Global Pulse

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  • Soviet architecture vanishes as Central Asia drifts from Moscow

    Soviet architecture vanishes as Central Asia drifts from Moscow

    Thirty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union left the five Central Asian states independent, a quiet erasure of Soviet-era architectural and artistic heritage is accelerating across the region, driven by a growing ideological shift away from Moscow and state-led efforts to cement distinct national identities.

    In Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, one striking example of this trend sits on the facade of a soon-to-be-demolished apartment block: a massive mosaic honoring Soviet cosmonauts and engineers, celebrating the union’s mid-century scientific breakthroughs. Like thousands of other Soviet relics across Central Asia, the artwork is set to be destroyed to clear space for a luxury new residential development. Local resident Rakhmon Satiev told AFP he holds out hope the mosaic could be carefully removed and reinstalled at the new site, but that wish has little chance of being fulfilled.

    Over the past decade, deliberate neglect and intentional demolition have gutted the region’s Soviet built heritage, from iconic architectural landmarks to public artworks including mosaics, frescoes, and monumental sculptures. “If a building is old and does not fit into the new city plan, it is torn down. The city is being rebuilt and renovated, and the past is vanishing,” Dzhamshed Dzhuraev, a prominent Tajik mosaic artist, explained in an interview with AFP. Behind his Dushanbe studio, a once-prominent monument to Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin stands hidden from public view, a relic of an era regional leaders now deem out of step with modern national narratives.

    Following their 1991 independence, the five Central Asian former Soviet republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan — have seen their urban landscapes transform into a disjointed mix of gleaming new high-rises, crumbling Soviet-era buildings, informal shanties, and half-finished construction projects. For preservation advocates, the rate of heritage loss is alarming. Altynai Kudaibergenova co-founded Artkana, one of the region’s few independent groups working to save Soviet-era architectural heritage in Kyrgyzstan. She says the number of destroyed monuments is “striking,” and warns that Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, still holds dozens of magnificent examples of socialist-modernist architecture — a style that has grown popular with international tourists and design fans on social media — that are now at risk of demolition.

    The widespread demolition is rooted in ideological change, as long-serving regional leaders have worked to position themselves as the founding fathers of new independent nations, prioritizing new symbols of national power over leftover markers of Soviet rule. Rarely do officials frame the campaign in explicit ideological terms, however. Even as the region balances enduring economic dependence on Russia with growing Chinese investment, government leaders cast the demolition drive as a practical, cost-effective measure. They argue that renovating aging Soviet-era structures is more expensive than building new developments from scratch, noting the region’s total population has grown to roughly 80 million, creating urgent demand for new housing.

    In Dushanbe, where the mayor is the son of long-ruling president Emomali Rakhmon, the push for urban renewal has centered on replacing Soviet-era landmarks with symbols of the current government. Prominent Tajik sculptor Safarbek Kosimov told AFP that the city’s administration “is doing everything possible to make the buildings as beautiful and comfortable as he can,” adding that Soviet-era mosaics are simply “no longer necessary.” Portraits of the 73-year-old incumbent leader have already replaced many of the demolished Soviet artworks on public building facades across the capital.

    Critics of the campaign say it erases important cultural history for private and political gain. “Most Soviet mosaics were designed to convey an ideological message, but their artistic value is also important,” preservation advocate Kudaibergenova said. “Unfortunately, businesses are rarely receptive to such considerations. Their main priority is selling square metres at a high price.” Multiple nonprofits and international monitoring organizations have documented widespread corruption and opaque collusion between government officials and real estate developers driving large-scale urban renewal projects across the region.

    In Bishkek, local painter Erkinbek Bolzhurov is currently fighting to save the city’s historic House of Artists, which sits adjacent to the former national printing house — a structure that has already been reduced to nothing but its outer walls. “We want the city to develop, of course, but not at the expense of our memory,” he said. “Great artists worked inside these walls. That is what makes the building unique — it has a history.”

    Across Central Asia, tight government control over public expression means authorities rarely consult local communities or preservation groups before approving demolition projects. Still, some artists hold out hope for a future shift in attitudes. Tajik mosaic artist Dzhuraev says he believes “the time will come” when public art like Soviet-era mosaics will again be valued as part of the region’s layered history. “Architects and urban planners should pay them more attention,” he said, adding that a revival of appreciation for this heritage is still possible.

  • Countries to gather in Colombia for summit aimed at breaking fossil fuel reliance

    Countries to gather in Colombia for summit aimed at breaking fossil fuel reliance

    Against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical friction and volatile global energy markets, approximately 50 national governments are set to convene this week in Santa Marta, Colombia’s sunlit Caribbean coastal city, for a high-stakes summit focused on accelerating the global transition away from polluting fossil fuels. Running from April 24 to 29, the conference is co-hosted by the Colombian and Dutch governments, and will bring together a diverse cohort of participants: national cabinet ministers, regional and local government leaders, academic researchers, and civil society advocates. All attendees will center their discussions on how to wind down production and use of oil, gas, and coal while ensuring the global energy transition proceeds along a just, orderly, and equitable path, according to summit organizers.

    This gathering emerges from growing frustration among climate-conscious governments and grassroots advocates that decades of formal United Nations climate negotiations have failed to directly confront fossil fuel production, the single largest driver of anthropogenic global warming. The Santa Marta summit was organized to advance this critical conversation outside the slow-moving framework of official multilateral talks.

