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  • ‘We want to see blood’: Israeli political leadership and settler groups call for revenge against Palestinians

    ‘We want to see blood’: Israeli political leadership and settler groups call for revenge against Palestinians

    A wave of violent tensions has swept the occupied West Bank in 2026, following a fatal clash in the Palestinian village of Tell that left one Israeli settler and four members of a local Palestinian family dead. In the aftermath, senior Israeli political leaders and prominent settler organizations have issued explicit calls for violent revenge, including demands to raze entire Palestinian communities and displace their civilian populations.

    Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister and leader of the Religious Zionism party, announced Friday that the villages of Tell, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik should be destroyed, saying the communities should be left in the same state of ruin as large areas of Nablus and Tulkarm that were heavily damaged in recent Israeli military operations. Smotrich added that all civilian residents of the targeted villages should be forcibly evacuated, and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reassign control of the entire area from the Palestinian Authority to Israeli administration.

    Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, echoed the hardline stance, arguing that for every Israeli killed, Palestinian communities must forfeit land and residential property. He went further, demanding that Israel implement the same strategy of leveling entire residential areas that it has employed in the Gaza Strip across occupied West Bank Palestinian communities.

    The inflammatory rhetoric comes shortly after armed Israeli settlers, escorted by uniformed Israeli military personnel, carried out a large raid on Tell, where settler violence has surged in recent months. The clash that sparked the current unrest left four members of the Palestinian Saifi family dead by Israeli gunfire; Israeli military officials claim one member of the family seized a settler’s weapon and killed the settler before dying in the subsequent gunfight.

    Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health underscores the escalating violence in the territory this year: as of this latest unrest, at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the West Bank in 2026, 21 of whom were killed by direct settler attacks.

    Zvi Sukkot, another lawmaker from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, amplified the calls for destruction Friday, telling Israeli Channel 14 that Tell must be left in ruins, and posting a blank black image captioned only “Revenge” to his public Facebook page. The radical settler militia Hilltop Youth, which has a long record of violent attacks on Palestinian communities and property, quickly endorsed the calls for retaliation.

    Private group chat messages reviewed by Middle East Eye show settler activists demanding immediate action to “erase the village of Tell” within hours of news of the settler’s death breaking. “We want revenge. Not settlements, not promises of more housing units,” one message read. “We want to see blood. There is no comfort without revenge,” the message added, alongside an attached graphic depicting a river of blood. Elchanan Groner, a leading high-profile hilltop settler, declared in a public tribute to the deceased settler that “the village of murderers, Tell, must be erased now” and vowed to avenge what he called the settler’s “pure blood”.

    Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to the violence with hardline pledges of his own, posting to his social media platform X that “we will pursue terror everywhere” and that Israel “will settle accounts with them” for the attack. He confirmed he had instructed the Israeli military to demolish the family home of the Palestinian man who killed the settler, and order swift, forceful military action against other villages in the area. Netanyahu also announced he had ordered officials to speed up the legalization of existing unapproved settler outposts and approve the establishment of new outposts — the same sites from which most recent settler attacks, including the Tell raid, originate.

    Following the prime minister’s orders, the Israeli military mobilized additional troops to the West Bank for a large-scale security operation centered on the Nablus region in the northern occupied territory, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday. Palestinian news agency Wafa has confirmed that Israeli forces have arrested 66 Palestinians across the West Bank to date, 30 of whom are civilians detained directly in Tell. As of Saturday morning, Haaretz added, the military has closed all access points to Tell and nearby Burin, and imposed a full siege on the city of Nablus.

    Israeli troops have carried out widespread raids on private Palestinian homes across multiple West Bank communities, carrying out searches, detaining civilians, and leaving widespread property damage in their wake, according to Palestinian local reports. The Quds News Network also reported Friday that Israeli forces raided a major hospital in Nablus to arrest two Palestinian men they claim were involved in the earlier Tell clashes.

    As military operations have expanded, settlers have launched coordinated retaliatory attacks on Palestinian communities across the West Bank, acting on the earlier calls for revenge from political and settler leaders. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported Friday that eight Palestinians were injured, one critically, during a settler attack on the village of Far’ata near Qalqilya, where local residents say settlers set fire to residential homes and threw stones at civilian property. Three more Palestinians were injured Friday during a settler raid on the town of Sarra, near Nablus, with settlers again setting homes on fire and damaging civilian property, PRCS confirmed.

    Quds News Network documented additional violent settler attacks across multiple hotspots, including Masafer Yatta south of Hebron, and the Nablus-area villages of Awarta and Urif, where settlers set fire to Palestinian land and property and uprooted hundreds of olive trees — a core source of income for many local Palestinian families. In the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan near Salfit, settlers seized control of an empty private Palestinian home and raised the Israeli flag over the building, the outlet added.

    Wafa reported similar attacks in Birin east of Hebron, Abu Njeim southeast of Bethlehem, and targeted damage to local water infrastructure in Kafr Malik in the Ramallah governorate. Haaretz also confirmed additional attacks on the Nablus-area villages of Jit, Iraq Burin and Tell, and reported that settlers stabbed and wounded a Palestinian man in Wadi al-Mu’arrjat in the Jordan Valley.

  • What next for the ICC and the Palestine investigation after Karim Khan’s removal?

    What next for the ICC and the Palestine investigation after Karim Khan’s removal?

