison in the south, before the entity announced the start of their deportation.

AFP Gaza Strip The Red Cross warned Saturday that any Israeli attempt to evacuate Gaza City would put residents at risk, as Israel's military tightened its siege on the area ahead of a planned offensive.Gaza's civil defence agency said that since dawn Israeli attacks had killed 61 people in the territory already devastated by nearly 23 months of war."It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions," International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement. The dire state of shelter, healthcare and nutrition in Gaza meant evacuation was "not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances".Israel is under increasing pressure to end its offensive in Gaza where the great majority of the population has been displaced at least once and the United Nations has declared a famine. But despite the calls at home and abroad for an end to the war, the Israeli army is readying itself for an operation to seize the Palestinian territory's largest city and relocate its inhabitants.The Israeli military has declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone", without the daily pauses in fighting that have allowed limited food deliveries elsewhere. The military did not call for the population to leave immediately, but a day earlier COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it was making preparations "for moving the population southward for their protection".Gaza's civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP 57 people had been killed in Israeli bombing since dawn. The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figure. Bassal said 12 people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit "a number of displaced people's tents" near a mosque in the al-Nasr area, west of Gaza City.Umm Imad Kaheel, who was nearby at the time, said children were among those killed in the strike, which had "shaken the earth". "People were screaming and panicking, everyone running, trying to save the injured and retrieve the martyrs lying on the ground," the 36-year-old said.The civil defence agency said 12 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited near food distribution centres in the north, south and centre. A journalist working for AFP on the northern edge of Gaza City reported he had been ordered to evacuate by the army, adding conditions had become increasingly difficult, with gunfire and explosions nearby. Abu Mohammed Kishko, a resident of the city's Zeitoun neighbourhood, told AFP the bombardments the previous night had been "insane"."It didn't stop for a second, and we didn't sleep all night," the 42-year-old said.