    Unlike binding formal UN climate agreements, the summit is not designed to deliver enforceable international commitments. Instead, organizers frame the gathering as a long-overdue space to open debate on a politically charged issue that has been sidelined in traditional climate negotiations for decades. “This is fundamentally a political space. We are opening a forum for discussion that simply does not exist in existing climate processes,” Colombia’s Minister of Environment Irene Vélez Torres told the Associated Press in a pre-summit interview. The core goal, officials say, is to draft a shared set of actionable policy proposals and build a broad coalition of nations willing to move faster than current international commitments to phase out fossil fuels.

    Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at Brazil’s Observatorio do Clima think tank, notes that climate action has unfortunately slipped down the list of urgent priorities for many governments in recent years, amid competing global crises. Attendees will include major fossil fuel producing and consuming nations from across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Notably, two of the world’s largest oil producers, the United States and Saudi Arabia, will not participate, a reality that underscores deep global divisions between nations pushing for an accelerated transition and economies deeply tied to fossil fuel extraction and export revenues.

    Under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, member nations set their own voluntary national emissions reduction targets, with no enforceable international mechanism to compel countries to phase out fossil fuel production. The Santa Marta summit is part of a broader global push to shift climate diplomacy beyond incremental emissions target-setting and toward direct action to curb fossil fuel output, an issue that has split the international community for decades along political and economic lines. Climate advocates argue that new, bolder approaches are needed to close what they see as a dangerous gap in global climate governance.

    A key proposal expected to dominate summit discussions is the creation of “fossil-free zones”: designated geographic areas where all new oil, gas, and coal extraction is permanently banned, with a focus on ecologically sensitive and biodiversity-rich regions. “Fossil-free zones turn global, abstract climate goals into concrete, on-the-ground decisions,” explained Andrés Gómez of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. Indigenous leaders, who have been central to shaping the summit agenda, are pushing attending governments to enshrine fossil-free zones as a core component of national energy transition plans.

    “For Indigenous peoples, halting fossil fuel extraction is not only an existential climate imperative — it is essential to defending our ancestral territories, our self-governance systems, and our fundamental right to self-determination,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach, executive secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, a coalition of Indigenous and local community groups representing millions of people across the world’s forest regions. Jintiach added that governments must move “from empty commitments to on-the-ground implementation” by embedding fossil-free zone policies into official national energy transition roadmaps. Analysis from environmental advocacy groups shows that existing oil and gas extraction concessions already overlap with millions of hectares of intact tropical forest and Indigenous-held territories, highlighting the massive scale of the challenge facing reformers.

    The summit convenes at a moment of unprecedented global geopolitical uncertainty, including ongoing conflict in the Middle East that has disrupted global energy markets and threatened supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply transits. The resulting energy price spikes have rippled far beyond energy markets, hitting household budgets worldwide. “Oil price volatility does not stay confined to energy trading floors — it moves straight into the daily lives of ordinary people,” said Mary Robinson, former Irish president and leading climate justice advocate who will attend the summit, during a pre-summit press briefing. “As always, the impacts hit the most vulnerable communities hardest, while big oil companies rake in record windfall profits,” she added.

    Vélez argues that current global energy instability should speed up, rather than delay, the transition away from fossil fuels. “This crisis — and let’s call it what it is: the war in the Middle East has triggered a global crisis — in this context, I believe the global movement must double down on radicalizing the green agenda and accelerating the energy transition,” she said. Some energy analysts, however, warn that short-term energy supply shocks could push many nations to ramp up domestic fossil fuel production in the near term, even as they reaffirm long-term climate commitments. This dynamic highlights the persistent tension between national energy security goals and urgent climate action.

    This tension is particularly acute in Latin America, where many national economies remain heavily dependent on oil, gas, and mining exports even as regional governments position themselves as global climate leaders. Colombia, one of Latin America’s top oil producers and home to roughly 6% of the world’s remaining Amazon rainforest, relies on crude exports for a large share of both government revenue and foreign exchange earnings. Despite this dependence, Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s administration has pledged to halt all new oil exploration and lead global calls for a coordinated phaseout of fossil fuels. “Economic and fiscal dependence on fossil fuels is a problem, and it is perhaps the single biggest challenge we face as we push for this transition,” Vélez acknowledged.

    Financial constraints will also be a central topic of summit discussions. Many low- and middle-income developing nations carry high levels of public debt and have limited fiscal space, making large-scale investments in renewable energy infrastructure and just transition programs difficult to achieve. Civil society groups argue that without fundamental reforms to the global financial system, these constraints will continue to slow progress away from fossil fuels.

    “Moving away from fossil fuels unquestionably requires a carefully planned economic and energy transition that accounts for national fiscal realities,” said Carola Mejía of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Economic, Social and Climate Justice. Gabriella Bianchini, policy advisor for advocacy group Global Witness, says the stakes of the summit extend far beyond climate action alone. “As communities across the globe suffer the consequences of oil-driven conflict, it has never been clearer that the world needs to leave the fossil fuel era behind,” Bianchini said. “Santa Marta is a chance for governments and communities to grab the bull by the horns and take concrete action toward building a greener, more equitable, and more peaceful world.”