    In a historic first for the International Criminal Court (ICC), member states voted Friday at a United Nations session in New York to remove sitting chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office over alleged misconduct. The secret ballot saw 82 of the court’s 125 member states back the dismissal, bringing an 18-month long disciplinary process to a dramatic end. This unprecedented action marks the first time a sitting ICC prosecutor has been removed in the court’s 24-year history, a move critics already decry as a politically motivated power play.

    Khan has firmly denied all wrongdoing, and his legal team has announced plans to challenge the dismissal through every available legal channel. The immediate removal, which went into effect the moment the vote was finalized per ICC rules, has stripped Khan of his post and removed him from all active investigations, including the high-stakes inquiry into alleged crimes in Palestine that put him at the center of global geopolitical tension.

    The disciplinary process that led to the vote has long faced accusations of procedural irregularity and political bias. In March, a three-judge expert panel appointed by the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) bureau unanimously ruled that findings from UN investigators did not prove misconduct or breach of duty under the court’s governing framework. The bureau subsequently voted to set aside this panel’s conclusion, and MEE exclusively confirmed this month that the bureau altered voting procedures to streamline the removal: merging a two-stage approval process into a single motion, effectively lowering the threshold required to oust Khan. These procedural changes are expected to be core to Khan’s coming legal challenge.

    Khan had previously indicated he would bring his appeal to the International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT), the body that handles employment disputes for UN and international organization staff. Former International Court of Justice judge Abdul Koroma has assessed Khan’s chances of a successful appeal as “considerable,” but the legal path remains untested. ICC scholars Ezequiel Jimenez and Sergey Vasiliev point out that ILOAT case law is structured for standard international organization labor disputes, and it remains unconfirmed whether the ASP plenary’s political decision to remove an elected prosecutor falls within the tribunal’s jurisdiction. Even if Khan wins a favorable ruling, years of ILOAT proceedings mean a successor could already be in place by the time a decision is issued, making reinstatement functionally impossible.

    Geopolitical fallout from the vote has already begun, centered on the unprecedented arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, which the ICC issued under Khan’s leadership in 2024. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Khan’s removal “long-delayed,” and immediately demanded the court withdraw the warrants “immediately.” He repeated Israel’s already debunked claim that the warrants were rushed to distract from the misconduct allegations against Khan.

    Khan has also been the target of U.S. sanctions since the warrants were issued: he was the first individual designated under Executive Order 14203, signed by former U.S. President Donald Trump in February 2025 as retaliation for the warrants. The order froze Khan’s U.S. assets, revoked his visa, and barred his family from entering the United States. While there is precedent for delisting — the Biden administration revoked sanctions on Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda in 2021 over her Afghanistan investigation — that delisting followed a change in U.S. administration, not the departure of the prosecutor from office, and there is currently no indication the current U.S. administration will lift sanctions on Khan. The U.S. State Department has not responded to requests for comment on the dismissal.

    The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has stated that its ongoing work across all active cases will continue without interruption. The court currently manages more than a dozen open situation investigations beyond Palestine, including cases in Ukraine, Darfur, Libya and Afghanistan. However, the dismissal creates significant uncertainty for the future of the Palestine probe, particularly for pending arrest warrant requests for senior Israeli officials Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which MEE has exclusively reported were prepared before Khan’s 2025 leave but were shelved for months due to threats of additional U.S. sanctions. Legal analysts note Khan’s departure may shift the OTP’s prioritization of these requests and its willingness to resist external pressure.

    Khan made advancing the Palestine investigation a central priority of his tenure after taking office in 2021, dedicating new resources to the inquiry that had stalled for 15 years under his two predecessors, who never advanced to requesting arrest warrants for Israeli officials. While the existing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant remain active and will not be automatically withdrawn following Khan’s departure — only ICC judges can withdraw warrants, and they have repeatedly declined to do so — Israel has already signaled it will push to argue the warrants are tainted by Khan’s removal.

    Israel has multiple ongoing legal challenges to the warrants. The most significant challenges the court’s very jurisdiction over Israeli citizens, as Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute. In April 2025, the ICC Appeals Chamber sent the claim back for a full ruling after finding the lower court had incorrectly dismissed it as premature. No decision has been issued more than a year later, and any ruling will almost certainly be appealed again, pushing a final outcome to 2027 at the earliest.

    A second challenge, filed in November 2025, sought to disqualify Khan over alleged bias and cancel the warrants. The disqualification request becomes moot with Khan’s removal, but Israeli officials have already publicly raised the argument that the warrants are invalid because they were secured by a prosecutor found guilty of misconduct, leaving the future of that claim uncertain. Two other Israeli challenges have already been rejected: in December 2025, the Appeals Chamber threw out a claim that state referrals filed after October 7, 2023 amounted to a new investigation requiring fresh notification to Israel, and in July 2025, judges rejected a request to suspend the warrants while the jurisdiction dispute is resolved, ruling the warrants remain in force pending a final decision.

    Since Khan took leave in May 2025, the OTP has been jointly led by deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal, who will continue to lead the office following the dismissal. Neither holds the title of acting prosecutor, however, and the court has now operated without an elected chief prosecutor for more than a year. Both deputies were also sanctioned by the U.S. in August 2025 for upholding the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants after taking over interim leadership.

