分类： society

A 45-year-old suspect has been formally charged by British police in connection with a broad-daylight stabbing attack that injured two Jewish men in north London’s Golders Green, an incident that has deepened anxiety among the UK’s Jewish community and triggered urgent government action to address a documented surge in antisemitism.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed on Friday that Essa Suleiman, a British national who was born in Somalia and moved to the UK during childhood, faces three counts of attempted murder and one charge of carrying a bladed weapon in a public space. One of the attempted murder charges stems from an unrelated altercation Wednesday in south London, where Suleiman allegedly confronted a flat occupant while armed with a knife. The remaining charges relate directly to the Golders Green attack, an area known for its large, long-established Jewish population.

The stabbing left two men — a 76-year-old and a 34-year-old — with non-life-threatening injuries. Both were treated on-site before being transferred to hospital for further care. Police confirmed the younger victim has been discharged, while the older victim remains in stable condition. Counter Terrorism Policing is leading the investigation, which was immediately classified as a terrorist incident.

“We are determined to get justice for the victims,” said Commander Helen Flanagan, lead of the investigation team, in a formal statement. “Now that a person has been charged, I would urge everyone to avoid any further speculation in relation to this case so that justice can run its course.” Suleiman is scheduled to make his first court appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later Friday.

The attack comes amid a sharp upward trend in antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom, with monitoring groups recording a dramatic surge after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The incident sparked widespread anger from British Jewish communities, who have repeatedly accused the national government of failing to provide adequate protection for Jewish people and sites. When Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the attack site Thursday, he was met with boos and heckles from attendees.

In response to growing public pressure, Starmer pledged a new wave of security enhancements for the UK Jewish community in a televised address from Downing Street. He called on all British citizens to stand together against antisemitism, saying, “everyone decent in this country to open their eyes to Jewish pain, Jewish suffering and Jewish fear.”

Senior law enforcement officials have echoed warnings that antisemitism is becoming increasingly embedded in British society. Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley told Times Radio on Friday that the country is “facing a building pandemic of antisemitism in society.” He added that policing is only addressing the immediate outcomes of hate-based extremism, arguing, “We need work done upstream to tackle those attitudes in society which are far too prevalent.”

The UK Home Office has already implemented urgent policy changes in response to the rising threat. Officials confirmed this week that the national terrorism threat level has been raised to “severe” — the second-highest tier in the UK’s five-tier classification system — meaning another attack is highly likely over the next six months. The government also allocated an extra £25 million ($33 million) to fund increased protective security for Jewish sites across the country, including synagogues, schools, community centers, and other places of worship.

This latest attack comes nearly seven months after a fatal attack on a synagogue in Manchester, and follows a string of recent arson incidents targeting Jewish properties in north London. Monitoring groups note that alongside the surge in antisemitism, Islamophobic incidents have also risen sharply in the same period. Starmer is facing growing pressure from opposition and conservative voices to introduce tighter restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests, which critics claim have become a breeding ground for antisemitic rhetoric. His government already expanded police powers to regulate public demonstrations last year. Nigel Farage, leader of the hard-right Reform UK party, also visited the attack site Thursday, accusing authorities of being overly lenient on what he described as discriminatory chants at protests.

After nearly a decade of crippling drought that parched northern Afghanistan’s landscapes and left hillsides barren of any greenery or blooms, this spring has brought a long-awaited transformation. Abundant seasonal rains have awakened rolling valleys near Shirin Tagab district, which sits along Afghanistan’s border with Turkmenistan, blanketing the terrain in sweeping swathes of vivid red common poppies. This has drawn hundreds of families back to the hills to revive a beloved local tradition that has persisted through years of hardship and political change.

For many visitors, the sea of red blooms is a sight they never expected to see again in their lifetimes. Seventy-nine-year-old Ghawsudin, who goes by a single name, traveled three hours across rough terrain just to walk among the flowers. “There has been a drought for almost 10 years. No flowers or greenery grew,” he explained. “This year has been very good, and God is merciful.” Thirty-five-year-old Mohammad Ashraf echoed that sentiment, noting he had not witnessed such a dense, vibrant bloom of poppies for more than a decade. “Now there are so many red flowers, and you see people come here for picnics,” he told Agence France-Presse, as families spread blankets across the grass and children frolicked between the flower stalks.