    Bianchini added that while formal UN climate talks remain a critical part of global climate governance, they have repeatedly failed to deliver meaningful progress on curbing fossil fuel production. “Santa Marta represents a space for governments to advance the only plan we know will stave off the worst impacts of climate breakdown: a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels,” she said. Observers note that the core test of the summit will be whether it can send a clear, unified political signal on an issue that has remained unresolved after decades of global climate talks. For Vélez, the gathering represents a potential turning point for global climate action. “If we step back, this conference is that turning point where, collectively, we decide to stand on the right side of history,” she said.

  • Israel, Lebanon extend ceasefire as Trump hopes for historic deal

    Israel, Lebanon extend ceasefire as Trump hopes for historic deal

    In a development that keeps fragile peace hopes alive along the Israel-Lebanon border, US President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the two rival nations have agreed to extend their existing temporary ceasefire for an additional three weeks. The announcement came as the US leader laid out his vision for a landmark three-way summit at the White House to advance a potential full peace deal, even as fresh deadly exchanges of fire underscored the truce’s deep instability.

    Speaking alongside Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors at the White House – the first high-level direct encounter between the two states, which have no formal diplomatic relations, since 1993 – Trump struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of ending decades of open conflict between the two nations. “I think there’s a very good chance of having peace. I think it should be an easy one,” he told reporters, adding that he expects Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to travel to Washington for talks during the newly extended truce window.

    The original ceasefire was first agreed on April 14 following initial ambassador-level talks and was set to expire Sunday. Lebanese officials had previously pushed for a one-month extension, with Aoun demanding the truce explicitly include commitments to halt destruction of civilian infrastructure, and end attacks on civilians, places of worship, medical and education facilities, and journalists. The demand gained urgent traction after a Lebanese journalist, Amal Khalil, was killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon Wednesday, with mourners holding a funeral procession for her in the southern Lebanese town of Bissariye this week.

    The current round of open conflict between Israel and Hezbollah dates back to late February, when Israel launched a major offensive in Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket fire. The Iran-aligned militant group had pledged retaliation after Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the opening of the US-Israel war on Iran that began February 28. According to Lebanese authorities, the Israeli offensive has killed more than 2,450 people and displaced over one million, while Israeli forces have occupied a 10-kilometer deep “security zone” along the southern Lebanese border.

    Even as the ceasefire extension was being announced at the White House, new violence erupted Thursday: Hezbollah confirmed it had launched a fresh barrage of rockets into northern Israel, saying the attack was retaliation for repeated Israeli violations of the original truce. Israeli officials reported that all incoming rockets were intercepted by their defense systems. The exchange followed a deadly day of Israeli strikes Wednesday that killed five people across Lebanon, including Khalil. On Thursday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle near the southern city of Nabatieh, roughly 35 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel has repeatedly argued that truce terms allow it to carry out operations against what it frames as imminent or ongoing Hezbollah attacks, while Hezbollah has launched multiple small-scale attacks on Israeli troops and military assets in southern Lebanon in recent days.

    Israeli ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter struck a conciliatory tone Thursday, saying Israel seeks a formal peace agreement with the Lebanese government and claimed the campaign against Iran has significantly weakened Hezbollah’s military capacity. “We’re united with the Lebanese government in wanting to rid the country of this malign influence called Hezbollah,” he said.

    The ceasefire extension comes against a backdrop of stalled US-Iran negotiations. Iran had made a full ceasefire in Lebanon a precondition for resuming talks with Washington aimed at ending the ongoing war, but refused to attend a planned second round of negotiations this week in protest of a continuing US naval blockade of Iran. Despite the breakdown, Trump announced Thursday he was extending an existing truce with Iran indefinitely. Notably, Lebanese President Aoun has already pushed back on a prior Trump claim that he would hold a direct telephone call with Netanyahu, signaling ongoing divisions remain even as diplomatic efforts move forward.

  • Stuffed toys in US capital symbolize displaced Ukrainian children

    Stuffed toys in US capital symbolize displaced Ukrainian children

    In a striking, somber display just steps from the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., 20,000 stuffed teddy bears line a National Mall fence, each one standing in for a Ukrainian child Kyiv accuses Russia of abducting since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. On Thursday, Ukrainian activists and U.S. lawmakers gathered at the installation to draw global attention to the missing children, uniting under the urgent rallying cry: “Bring Them Home.”

    For 24-year-old Ukrainian activist Mariia Hlyten, the sheer number of toys on display underscores the scale of the crisis unfolding while world powers work toward diplomatic resolution. “When you see the scale… you then start to understand how terrifying this is, and that all this time, while we are waiting for some kind of negotiations, there are children’s lives at stake,” Hlyten said, emphasizing that the abducted children must be repatriated without delay.

    The event was organized by Razom for Ukraine, in partnership with the American Coalition for Ukraine. Three senior U.S. lawmakers addressed the crowd, each condemning the alleged abductions as a deliberate act of cultural erasure and a violation of international law. Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign extends far beyond territorial conquest. “What Vladimir Putin is doing here is not trying to take territory alone. He’s not trying to defeat a nation alone,” Blumenthal said. “He’s trying to destroy the people, that is the purpose of abducting children, changing their names, re-education. Killing their identity, if not the children themselves — making sure that they never grow up speaking their own language, knowing their own religion and culture.”