    Per Article 42 of the Rome Statute, Khan’s removal triggers a new election for the role, only the fourth such election in the court’s history. The chief prosecutor is elected by a secret absolute majority vote of ASP member states for a nine-year non-renewable term, though states can opt for a shorter term to finish the remainder of Khan’s tenure. The next regular ASP session is scheduled for December 2026 at UN Headquarters in New York, where six judges are already set to be elected. ICC expert Ezequiel Jimenez told MEE the most likely paths are either adding the prosecutor election to the December session or convening a special resumed session in early 2027, and he expects the ASP to form a working group to organize the vote, with a new bureau taking office in December to shape the process.
    Jimenez noted that nothing in court rules bars either sitting deputy from being nominated by a member state, and he has suggested the ASP could narrow the field to the two deputies to speed up the selection process, granting the winner the remaining four years of Khan’s original term ending in 2030, rather than holding a contest for a full nine-year term. That outcome would require consensus, however, as any member state can put forward its own candidate. The 2020 election that selected Khan deviated from the ASP’s agreed process when member states abandoned the vetting committee’s official shortlist, unlike the 2011 consensus election of Bensouda, who was a sitting deputy at the time.

    Regional and demographic considerations are expected to factor into the nomination process. The post of chief prosecutor has been held by representatives from Latin America (Luis Moreno Ocampo), Africa (Fatou Bensouda), and Western Europe (Karim Khan), with no representative from Asia Pacific or Eastern Europe ever holding the role. “Will western Europe ask for their ‘turn’ again? Or will it be someone from Asia or Eastern Europe? These factors will be part of the new election,” Jimenez noted.

  • In the cradle of Tunisia’s revolution, anger gave way to apathy. Then Gaza happened

    In the cradle of Tunisia’s revolution, anger gave way to apathy. Then Gaza happened

    Fifteen years ago, a small act of desperation in a central Tunisian city rippled across the Arab world and reshaped modern Middle Eastern history. In Sidi Bouzid, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline and lit himself ablaze, after corrupt local officials repeatedly harassed him, publicly humiliated him, and seized the only fruit cart he relied on for survival. That devastating act of protest ignited the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, which ousted Tunisia’s 23-year authoritarian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and sent a wave of uprisings across the entire Middle East and North Africa.

    Today, the covered market of Sidi Bouzid hums with the same surface routines it has held for decades: traders call out their goods, haggle over prices, and restock piles of citrus and leafy greens, while customers pick through produce slowly, calculating every dinar spent as rampant inflation pushes basic food out of reach for many. On the surface, life looks unremarkable. But dig beneath that routine, and residents are quick to say the city’s mood has shifted dramatically – and not for the reasons many might expect. Tunisia’s crippling economic crisis has not softened, and public trust in national politics remains as broken as it has been for years. Instead, the change traces to a conflict more than 2,000 kilometers away: Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

    For countless residents of Sidi Bouzid, solidarity with the Palestinian people has become deeply intertwined with their own simmering anger over deepening poverty and a political system that has left ordinary people completely disenfranchised. Most surprisingly of all, the conflict has done what few political analysts would have predicted: after years of fading public political discourse, drained by widespread apathy and President Kais Saied’s growing authoritarian consolidation of power, the crisis in Gaza has given Tunisians a renewed reason to speak openly about their grievances.

    “Our leaders betrayed us,” Wajdi, a fruit seller working in the same market where Bouazizi once traded, told Middle East Eye. “What have any Muslim leaders done for Palestine? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We hear every day that Tunisia stands with Palestine, but what has our government actually done to back that up? All the president does is talk. He had every opportunity to take practical steps, to push for change internationally, to pressure other governments that back Israel, but instead we’ve seen nothing. We’re tired of his empty words.”

    For Wajdi and dozens of other Tunisians interviewed by MEE across Sidi Bouzid, Gaza has emerged as a sharp new political flashpoint that cuts directly into long-simmering domestic tensions. It has become a stark measure of the growing gap between the Tunisian government’s rhetorical commitments and its actual inaction, reopening public political conversations that had gone mostly silent since July 2021. That was when Saied suspended the elected parliament, sacked the sitting prime minister, seized unilateral prosecutorial authority, and invoked a national emergency – a move widely labeled a coup by international human rights groups and Tunisian political opposition leaders.

    When Saied first consolidated power, many residents of Sidi Bouzid welcomed the move, hopeful that a strong, centralized presidency would break the years of crippling political deadlock that had paralyzed the country in the decade after the revolution. But as economic hardship deepened year after year, most Tunisians lost all faith that political change could improve their daily lives. Voter turnout plummeted to historic lows in subsequent elections, public political debate faded from public spaces, and conversations between friends and neighbors increasingly centered solely on how to make ends meet.

    Fifteen years after it set off a regional revolution, Sidi Bouzid remains one of Tunisia’s poorest governorates. Promised investments from the government and international donors never materialized, unemployment remains stuck at stubbornly high rates, and for most young people, dangerous irregular emigration across the Mediterranean, not domestic political reform, is seen as the only viable path to a better future. With inflation running in double digits, turning routine grocery shopping into a careful calculation of limited funds, traders report that customers who once bought enough produce to last a week now only buy what they can eat over a couple of days. “Everyone has become poorer,” Wajdi said, as he watched shoppers move slowly between his and neighboring stalls.

    When Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians spread rapidly across Tunisia. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital Tunis and other major cities, and Sidi Bouzid once again saw residents gathering in public around a shared political cause. Palestinian flags appeared across the city in unprecedented numbers, and marches drew crowds of people who had not joined any public demonstration in years. For many residents, these demonstrations became one of the only spaces where they once again felt comfortable sharing political opinions openly, after years of self-censorship and shrinking space for public debate.