Crucially, the blooms attracting crowds are common poppies, not the illicit opium poppies that the ruling Taliban government has banned across the country. This annual gathering is a longstanding cultural practice tied to Nowruz, the Persian New Year that Afghans have celebrated for centuries. For generations, northern Afghans would travel out of the major city of Mazar-i-Sharif after their Nowruz festivities to see the poppy blooms. While the Taliban administration, which enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law, has halted official public Nowruz celebrations in recent years, the quiet tradition of visiting the poppy fields has endured.

Cultural observers note that flowers, and poppies in particular, hold a deeply embedded place in Afghan daily life. Oriane Zerah, a professional photographer who has published a full book documenting the connection between Afghans and flowers, emphasizes that floral culture is woven into nearly every part of society. “As soon as an Afghan has a little space in their garden, they plant a flower. Even in displacement camps, there’ll be a flower somewhere,” Zerah explained. “They put them on their pakol, one of their traditional hats, and there are desserts made with flowers.”

Poppies also carry layered cultural meaning shaped by Afghanistan’s long history of conflict. Afghan writer Taqi Wahidi explains that for decades, poppies have been placed on the coffins of fallen fighters, a tradition that mirrors the use of poppies as a symbol of remembrance for war dead in countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. In that context, the flower has long been tied to the idea of rebirth after sacrifice: “Dying in the path of the homeland, or in the path of religion and faith, was considered a kind of new resurrection and entry into a new life,” Wahidi said.

Today, for Afghans gathering in these northern valleys, the poppy carries a new, hopeful meaning. Wahidi notes that the blooms now primarily “symbolise vitality and freshness. At the same time that nature is renewed, human beings also want to bring new colours into their lives.” For a community that has endured ten years of drought and ongoing political upheaval, this annual spring bloom is more than a recreational outing—it is a quiet celebration of resilience, cultural continuity, and the renewal of life after hardship.

Central Australia’s remote outback town of Alice Springs has been roiled by violent overnight confrontation between enraged community members and police, triggered by the discovery of a body confirmed to be that of a missing 5-year-old Indigenous girl, identified at her family’s request as Kumanjayi Little Baby.

The young girl went missing from Old Timers, an Indigenous community camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs, late Saturday. Her disappearance sparked a massive, multi-day search effort that captured national attention, with hundreds of volunteers joining authorities to comb the surrounding outback on foot, horseback and by air. On Thursday, search crews located the child’s body roughly five kilometers (three miles) from the camp where she was last seen, and police confirmed a formal forensic autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.

Hours after the body was found, police announced the arrest of 48-year-old Jefferson Lewis, the prime suspect in the case. But before law enforcement could take him into custody, Lewis turned himself in to members of the Indigenous community Thursday evening, where he was severely beaten by community members until he lost consciousness. When police, ambulance and emergency response teams arrived to extract Lewis and provide medical care, they were attacked by the gathered crowd, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole told reporters during a press briefing Friday.

“At the time of his apprehension by us, he was unconscious and he was in the process of being treated by St John’s Ambulance when they were set upon, as were the police,” Dole said. Lewis was eventually evacuated to Alice Springs’ main hospital for treatment of his injuries, but a large, angry crowd soon gathered outside the medical facility demanding access to the suspect, with many calling for traditional Indigenous “payback” punishment against him, according to public broadcaster ABC.

Local media footage from the confrontation shows tear gas lingering in the air, a police vehicle engulfed in flames, and crowds shouting at heavily armed officers who formed a perimeter to block access to the hospital. To contain the unrest, Commissioner Dole said authorities deployed all available local resources to quell the violence, which left multiple first responders injured. A number of police officers suffered minor injuries, including one officer who received a head wound during the initial arrest operation. One firefighter sustained a serious facial injury after being attacked, and one woman is now under investigation for allegedly attempting to set an unoccupied police car on fire.