    House Democrat Jamie Raskin echoed Blumenthal’s criticism, calling the forced removals a blatant violation of international humanitarian standards and the laws of war. “It’s a war crime and if it’s done intentionally… it is part of the proof of genocide,” Raskin said.

    Standing nearby draped in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow national flag, 28-year-old Arkady Dolina, a Ukrainian and relative of Hlyten, described the mass abductions from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories as “absolutely horrible.” He framed the campaign as the latest chapter in a long-running Russian policy of forced indoctrination, saying: “This is the continuation of a centuries long Russian policy to abduct, indoctrinate kids and then send them as their cannon fodder to fight their stupid, useless, brutal wars.”

    Moscow has repeatedly denied all accusations of forcibly abducting Ukrainian children. Still, claims from Kyiv have gained traction from international bodies and world governments. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that roughly 2,000 children had been successfully returned to Ukraine from Russia and Russian-held territories, but thousands more remain held captive. In March, the U.S. government launched a $25 million fund to support efforts to reunite displaced Ukrainian children with their families, a cause that former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump has also publicly backed. In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, charging the pair with the war crime of unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.

    Kyiv alleges that Russia has systematically worked to erase the Ukrainian identity of abducted children, forcing them to undergo pro-Russian indoctrination, compelling many to take Russian citizenship. These claims have been corroborated by firsthand testimony from Ukrainians who have escaped Russian occupation.

  • Lebanon leaders accuse Israel of war crime after journalist killed

    Lebanon leaders accuse Israel of war crime after journalist killed

    A fragile 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has been thrown into new controversy after an Israeli airstrike killed a seasoned Lebanese journalist and left another injured, triggering sharp accusations of deliberate war crimes from Beirut and condemnation from global human rights and United Nations officials.

    On Wednesday, civil defense forces and Amal Khalil’s employer, Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, confirmed the 42-year-old correspondent’s death. According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA), Khalil and fellow journalist Zeinab Faraj had fled to a residential home in the border village of Al-Tiri after Israeli forces targeted a car traveling immediately ahead of them. That initial strike killed two people inside the vehicle: the mayor of Bint Jbeil, a nearby town under Israeli occupation, and his companion.

    Moments after the pair took shelter, a second Israeli airstrike hit the house they were hiding in. Faraj was evacuated to a local hospital with non-life-threatening wounds, but Khalil was left trapped under rubble. The Lebanese Red Cross confirmed its teams were able to extract Faraj, but were forced to retreat from the area after receiving an imminent strike warning, leaving them unable to reach Khalil. Rescue operations could only resume several hours later after Lebanese authorities coordinated with UN peacekeepers deployed to the southern border region to regain access, with Khalil’s body eventually recovered from the rubble.

    Lebanese President Joseph Aoun issued a formal statement Thursday accusing Israel of deliberately targeting journalists to cover up its military actions against Lebanese civilians, calling the killing an unambiguous war crime. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam echoed the condemnation in a post on X, noting that both targeting journalists and blocking access for emergency rescue teams violate international war norms, and confirmed his administration would formally bring the case to international judicial and human rights bodies. Lebanon’s health ministry additionally accused Israeli forces of targeting an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem during the incident, a charge the Israeli military has denied.

    The Israeli military offered a different account of the incident in its own statements, saying it had targeted two vehicles that departed from a Hezbollah military facility in southern Lebanon. It claimed the vehicles carried individuals classified as terrorists who had crossed the so-called “forward defense line” that Israeli forces established in southern Lebanon and were moving toward Israeli troop positions. An Israeli military spokesperson told Agence France-Presse Thursday that the incident remains under internal review, and denied that Israeli forces had blocked rescue teams from accessing the strike site.

    Since the resumption of hostilities between Israel and the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah in October 2023, more than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, a majority of them civilians. The 10-day ceasefire that went into effect last Friday was intended to open space for diplomatic negotiations to de-escalate the year-long cross-border conflict, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese residents from the southern border region. Israel has maintained a forward presence in southern Lebanon and enforced a “yellow line” that bars displaced residents from returning to their homes in the area.

    On Thursday, dozens of colleagues, family members, and supporters gathered in Khalil’s southern hometown of Baysariyeh for her funeral. Her coffin was draped in the Lebanese flag, decorated with flowers, and topped with her press helmet and vest, symbols of her work reporting from the front lines of the conflict. Hundreds more joined a protest in the capital Beirut to demand accountability for her death.

    Global and regional rights groups have joined Lebanon’s leadership in condemning the killing, noting that Khalil is at least the fourth Lebanese journalist killed by Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon since the start of the current conflict. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Middle East head Jonathan Dagher said the sequence of strikes that killed Khalil – the initial attack on the car, followed by the strike on the house where journalists had taken shelter, followed by the delay in rescue access – strongly indicates deliberate targeting of press workers and obstruction of emergency aid, both defined as war crimes under international law. Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch, called for an independent, credible investigation into the killing, emphasizing that intentional strikes against civilians, including journalists, meet the legal definition of a war crime.

    United Nations officials also weighed in on the incident. Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, reaffirmed that targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian and emergency access are clear violations of international humanitarian law. Dujarric added that Guterres has repeatedly stressed that journalists must be allowed to carry out their critical work of documenting conflict without fear of harassment, attack, or death. Back in March, an earlier Israeli airstrike killed three other journalists in southern Lebanon, prompting UN human rights experts to call for a full international investigation into that incident.