    But as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed into the tens of thousands, many Tunisians began asking why their government’s support for Palestine stopped at rhetorical condemnation. While Saied has repeatedly issued public statements condemning Israeli actions, residents say they have seen little effort to turn that rhetoric into meaningful diplomatic action or regional leadership on the issue.

    “I don’t think Tunisia has done anything meaningful at all,” said Oumaima, a 26-year-old housewife from Sidi Bouzid. “We haven’t seen serious diplomatic efforts or attempts to build a united international coalition to pressure Israel. Why wasn’t Tunisia leading efforts at the International Criminal Court or working to bring all African countries together around a common position against what’s happening?” Oumaima pointed instead to South Africa, which filed a landmark case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice that won widespread acclaim and support across the Global South. “Other countries stepped forward while Tunisia, despite all its statements about supporting Palestine, stayed on the sidelines,” she said. “I expected much more from our government.”

    Dozens of residents echoed that frustration, arguing that the government’s response to the crisis has been defined far more by empty rhetoric than tangible action. They question why Tunisia has not worked to rally African governments around a unified stance or pursued legal avenues against Israel at international bodies, while other middle-income and developing states have pushed the issue onto the global agenda. That contradiction feels even starker when looking at domestic policy, they say.

    While Tunisian officials regularly frame the country as an unwavering supporter of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian rights, authorities have launched a widespread crackdown on independent pro-Palestinian activists, including organizers involved in the Global Sumud Flotilla campaign that aimed to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The wave of arrests has fueled accusations that the Saied regime is seeking to monopolize solidarity with Gaza, only allowing pro-Palestinian expression that stays within state-approved boundaries, while treating independent grassroots activism as a direct political threat.

    “The regime displays hyper-sensitivity towards any street mobilisation, even when protesters raise officially endorsed slogans like supporting Palestine,” Khalil Lahbibi, a Tunisian activist involved with the Global Sumud Flotilla, told MEE. “It refuses to allow the public to organize independently or outside official, directed mobilization frameworks. Because young activists and civil society organisations have the capacity to mobilize and shape public opinion, the regime treats them as direct political threats and potential rivals. Saied is seeking to strike down the very idea of independent collective action.”

    Mohammed, a 22-year-old unemployed high school graduate in Sidi Bouzid, questioned why Tunisia has largely confined itself to verbal condemnation, rather than leading any meaningful regional or international campaigns against Israel’s actions. “The government says it supports Palestine, but its actions tell a completely different story,” he said. “It has arrested activists – people who were actually trying to show solidarity with Palestinians. How can you claim to defend Palestine while criminalizing those who are standing up for it? That’s a betrayal of the cause.”

    Mohammed added that Saied’s speeches condemning Israel now carry almost no weight without concrete political action to back them up. “If he was truly serious, he would have worked with Algeria, Libya and other African countries to find ways of stopping weapons from reaching Israel, whether by sea or by air,” he said. “Instead, we’ve only heard words while Gaza continues to suffer.”

    It remains unclear whether the public anger sparked by the Gaza war will mark the beginning of a broader political reawakening across Tunisia. Years of economic hardship, political repression, and broken promises have left most residents of Sidi Bouzid wary of predicting another mass uprising like the one that began here in 2010. Few speak openly of repeating that revolution today. But what is certain, they say, is the blanket silence that settled over the city’s public life in recent years has been broken.

    “The people will no longer be silent,” Mohammed said. “This government hasn’t done anything for Palestine or any Muslim causes. They now either need to step aside or step up, because the people have had enough. We will not back down.”

  • Man charged over intercepted bomb in car

    Man charged over intercepted bomb in car

    Security forces in the Republic of Ireland have foiled an alleged plot linked to dissident republican activity, seizing an explosive device hidden in a vehicle and charging two people in connection with the incident, law enforcement authorities confirmed this week.

    The operation unfolded on Wednesday, when officers stopped the suspect vehicle along the N2 highway close to the town of Carrickmacross, which sits less than 20 kilometers from the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. During a search of the car, investigators located the concealed bomb, prompting a major security response in the region.

    Authorities have now charged two people in connection with the discovery. A 25-year-old woman was the first to be charged, with the case against her filed on Friday. A second suspect, a man in his 40s, was subsequently charged, and is scheduled to make an initial court appearance at a special sitting of Dublin’s Criminal Courts of Justice on Saturday evening.

    The location of the find, just a short distance from the Irish border, has renewed attention to the ongoing threat of small-scale dissident republican activity, which has persisted decades after the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the large-scale violence of the Troubles. Security forces on both sides of the border maintain regular patrols and operations to disrupt potential attacks linked to these groups, who reject the peace agreement and continue to push for a united Ireland through violent means.

  • India’s ‘cockroach’ protest called off after education minister quits

    India’s ‘cockroach’ protest called off after education minister quits

    In a landmark victory for grassroots youth dissent in India, embattled Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has stepped down from his post, prompting jubilant celebrations among protesters and leading the movement that forced his ouster to end its five-week campaign. The unexpected outcome marks one of the most significant blows to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling administration in recent years, born from a viral satirical movement that evolved from an online joke into a powerful vehicle for widespread public discontent.

