Sudan, Tonga, UAE.

Today's three stories you should know.

Jan 18, 2022

Sudan

As mentioned in previous newsletters, three months after Sudan’s military coup and protesters keep taking to the streets in their thousands. And they’re brave. Some 67 people have been killed by security forces so far. Today, at least seven people were shot dead, according to local medics and pro-democracy activists. Several others were reported to have suffered gunshot wounds. More protests are planned for this week.

Tonga

Distress signals have been detected from two Tongan islands as authorities scramble to assess the scale of destruction two days after a huge undersea volcano erupted, sending waves more than a meter tall crashing into the country’s largest island. Tonga is a Pacific nation made up of about 170 islands. Both New Zealand and Australia have dispatched surveillance flights as almost all communications continue to be crippled. An undersea cable that connects the islands to the outside world was severed.

UAE

Yemen’s Houthi rebels today claimed a drone attack on an oil facility in the United Arab Emirates, which killed three people in the city of Abu Dhabi. The Yemeni rebels often target Saudi Arabia with drones, but attacks on the UAE are very rare. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition, which includes the UAE, intervened in Yemen’s conflict in 2015 to support President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who had been toppled by the Iran-backed Houthis. One hundred and thirty thousand people are estimated to have been killed since the violence erupted in 2014.