    Speaking from the Beirut protest honoring Khalil, local journalist Inas Sherri told AFP that international accountability is the only way to end the pattern of press killings. “If we were holding people accountable, Israel would not have continued killing journalists one after another,” Sherri said.

  • Trump says Israel-Lebanon ceasefire to be extended by three weeks

    Trump says Israel-Lebanon ceasefire to be extended by three weeks

    A new chapter of diplomatic engagement between longtime adversaries Israel and Lebanon has resulted in a three-week extension of their fragile ceasefire, U.S. President Donald Trump announced this week, following a fresh round of high-level talks between the two nations’ envoys hosted in Washington. The initial ceasefire, brokered last week after the first direct high-level negotiations between the sides in 30 years, was scheduled to expire Sunday, and its extension keeps open the window for de-escalation after more than seven weeks of open conflict between Israel and the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah.

    Trump made the announcement first on his social platform Truth Social, noting the Washington-based meeting between envoys “went very well.” Speaking alongside U.S. Senate lawmakers JD Vance and Marco Rubio in the Oval Office, the president added that the U.S. will deepen cooperation with Lebanon to secure its borders against Hezbollah, and confirmed that both Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been invited to visit the White House in the coming weeks to continue negotiations. “They do have Hezbollah to think about,” Trump said. “We are going to be working with Lebanon to get things straightened out in that country. I think it will be a wonderful thing to get this worked out simultaneously with what we are doing in Iran.”

    Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter joined Trump for the Oval Office remarks, and both diplomats commended the U.S. leader for his hands-on role in advancing the talks. Leiter emphasized that both nations share a core goal of eliminating what he described as Hezbollah’s “malign influence” from Lebanese territory.

    Despite the diplomatic breakthrough for a ceasefire extension, violence has continued to plague the border region, with both sides trading accusations of ceasefire violations in the days leading up to this week’s talks. On Thursday evening local time, just as negotiations were getting underway in Washington, Hezbollah announced it had launched a rocket barrage against northern Israel in retaliation for what it called an Israeli breach of the truce. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it intercepted all incoming projectiles.

    A day earlier, Lebanon filed formal accusations of war crimes against Israel after an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed one journalist and injured a second. The IDF has denied it intentionally targeted media personnel.

    The current round of conflict erupted in early March, after Hezbollah launched a large-scale drone and rocket attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran on February 28. In response, Israel launched intense airstrikes across Lebanon, concentrated in the southern part of the country and the capital Beirut, and reintroduced ground troops into southern Lebanon, where it has maintained an occupation of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of Lebanese territory ever since.

    Humanitarian costs of the conflict have been catastrophic, according to official data. Lebanon’s health ministry reports at least 2,294 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across the country since the outbreak of the latest war, a toll that includes 274 women and 177 children. On the Israeli side, Israeli authorities confirm Hezbollah attacks have killed two civilians, while 15 Israeli soldiers have died in combat operations inside Lebanon. United Nations data indicates more than one million Lebanese people — roughly one out of every five residents of the country — have been displaced by the fighting, most from southern Lebanon, where entire villages and residential areas have been destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

    A major sticking point in long-term peace talks remains the future of Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organization that operates as both a militant militia and a mainstream political party within Lebanon. The U.S., Israel, and many Lebanese political factions have demanded Hezbollah fully disarm, but the group has refused to enter any discussions about the status of its weapons. Lebanese President Aoun has repeatedly warned that forcing disarmament through military action would trigger internal Lebanese violence, arguing any resolution on the issue must come through negotiated dialogue with the group. For Hezbollah’s supporters, the group remains the only credible defense force for southern Lebanon amid the country’s weak central state institutions, a position that has been reinforced by the ongoing conflict.

  • Kuwait releases journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin after acquittal

    Kuwait releases journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin after acquittal

    After 52 days of behind-bars detention on charges tied to social media posts about the US-Israeli military campaign targeting Iran, award-winning Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has been cleared of all counts and released from custody in Kuwait.

    The 41-year-old, who holds dual Kuwaiti-American citizenship and was born in the United States, was taken into custody on March 2 during a trip to Kuwait to visit extended family. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the arrest was triggered by a string of social media posts Shihab-Eldin shared about the ongoing regional conflict. Among these posts was footage of a U.S. fighter jet crashing at an American airbase located within Kuwait; the press freedom advocacy group stressed that all material the journalist shared was already publicly available.

    Caoilfhionn Gallagher, international legal counsel representing Shihab-Eldin’s family, confirmed the acquittal in an official statement, saying, “We are relieved that, after 52 days in detention, Ahmed has been found innocent on all charges. Our focus now is upon ensuring the liberty and safety of our client.”

    The CPJ echoed this relief in an update posted to the social platform X, noting that while full details surrounding the case were still being collected, Shihab-Eldin’s international legal team had formally confirmed the full acquittal and his impending release.

    A veteran journalist with an extensive career, Shihab-Eldin has contributed reporting to a roster of major global media outlets including The New York Times, Al Jazeera English, and PBS. His work, which focuses heavily on human rights and regional affairs, has earned him high-profile industry honors, including a British Journalism Award and an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender Award.