    The movement behind the protest, known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), is not a registered political party. It traces its origins to a controversial comment from India’s Chief Justice, who labeled unemployed young people entering activism and independent journalism as “cockroaches.” Though the justice later clarified he was only referring to individuals holding fake academic credentials, the term was reclaimed by young activists, who transformed the once-insulting label into a symbol of resilience and defiance against systemic failure. Led by 30-year-old political communications strategist and former Boston University student Abhijeet Dipke, the movement quickly amassed a massive online following, now boasting 26 million followers on Instagram, and channeled widespread youth anxiety over broken education systems, high unemployment, and repeated exam paper leak scandals into tangible street action.

    The CJP’s core demands centered on comprehensive education reform, accountability for recurring exam paper leaks, and Pradhan’s resignation. The protest gained global momentum when prominent Indian activist and educationist Sonam Wangchuk joined the movement on June 28 and launched an indefinite hunger strike to back the group’s demands. As Wangchuk’s health declined, police forcibly removed him from the main protest site at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar last Saturday and transferred him to a hospital, where he continued his fast. He only ended his strike early Friday after receiving official assurances from the government that his demands would be reviewed.

    Tensions escalated dramatically this week, when a peaceful march by protesters to India’s Parliament was met with a violent police crackdown that left dozens injured, hundreds hospitalized, and around 70 protesters arrested (most of whom have since been released on bail). Images and footage of the crackdown spread rapidly across social media, amplifying public anger and putting unprecedented pressure on Modi’s administration. For nearly five weeks, the government had ignored the protest, but the fallout from the police violence forced a rapid shift in strategy: on Thursday, Modi broke his silence, announcing plans to establish fast-track courts for anyone involved in exam paper leaks, and releasing a video message stating that a strict new law targeting paper leaks was already in draft form and would soon be introduced to parliament. The announcement failed to defuse tension, with social media flooded with memes and mocking posts turning the prime minister’s attempt to quell anger into viral jokes.

    Hours before the CJP called off its protest, Pradhan announced his resignation in a Hindi-language post on the social platform X. In his statement, Pradhan wrote that he “respected the aspirations, dreams, and expectations of the youth” and was “pained by the events” of the preceding days. He framed his resignation as a step to “prevent anti-national forces from exploiting” the unrest, preserve national unity, and ensure that no Indian student’s future becomes “entangled in legal complexities,” allowing young people to return to their studies and career building.

    As news of the resignation broke, celebrations erupted immediately at Jantar Mantar. From the protest’s makeshift stage, an emotional Dipke shouted to the crowd, “We have done it,” sparking deafening cheers. Protesters sang, danced, chanted slogans, and distributed sweets to mark the win. Even after CJP leadership announced the end of the protest and left the site hours later, thousands of jubilant supporters remained gathered at the venue deep into the night. Many told reporters they had waited weeks for the outcome and were not ready to leave without full celebration. Large numbers of police were deployed around the protest site, but officers confirmed they would only intervene if laws were broken.

    Dipke called Pradhan’s resignation a clear win for democracy, but emphasized that the movement’s work is far from finished. In a post-resignation statement on X, he said the CJP would continue advocating for compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after a key medical exam was canceled over leak concerns. He also renewed calls for accountability against police officers accused of using excessive force during the July 20 crackdown on the parliamentary march, ending his statement with a defiant warning: “Remember, do not mess with [the] cockroach.”

    Political analysts note that while the protest only explicitly demanded Pradhan’s resignation, it has already dealt a severe blow to Modi’s political brand and his long-held aura of invincibility. Since taking power in 2014, Modi’s government has rarely tolerated public dissent and has typically cracked down heavily on large-scale protests, making this climbdown all the more notable. This is not the first time the administration has backed down in the face of widespread public action: in 2021, the government repealed controversial agricultural laws after a year-long mass protest by Indian farmers.

    The youth-led movement has resonated across broad swathes of India’s middle class, cutting across divisions of religion, caste, and industry to unify people around shared anger over limited educational opportunities and stagnant job growth. Many protesters who spoke to reporters revealed they had once supported Modi but had since abandoned the prime minister, accusing his government of dividing communities along religious lines instead of addressing pressing economic and social issues. On Saturday, opposition leaders across India welcomed Pradhan’s resignation, widely framing it as a victory for India’s young people and grassroots democratic action.

  • More than 250,000 flee wildfires in France and Spain

    More than 250,000 flee wildfires in France and Spain

    Across Southern and Western Europe, a devastating outbreak of unseasonably early and widespread wildfires is overwhelming firefighting resources, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and leaving emergency responders scrambling to contain blazes fueled by record heat and unpredictable gusty winds. The crisis has already spread from France and Spain to Italy and the United Kingdom, with regional and EU officials warning that 2026 is on track to become the worst year for European wildfire damage on record.

    In southwestern France, the situation remains particularly critical, with strong winds pushing large active flames within 40 to 50 kilometers of the major city of Bordeaux. As of Saturday morning, smoke carried by prevailing winds had already reached Bordeaux, leaving a sharp acrid odor hanging over the city, even as the main blaze remained outside the urban center. One senior French official confirmed that response teams are still far from gaining full control of the fastest-spreading blazes in the Gironde and Landes regions.

    To date, approximately 200,000 residents and tourists have been evacuated from high-risk areas across southwestern France, with emergency orders issued overnight for seven small communities located west of Bordeaux. Temporary emergency shelters have been constructed across the region to house displaced people, while the French government has mobilized military personnel to support overstretched local firefighters, clearing underbrush and constructing strategic fire breaks to slow the advance of flames. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced that a total of 98,000 hectares of land have already burned across the country since the start of 2026, and President Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency cabinet meeting to coordinate the national response amid an unprecedented outbreak of roughly 30 active fires across the nation.