Commissioner Dole rejected any justification for the unrest, saying “the behaviour that we saw last night cannot be explained away, excused or accepted,” and called for widespread calm across Alice Springs. For their safety, police ultimately transferred Lewis from the Alice Springs hospital to a correctional facility in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, and he is expected to be formally charged with criminal offenses in the coming days.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro described the little girl’s death as “the realization of our worst nightmares”, but echoed Dole’s call for calm, noting that the entire town had come together in an extraordinary show of unity to search for the child earlier in the week. “This week, we’ve seen this town come together like never before — hundreds of people walking shoulder to shoulder through the long buffel grass, through the bush, to make sure we left no stone unturned,” Finocchiaro said. “I don’t want last night to take away from that extraordinary effort.”

Robin Granites, a Warlpiri Indigenous elder and family spokesman, also issued a public statement calling for peace as the community enters what Indigenous Australians refer to as “sorry business” — the traditional period of mourning and grief following a death. “It is time now for sorry business, to show respect for our family and have space for grieving and remembering,” he said. “We need to be strong for each other, we must respect family and cultural practice.”

A wave of collective grief erupted into violent public unrest outside a regional Australian hospital this week, after authorities discovered the body of a 5-year-old Aboriginal girl who had been missing for five days. The incident has cast a harsh light on deep-seated community tensions in Central Australia’s Northern Territory, following the tragic death of the young child, identified publicly only as Kumanjayi Little Baby to respect Indigenous cultural mourning protocols that restrict using the full names of deceased people without family approval.\n\nThe girl was last seen alive late on Saturday night, when she was put to bed at Old Timers Camp, a government-designated Aboriginal accommodation camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs. Her body was recovered early Thursday, triggering immediate shock and anger across the local community. By Thursday evening, local residents had located Jefferson Lewis, the 47-year-old man who had been the prime suspect in the case, who had been released from prison just six days before the girl disappeared. Community members confronted Lewis, reportedly assaulting him before police arrived to take him into custody.\n\nWhen word spread that Lewis would receive medical treatment at Alice Springs’ main hospital, hundreds of local Aboriginal people gathered outside the facility to demand justice under traditional Indigenous law, a practice known locally as “payback”. Footage captured from the scene shows crowds of up to 400 demonstrators throwing projectiles at police officers, leaving multiple police vehicles damaged and several people—including emergency responders—with minor injuries. Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that when officers located Lewis, he was already unconscious from the attack by community members. When police and paramedics attempted to move Lewis for emergency care, roughly 200 demonstrators confronted the emergency teams, forcing officers to deploy tear gas to disperse the crowd.\n\nProtesters repeatedly chanted that Lewis should be killed for the alleged crime, and accused police of deliberately protecting the suspect from traditional punishment. Commissioner Dole acknowledged the overwhelming grief that drove the unrest, but condemned the violence, saying the chaotic scenes outside the hospital “are not acceptable” and do not “reflect what we’ve seen from the community of Alice Springs in the last five days”. In a remark that echoed the shared devastation of everyone involved in the search, Dole added, “Everyone involved in the search for her had been holding out hope of finding her alive. When we made that discovery yesterday it was absolutely devastating for everybody involved.”\n\nShortly after the unrest, authorities airlifted Lewis from Alice Springs to a hospital in Darwin, where he is now formally in police custody. Prosecutors confirm formal murder charges are expected to be filed in the coming days, as forensic teams continue work to confirm the girl’s identity and exact cause of death, with examinations set to continue through Friday.\n\nIn a written statement released through authorities, Kumanjayi Little Baby’s mother, who has requested to remain anonymous, shared a heartfelt tribute to her daughter, saying, “It is going to be so hard to live the rest of our lives without you. We know you are in heaven with the rest of the family and Jesus. Me and your brother will meet you one day.” She also extended gratitude to the hundreds of local community members, police officers, and civilian volunteers who worked around the clock for five days to search the surrounding bush and outback terrain for the missing child.\n\nNorthern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro echoed the widespread national sorrow over the tragedy, saying, “For five days every Territorian has had their heart in their throat waiting for the moment when we got the announcement that she had been found safe and well… Everyone is incredibly devastated.” As of Friday morning, no arrests have been made in connection with the violent unrest outside the hospital, and investigations into both the girl’s death and the public disorder are ongoing.