    Beyond Shihab-Eldin’s individual case, the CPJ has framed his detention as part of a growing, region-wide crackdown on digital free speech that has unfolded alongside the escalation of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Like other Gulf nations, Kuwait has rolled out increasingly strict limits on online expression amid rising regional tensions, moving to restrict public discussion of attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure.

    On the same day Shihab-Eldin was arrested, Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior published a public statement advising citizens and residents against “photographing or publish any clips or information related to missiles or relevant locations,” warning that multiple people had already been taken into custody on charges of spreading false information. Weeks after that initial announcement, Kuwait’s legislature introduced sweeping new legislation that carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence for anyone found guilty of “disseminating news, publishes statements, or spreads false rumours related to military entities” with the intent to erode public trust in state military institutions.

    Data from the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) underscores the scale of this crackdown: the rights organization reports that dozens of people across the region have been arbitrarily detained since the outbreak of the war, all for the act of “peacefully expressing their opinions on social media.” The GCHR added that most of these detainees are held in unacknowledged state security facilities for days at a time, and are systematically denied access to both family visits and legal representation, in violation of international human rights standards.

  • Amal Khalil: The fearless journalist, killed by Israel, who embodied southern Lebanon

    Amal Khalil: The fearless journalist, killed by Israel, who embodied southern Lebanon

    Forty years after she was born into the decades-long Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, seasoned Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed in that same region by invading Israeli forces while on assignment, leaving a deep gap in local journalism and a nation mourning a fearless storyteller who dedicated her life to amplifying marginalized voices.

    Khalil, 42, was targeted and killed last Wednesday while traveling to al-Tayri to cover an earlier Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, an initial Israeli strike hit a vehicle ahead of Khalil and freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj, forcing the pair to seek shelter in a nearby residential building. A second Israeli strike then directly hit the structure. Rescuers managed to pull out Faraj, who suffered a severe head injury, but came under Israeli gunfire when they attempted to reach Khalil. Her body was recovered hours later, pulled from the rubble of the destroyed home.

    Born in 1984 in al-Baisariyah, a village in Lebanon’s southern Saida district, Khalil grew up steeped in the realities of conflict and occupation. Her hometown had just been retaken from Israeli control shortly before her birth, and she spent her childhood looking out at nearby occupied villages while Lebanon was mired in civil war. Her early exposure to the struggles of southern Lebanese communities shaped her lifelong commitment to on-the-ground, people-centered reporting. As a young girl, she secretly read the now-defunct Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, where she first learned about ordinary people’s struggles, detained activists, forcibly disappeared citizens, and the human cost of Lebanon’s civil war. She went on to study Arabic literature in Saida, and without her parents’ knowledge, traveled to Beirut to become involved in communist activism — a step that launched her professional writing career, starting with early features for al-Hasnaa magazine. In one notable early piece, she profiled how queer people navigated and celebrated love in Lebanon’s conservative society for a Valentine’s Day special issue, she recalled in a January 2025 interview with Beirut-based outlet The Public Source.

    In April 2006, just months before Al-Akhbar newspaper published its first issue, Khalil joined the newly launched outlet, where she would remain for nearly 20 years. Only weeks after she joined, Israel launched its 33-day 2006 war on Lebanon, a turning point that shifted her focus from planned coverage of women’s and cultural issues to documenting the experiences of people displaced and targeted by Israeli strikes. This focus on public interest storytelling, particularly for communities in southern Lebanon, became the throughline of her entire career. For most of her professional life, she was based in Tyre (known locally as Sour), where she investigated corruption and highlighted social injustices without sparing powerful figures — even when that put her own safety at risk. “Going after corruption cases and social issues in the area, sparing no one – not even my family – led to confrontations,” she once said. “I was threatened, assaulted, and intimidated. The pressure to break me was relentless, but I didn’t yield.” Though Al-Akhbar has a longstanding editorial alignment with Hezbollah and its resistance against Israeli occupation, Khalil repeatedly emphasized she reported without imposed limitations, pointing to the outlet’s 2011 decision to publish WikiLeaks documents referencing parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, despite a request from then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to withhold the material. Over time, she became the newspaper’s lead field correspondent for all of southern Lebanon, covering areas including Sour, Bint Jbeil and Nabatieh.

    Khalil was well aware of the risk Israeli forces posed to Lebanese journalists, having already mourned one of her own colleagues killed in Israeli shelling: in 2010, she wrote the obituary for Assaf Abu Rahhal, recalling the moment a Lebanese soldier handed her Abu Rahhal’s blood-stained identification, the only personal effect that remained of him. “It was all that remained of Assaf. I will never forget that day,” she wrote.

    Throughout her career, Khalil remained unwavering in her commitment to left-wing politics and resistance against Israeli occupation. In recent years, she taught herself video editing to produce on-the-ground reporting, though she refused to appear on camera herself, saying: “For me, it was simple: I’m here to tell the stories of the people, not to become the story myself.” When the 2023-2024 Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out — after Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with Palestinians under assault in Gaza — Khalil spent months documenting evidence of Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon. Following a February 2024 ceasefire, she continued to report on near-daily Israeli violations of the truce. She survived multiple close calls, the most recent in November 2024, when Israeli forces opened fire to force her and her colleagues to retreat from the border. Friends and colleagues said she never bowed to Israeli restrictions on her movement, refusing to stay out of areas Israeli forces sought to bar journalists from entering. After that 2024 close call, she said people had repeatedly urged her to limit her travel for safety, but her beliefs and upbringing taught her to stand “in the face of oppression.” “My alignment with the people of the south, my presence among them since the July 2006 war, has always been the right choice. They have always lived up to that faith placed in them,” she said. “They will grow stronger, more steadfast, and more committed to this unwavering compass, toward truth, and toward Palestine.”