    The crisis has also disrupted major public events: organizers of the Tour de France confirmed they have shortened the race’s final Sunday leg from 133 kilometers to 89 kilometers, allowing security forces that were assigned to the route to be redeployed to wildfire-affected zones.

    Many evacuees, including a large number of international tourists staying in popular coastal and regional vacation spots, have described terrifying experiences fleeing the advancing flames. Spencer Randall, a British tourist who evacuated with his family in the early hours of Saturday to a town 100 miles east of Bordeaux, told reporters his group can still smell smoke from the wildfires at their safe location. “It’s quite strong winds fanning the flames, just terrifying,” he said. Another British vacationing couple in the Bordeaux area reported that ash from the fires has coated their rental property’s swimming pool and turned their shoes black during outdoor walks, with smoke that irritates lungs almost immediately after stepping outside. Local residents described the unfolding disaster as deeply stressful, with one calling the widespread destruction a “total disaster.”

    To the south, Spain is facing its own unprecedented wildfire crisis, with a national state of emergency declared. One fatality has already been confirmed: a man in his 70s was found dead in his car by responding firefighters working to extinguish a blaze in the Salt de l’Aigua ravine in Manises, in the València region, according to local media reports.

    So far in 2026, more than 130,000 hectares of land have burned across Spain, which exceeds the 10-year annual average of 100,000 hectares for the country. Nearly 60,000 people have been evacuated from high-risk areas in the Madrid and Ávila regions, with more than 28,000 remaining confined to their homes to avoid exposure to smoke and fire hazards. Madrid’s regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso called the current outbreak the “worst fire in the history of the region.”

    While shifting weather conditions, including lower temperatures, higher humidity and reduced wind speeds, have created a small window of opportunity for firefighters to gain ground on blazes outside Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned that major challenges remain. “It’s true that temperatures have dropped a little bit. But still the wind is making it difficult and there may be thunderstorms as well,” Sánchez told reporters from Cenicientos, south-west of Madrid, adding that the country still faces “complex times ahead.”

    The wildfire crisis is not limited to France and Spain. On the Italian island of Sicily, civil protection officials confirmed that more than 350 separate fires, including 10 large major blazes, have broken out, prompting multiple evacuation orders. In Scotland, emergency services declared a major incident on Friday evening to respond to a large wildfire that has been burning uncontrolled for 10 days in the Cairngorms National Park.

    EU crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib warned that the current season is on track to break last year’s grim record of 1 million hectares of burned land across Europe. “We are expecting to face another historical, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year,” Lahbib told the BBC, adding that forecasters predict another upcoming heatwave that could trigger additional new outbreaks across the continent.

    To support overwhelmed national response efforts, the EU has activated its civil protection mechanism, with cross-border reinforcements deployed to the hardest-hit countries. France is receiving three Canadair water bombers from Croatia, two Air Tractor water aircraft from Portugal, Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and a 40-person forest firefighting team from Romania. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added that 11 additional aircraft and helicopters from the EU’s shared firefighting fleet have also been deployed to both France and Spain to boost response capacity.

  • Intern arrested in Belgium on suspicion of spying inside NATO military headquarters

    Intern arrested in Belgium on suspicion of spying inside NATO military headquarters

    Belgian law enforcement authorities announced on Saturday that a Canadian woman has been taken into custody on espionage allegations following her detention at NATO’s top military operational command facility. The investigation was initiated after NATO’s internal security division provided a critical tip that triggered the full probe by Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office. According to official statements, law enforcement teams first carried out coordinated raids at both the suspect’s private residence and her workplace inside the NATO command site on Thursday, before taking the Canadian citizen of Chinese heritage into official custody on Friday. Prosecutors have formally outlined two core accusations against the suspect: that she conducted intelligence gathering activities on behalf of an outside third nation, and that she is affiliated with a transnational criminal organization structured to support this espionage work. Both Belgium and Canada hold full membership in the 32-nation NATO military alliance, which formally designated China as a systemic “security challenge” in its 2021 strategic framework, alongside active security threats stemming from Russia and regional instability in the Middle East. The NATO facility where the intern was working, officially named Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), is situated in the southern Belgian city of Mons, close to the country’s border with France. This site differs from NATO’s political headquarters based in Brussels, which hosts member state ambassadors for high-level discussions on critical defense issues ranging from collective defense spending to unauthorized drone incursions and cross-border cyber threats. In contrast, SHAPE serves as the primary military planning and command center for the alliance, where senior military officers develop joint operational strategy, coordinate tactical deployments, and oversee all NATO military operations across the globe. As of Saturday’s public announcement, Belgian prosecutors have not released additional details about the specific scope of the alleged espionage activities, nor have they named the third country that the suspect is accused of working for. No court hearing dates have been made public at this early stage of the investigation, and representatives from NATO and Canadian officials have not yet issued additional formal comments on the ongoing case.

  • Israeli settlers rampage through Palestinian village near Nablus

    Israeli settlers rampage through Palestinian village near Nablus

    On a violent Friday in the occupied West Bank, hundreds of Israeli settlers carried out a coordinated assault on the Palestinian village of Sarra, located southwest of the city of Nablus, leaving homes burned, property destroyed, residents injured, and multiple families displaced to seek safety. This attack is the latest in a growing string of settler violence targeting Palestinian communities across the Nablus region that followed a deadly incident in the nearby town of Tel earlier the same day.