    In the days after her killing, tributes poured in from across Lebanon and the global journalistic community, with friends and colleagues remembering her generosity, courage and pioneering spirit. “Amal was present in every home. Every home in Lebanon has lost her,” her brother Ali Khalil said tearfully. “Amal resembles the south in all its details – its sweet breeze, its valleys, its mountains, and its old houses. She resembles all of that.” For younger Lebanese journalists, Khalil was a beloved mentor who freely shared her decades of knowledge and connections even with professional competitors. “She was so generous even if we were competitors. She never hesitated in sharing a contact, a key – and she had all the keys in the south. She knew it like the palm of her hand and she shared this love and dedication with everyone who needed it,” Hussein Chaabane, a Lebanese investigative and legal journalist, told Middle East Eye.

    Lebanese filmmaker Bachir Abou Zeid framed Khalil as far more than a conventional journalist, saying her devotion to her people and her land guided all her work. “Amal was not a journalist in the conventional sense of the profession. Her love for the land and for her people outweighed everything,” he said, calling her “a journalist of resistance” who was targeted specifically for her unflinching reporting. “The killing of Amal was the killing of a woman of resistance. Israel killed her because she was a journalist of resistance, not simply because she was a journalist.” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has labeled her killing a war crime, saying Lebanon will use all available international channels to hold those responsible accountable. Chaabane said Khalil’s death leaves an enormous void in Lebanese journalism, one that surviving colleagues must work to fill. “Amal never accepted what the Israelis tried to impose as limitations; she pushed their limits,” he said. “Her death will leave a vacuum, a huge one, which we need to fill.”

  • US boards ship carrying Iran oil as Trump threatens mine-laying vessels

    US boards ship carrying Iran oil as Trump threatens mine-laying vessels

    The United States has launched another provocative naval operation targeting Iran, with U.S. defense officials confirming that American forces have boarded the M/T Majestic X, a sanctioned vessel carrying Iranian crude oil, in the Indian Ocean as part of a widening maritime interdiction campaign. This interception marks the latest in a string of seizures implemented after the Trump administration imposed a full naval blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13.

    According to a public statement from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the operation qualifies as a formal maritime interdiction – a military action where naval forces intercept and inspect vessels suspected of hostile activity or violations of international sanctions. U.S. Central Command (Centcom) reports that under the current blockade, it has already ordered 33 vessels to return to their ports of origin, and the DoD has pledged to continue intercepting any vessel suspected of providing material support to Iran, regardless of where the ships are operating in global waters.

    This latest interception comes on the heels of a dramatic order from President Donald Trump, who directed U.S. Navy forces to “shoot and kill” any boat caught laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the strategically critical global shipping chokepoint that connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Trump’s aggressive stance is part of a broader strategy to cripple Iran’s economy by cutting off the country’s core oil export revenues, as well as blocking toll revenues that Iran began collecting from commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

    Speaking at a White House event on Thursday, Trump claimed the blockade is already “100% effective” and asserted that Iran is currently “getting no business” from its oil exports. He also made the surprising announcement that he rejected a recent Iranian offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, stating that the waterway “will open when we make a deal” on a broader peace agreement.

    Iran has pushed back fiercely against U.S. operations, labeling an earlier U.S. interception of an Iranian-linked vessel this week as outright “piracy.” On Thursday, Hamidreza Haji Bababei, deputy speaker of the Iranian Parliament, claimed that the first batch of toll revenues collected from commercial vessels using the Strait of Hormuz had already been deposited with Iran’s Central Bank. No additional details have been released regarding the total amount of the toll, how it is being collected, or which shipping companies have paid, and the BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.

    The heightened U.S. military activity comes even after Trump agreed to extend a temporary two-week ceasefire at the request of Pakistani mediators, raising questions about the sustainability of the truce. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led Iran’s first round of peace negotiations with the U.S., stated that it is “not possible” for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under the current blockade, which Iran says already amounts to a ceasefire violation by the U.S.

    In a post to his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump claimed that U.S. military forces now hold “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, and repeated a baseless claim that Iranian leaders are in disarray, saying Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is.” This comment references the fact that Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – Iran’s supreme leader of 34 years who was killed in the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 – has not been seen in public since taking office on March 8.

    Just one day before Trump’s post, Iran’s navy announced it had seized two commercial cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz and escorted them to Iranian territorial waters, following reports that three vessels had come under fire from Iranian forces. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite revolutionary military force, claimed responsibility for the seizures through its affiliated Fars News Agency. BBC Verify conducted an independent analysis of aerial footage released by the IRGC purporting to show the seizure, and confirmed that the two vessels – the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas – are correctly identified, but found that the footage was filmed several hours after the reported initial attack. Greek authorities have denied that the Epaminondas was seized, saying the vessel’s captain remains in full control, though transponder signals for both ships have been switched off, an unusual move for commercial vessels operating in open waters.

    Expanding on his earlier order, Trump confirmed Thursday that he had issued a formal order to the U.S. Navy to “shoot and kill” any boats caught laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, saying “There is to be no hesitation” in carrying out the order. He added that U.S. minesweepers are already actively clearing mines from the shipping lane “right now.” The order comes after unconfirmed reports suggested that U.S. military assessments estimated it could take up to six months to clear all mines from the strait if it were heavily mined, a claim the Pentagon has strongly rejected.

    “One assessment does not mean the assessment is plausible, and a six-month closure of the Strait of Hormuz is an impossibility and completely unacceptable to the Secretary,” Pentagon Chief Spokesman Sean Parnell told the BBC in a statement.

    In a nearly five-minute phone interview with the BBC’s North America editor Sarah Smith, Trump insisted that Iran is “dying to make a deal” and argued that his hardline approach “seems to be working very well.” He announced a two-week extension of the ceasefire earlier this week to give Iranian officials time to draft a “unified proposal” to end the ongoing conflict, but declined to specify how long the extended truce will remain in place. He also pushed back against reports that he is eager to wrap up the conflict quickly, writing on Truth Social that while he has “all the time in the World …Iran doesn’t – The clock is ticking!”

    Despite the severe economic pressure the conflict has placed on Iran, whose economy was already struggling before the war, and has now seen massive layoffs and a sharp collapse in consumer spending, Iranian officials have shown no public sign of backing down. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a statement on X that the country is “united, more than ever before,” and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and lead negotiator Ghalibaf echoed that claim, highlighting what they called Iran’s “iron unity” in the face of U.S. aggression.

    Israel, which joined the U.S. in launching the initial attack on Iran on February 28, has also maintained a hardline stance. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that his country stands ready to immediately resume hostilities and return Iran “to the dark and stone ages.” Katz added that Israel is “waiting for the green light from the US…to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty.”

  • Israeli soldiers looting homes in Lebanon on large scale, report says

    Israeli soldiers looting homes in Lebanon on large scale, report says

    An explosive new investigation published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Thursday has uncovered systemic large-scale looting of civilian property from homes and commercial establishments across southern Lebanon by Israeli soldiers, with the open approval and inaction of senior and junior military commanders. Multiple on-the-record testimonies from active-duty soldiers and officers paint a picture of rampant, unregulated theft that has become routine during Israel’s ongoing ground incursion into southern Lebanon, with stolen items ranging from everyday household goods such as televisions, sofas, carpets and paintings to motorbikes, cigarettes and construction tools. What makes the practice even more brazen, witnesses say, is that soldiers make no effort to conceal the stolen goods as they withdraw from occupied areas, openly loading pilfered property onto military vehicles in full view of command staff. One soldier described the scale of the looting as staggering, telling the outlet: “It’s on a crazy scale. Anyone who takes something – televisions, cigarettes, tools, whatever – immediately puts it in their vehicle or leaves it to the side. It’s not hidden. Everyone sees it and understands.” Testimonies uniformly confirm that military commanders have consistently failed to impose meaningful disciplinary action to halt the practice, despite having full knowledge of the ongoing theft. Many units see commanders completely ignore the looting, while others only issue token verbal condemnation without any follow-up penalties. One insider stated, “In our unit, they don’t even comment or get angry. The battalion and brigade commanders know everything.” Another witness recalled a single incident where a commander publicly yelled at soldiers found transporting looted goods in a military jeep and ordered them to throw the items away, but no further disciplinary or criminal action was pursued against the personnel involved. “Commanders speak against it and say it’s serious, but they don’t do anything,” another soldier summarized. In a formal statement provided to Haaretz, the Israeli military claimed it treats looting “with utmost severity” and maintains a strict ban on the practice, asserting that disciplinary and criminal proceedings are initiated when violations are confirmed. The army also noted that military police carry out routine inspections at the Israel-Lebanon border to intercept stolen property. But Haaretz’s reporting contradicts these official claims: the investigation found that many border checkpoints intended to catch looted goods at exit points from southern Lebanon have already been dismantled, while other planned checkpoints were never constructed at all. Soldiers told the outlet that this deliberate lack of enforcement is what has allowed the looting crisis to balloon to its current size. One soldier explained, “When there is no punishment, the message is obvious.” This latest revelation of widespread looting adds to a growing list of war crime accusations leveled against Israeli forces operating in Lebanon and Gaza since October 2023. Previous allegations include the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, extrajudicial killings of non-combatants, and trespass on civilian property for recreational purposes. Just last week, viral footage emerged showing Israeli soldiers demolishing an occupied civilian home in southern Lebanon “in memory” of a fallen comrade, while a separate photograph showed a soldier preparing food inside an abandoned Lebanese civilian residence – both incidents drew widespread international condemnation. The current round of full-scale Israeli military operations in Lebanon began on March 2 this year, ending more than 12 months of intermittent violations of a November 2024 ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hezbollah. Since launching the expanded ground invasion, Israeli forces have pushed several kilometers inside Lebanese territory, establishing a self-declared “buffer zone” that extends roughly 10 kilometers into southern Lebanon. Israeli troops currently remain deployed across this zone, barring Lebanese civilians from returning to their native villages and ancestral homes. Even after the announcement of a U.S.-brokered 10-day truce last week, Israeli forces have continued to carry out airstrikes across southern Lebanon and systematically demolish civilian residential structures, according to on-the-ground reports.