    Local residents and village officials shared harrowing firsthand accounts of the assault with independent news outlet Middle East Eye, detailing the scale and brutality of the attack. Mohammed Turabi, a Sarra resident whose home was directly targeted, said settlers hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at his property, setting ablaze his courtyard, ground floor, and parked vehicle. Miraculously, Turabi and his entire family escaped without physical injury, but the attack left them deeply traumatized. Critically, Turabi confirmed that Israeli military personnel were positioned nearby throughout the violence and made no effort to intervene to stop the attackers or protect Palestinian civilians.

    Ahmad Sarrawi, a member of the Sarra municipal council, described the assault as fully organized and premeditated. He explained that in the weeks leading up to the attack, settlers had been constructing informal dirt roads through village lands to create easy access to Palestinian residential areas on Sarra’s outskirts. According to Sarrawi, the attackers originated from the nearby unauthorised Havat Gilad outpost, and they moved rapidly to target outlying homes, setting fire to multiple structures and vehicles within minutes. Local villagers ultimately organized a collective confrontation to push the settlers out of the community and halt additional destruction.

    Elderly resident Umm Wahid shared a devastating account of the terror the attack inflicted on her family. She explained that she already forces all her children to sleep together at her daughter’s home each night out of constant fear of settler aggression. On the day of the attack, she witnessed Israeli bulldozers uprooting olive trees—an economic and cultural lifeline for many Palestinian farming communities—near the property before hundreds of settlers poured into the village from surrounding valleys. Fearing for the safety of her family, she fled the home immediately; moments after they left, settlers set the structure on fire before moving on to other homes, smashing windows and damaging additional vehicles. One of Wahid’s grandchildren lost consciousness after inhaling thick toxic smoke from the fires, leaving all the children in the family severely traumatized.

    Naaman Abdullah, mayor of Sarra, contextualized the attack within the long-standing structural restrictions that shape life for the village’s residents. He noted that the entire western section of Sarra falls within Area C, a designation under the 1990s Oslo Accords that grants Israel full military and civilian control over the territory, leaving Palestinian residents with no legal protection for their land or homes. Abdullah added that following the killing of four Palestinians in the village of Tel earlier that Friday, settlers fanned out across neighbouring villages to launch retaliatory attacks, eventually reaching Sarra to bulldoze land, uproot trees, and burn residential property. He emphasized that repeated settler violence, paired with constant Israeli military restrictions, has made daily life almost unlivable for Sarra’s residents: main roads are routinely blocked by military checkpoints and gates, forcing residents to travel along dangerous unpaved paths to reach their homes and basic services.

    This attack comes amid a documented surge in settler violence across the occupied West Bank, paired with growing incitement to violence against Palestinians by extremist settler groups shared widely on social media platforms. Palestinian leaders and international human rights organisations have repeatedly warned that this ongoing incitement fuels further bloodshed and creates a culture of impunity that allows attacks on Palestinian civilians and their property to continue without consequence. Palestinian authorities have issued repeated calls for the international community to deploy formal protection for Palestinian civilians living under occupation and to hold perpetrators of settler violence accountable.

    The Palestinian Presidency, national government, and the Commission Against the Wall and Settlements issued a formal condemnation of the Sarra attack and other recent settler assaults, framing the violence as a deliberate state-backed policy meant to intimidate Palestinian residents and force them to permanently abandon their ancestral land. The statement renewed calls for urgent international intervention to end the widespread impunity that enables repeated settler attacks and to hold all responsible parties accountable under international law.

  • Crisis-hit Flavio Bolsonaro launches presidential candidacy in Brazil

    Crisis-hit Flavio Bolsonaro launches presidential candidacy in Brazil

    Brazil’s right-wing political landscape is bracing for a major showdown this October, as scandal-plagued senator Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, formally launched his bid for the nation’s highest office on Saturday. The launch, hosted at a Sao Paulo convention by the ruling Liberal Party (PL), comes as the 45-year-old candidate attempts to unseat incumbent leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is seeking an unprecedented fourth term at age 80.

    The elder Bolsonaro, a far-right firebrand who was recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for orchestrating a coup attempt following his narrow 2022 election loss to Lula, personally tapped Flavio as his political heir. The convention venue, a warehouse adjacent to Sao Paulo’s iconic Pacaembu Stadium, was packed with enthusiastic supporters clad in Brazilian national team jerseys—now a widely recognized symbol of the Bolsonaro movement—who drummed and waved national flags in a display of grassroots enthusiasm. “We would have liked our candidate to be Jair Bolsonaro, but today Flavio is the best choice,” Fernando Moeno, a 50-year-old retired military police officer in attendance, told Agence France-Presse.

    Flavio has centered his campaign on a promise of sweeping national change, framing his platform as a mission to “free” Brazil from pervasive violent crime, persistent inflation, crippling high taxes, and what he casts as the failed governance of Lula. “We are on a plane without a pilot,” he claimed at a recent campaign event, criticizing the incumbent administration’s leadership.

    However, Flavio’s campaign has been derailed in recent weeks by a cascade of damaging scandals that have eroded his polling numbers. Until the wave of controversies broke, the senator was locked in a neck-and-neck race with Lula. The first scandal emerged in May, when a leaked audio recording caught Flavio requesting that disgraced banker Daniel Vorcaro—who is currently facing charges in connection with a multi-million dollar fraud scheme—finance a biographical film about his father. Flavio had previously publicly denied any contact with Vorcaro, telling reporters hours before the leak that the allegation was “a lie.” He now claims his interactions with the banker were limited exclusively to the film project. On Thursday, a Supreme Court justice ordered a formal investigation into the film’s financing, deepening the cloud over the campaign.

    A second, equally damaging crisis erupted just days before the convention, when Flavio’s stepmother Michelle Bolsonaro, the popular former first lady and a key asset to the right-wing movement among female and evangelical voters, published an Instagram video accusing Flavio of disrespect and mistreatment, claiming he had dismissed her by saying she “didn’t understand anything about politics.” As internal party divisions worsened, Flavio released a public letter on social media purportedly from his imprisoned father calling for party unity—a move that violated the terms of Jair Bolsonaro’s house arrest. In response, a Supreme Court justice blocked Flavio from visiting his father until after the first round of October voting. In a last-minute bid to heal the rift ahead of the convention, Flavio published a video public apology to Michelle, who quickly accepted the gesture.

    ideologically, Flavio has positioned himself as a more moderate alternative to his father’s unapologetic far-right rhetoric, but he retains hardline stances on crime and this repetition repeated his father’s debunked claims about vulnerabilities in Brazil’s electronic voting system, echoing the 2022 election misinformation that preceded the coup attempt. He has also struggled to build necessary alliances with Brazil’s powerful centrist political bloc, with multiple key centrist parties announcing they will remain neutral in the October 4 vote.

    Compounding Flavio’s troubles is the recent backlash over trade policy, after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, a close ideological ally of the Bolsonaro family, imposed two new rounds of tariffs on Brazilian exports this month. The Bolsonaro family publicly supported the earlier tariffs, which were framed as retaliation for Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction and sentencing. In response, Lula has publicly accused the entire Bolsonaro family of committing treason against Brazilian economic interests.

    The latest polling data, published Friday by leading Brazilian pollster Datafolha, shows Lula holding a narrow lead in a projected runoff matchup: the incumbent would capture 48% of the vote, compared to Flavio’s 43%, a shift that follows the recent string of scandals hitting the right-wing candidate.

  • Ukraine strikes Siberia refinery as Kazakh leader tells Putin war should end

    Ukraine strikes Siberia refinery as Kazakh leader tells Putin war should end

    Nearly four and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a dramatic escalation of cross-border attacks and a rare public rebuke from a key ally have shifted the trajectory of the conflict in a single 24-hour period. On Saturday, Ukrainian drones reached deep into Russian territory, striking an oil refinery in Western Siberia, disrupting a national athletics competition in the Ural Mountains, and triggering fresh civilian casualties on both sides of the front line, as Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev openly called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war during a bilateral summit in Siberia’s Omsk.

    The wave of strikes marked one of the farthest advances of Ukrainian aerial attacks into Russian territory since the war began. Tyumen region governor Alexander Moor confirmed that a local oil refinery caught fire after the drone attack, while in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s national athletics federation called an abrupt halt to an ongoing all-Russian competition over repeated drone threats. Leading Russian online retailer Wildberries, which has been the target of sustained Ukrainian drone attacks for a week, also evacuated staff from its Yekaterinburg facility amid the alerts, though no damage was reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later claimed responsibility for the Siberian refinery strike, adding that Ukrainian forces had also hit a military factory in Kirov region for the second consecutive day. Local Russian authorities reported five people were killed in the Kirov strike on Friday.

    The deep strikes have already had widespread ripple effects across Russia. Moscow announced Saturday that it would extend its temporary ban on fuel exports through the end of 2025, a direct response to widespread fuel shortages triggered by repeated Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Long queues have formed at petrol stations across multiple Russian regions, marking the most severe disruption to civilian life inside Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine has repeatedly stated that its cross-border strikes are a deliberate strategy to weaken Russia’s war economy and force the Kremlin to enter good-faith peace negotiations.

    Civilian casualties continued to mount across the conflict zone Saturday. Russian-installed occupation authorities in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region claimed a Ukrainian strike on a seaside tourist camp in the Azov Sea town of Kyrylivka killed 12 people, including four children, with eight more still missing and rescue operations ongoing. Another civilian death was reported in occupied Kherson region, and two more were killed in Russian border villages near the front line. Kyiv has not yet issued an official comment on the Kyrylivka strike. For its part, Ukraine reported five civilian deaths from Russian attacks across the country: three killed in a double-tap strike on a private courier facility in the northeastern town of Sumy, with two more fatalities recorded in the eastern and southern parts of the country.

    The United Nations has recently warned that civilian casualty rates have climbed sharply in recent weeks, as the conflict intensifies after nearly four and a half years of fighting. Against this backdrop of escalating violence, Tokayev’s public call for peace marked a rare break for Putin, who rarely faces public calls to end the war from leaders of allied states. “It is a shame, young people are dying… All this has to be stopped,” Tokayev said in televised remarks made while sitting beside Putin during the Omsk summit. The Kazakh leader proposed freezing the conflict along existing lines, restarting the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, and working toward a long-term ceasefire. He added that the roots of the conflict remain “not understandable” to him, and has never publicly endorsed Russia’s full-scale invasion, despite maintaining close strategic and economic ties with Moscow.

    Putin offered only a vague response, saying he would share further details of the conflict with Tokayev, and has repeatedly reaffirmed Russia’s goal to seize the entirety of eastern Ukraine by force. US-led international negotiations to end the conflict, which is Europe’s largest military confrontation since World War II, remain stalled, with neither side showing willingness to make significant territorial concessions to restart talks.