Global Pulse

分类： world

  • Explosions rock Damascus, wounding 18, as French President Macron visits Syria

    Explosions rock Damascus, wounding 18, as French President Macron visits Syria

    DAMASCUS, Syria – Two coordinated explosive device attacks shook central Damascus on Tuesday, as French President Emmanuel Macron held a landmark meeting with Syria’s new President Ahmad al-Sharaa, leaving at least 18 people injured, Syria’s Interior Ministry confirmed. The incident marks the second major deadly explosion in the capital in less than a week, throwing a shadow over efforts to stabilize the war-battered nation and rebuild its economy following 14 years of conflict.

    According to Syrian Interior Ministry statements carried by state media, the two blasts detonated in a busy central district of Damascus, just a short distance from the Four Seasons Hotel where Macron was confirmed to be staying, and close to the presidential palace where the meeting between the two leaders was taking place. One explosive device was hidden inside a public garbage bin, while the second was placed in a parked car. Four of the 18 injured people are active-duty police officers, and official sources confirmed no fatalities had been reported as of Tuesday afternoon. Local security forces have cordoned off the blast site to launch a full investigation into the attack, and no group has yet claimed responsibility for the assault.

    Footage of the incident widely shared across social media platforms captured a large plume of black smoke rising from the attack zone, which sits steps from the Syrian Tourism Ministry headquarters and the Damascus National Museum. The footage also shows a van and a motorcycle engulfed in flames, with visible blood stains on the pavement of the busy commercial street. Immediately following the blasts, the Élysée Palace issued a statement confirming that Macron was unharmed and that his scheduled meeting with al-Sharaa was proceeding as planned.

    Macron’s visit to Syria is unprecedented in modern Syrian-Western relations: he is the first leader of a major Western power to travel to Damascus since al-Sharaa took power in 2024, after leading an insurgency that ousted long-time authoritarian ruler Bashar Assad. Macron arrived in the country on Monday night accompanied by a large delegation of French business and economic leaders, with plans to sign a series of bilateral memorandums of understanding aimed at opening the door for foreign investment to support Syria’s reconstruction.

    The French president has been a leading voice among Western leaders pushing for the European Union and United States to lift the majority of economic sanctions imposed on Syria over decades of conflict and authoritarian rule. Al-Sharaa’s new administration has made attracting foreign reconstruction investment a top priority, after 14 years of war left the country’s infrastructure in ruins, displaced millions of people, killed nearly half a million, and left millions more trapped in poverty. Independent analysts estimate Syria will require hundreds of billions of dollars in total investment to fully rebuild.

    The attack comes just days after a separate explosive device detonated at a cafe near the Damascus Justice Palace, which killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 20. For al-Sharaa, the repeated blasts in the capital represent a major setback to his efforts to consolidate full control over Syrian territory, restore nationwide stability, and build trust with Western governments and domestic minority groups skeptical of his background as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group once linked to al-Qaeda. Al-Sharaa’s government has committed to sweeping political and economic reforms after decades of autocratic rule, and until this recent string of attacks, the capital had remained largely peaceful through the post-Assad transition period, even as the new administration faced scattered clashes with armed factions in outlying regions.

    Before heading to his meeting at the presidential palace on Tuesday, Macron held a closed-door session with members of Syrian civil society. The Élysée Palace has not released details on the participants or content of that meeting. Macron is scheduled to depart Damascus this week to travel to Ankara, Turkey, to attend the upcoming NATO summit.

  • Watch: Moment rare tornado lashes central Chinese cities

    Watch: Moment rare tornado lashes central Chinese cities

    A rare and unexpected tornado has swept through two central Chinese cities located in Hubei province, leaving dramatic footage of the destructive weather event in its wake. User-generated videos of the storm, which impacted both Ezhou and Huanggang, have been shared with British public broadcaster BBC, capturing the intense power of the rare twister as it moved through the populated urban areas.

    In the recorded footage, large pieces of debris can be seen being hurled through the air by the tornado’s powerful winds, a clear demonstration of the extreme force the storm brought to the region. Tornadoes are relatively uncommon in central China, making this sudden weather event an unusual and notable occurrence for local communities and meteorological observers alike.

    As the footage circulated, it provided a stark first-hand look at how the sudden severe weather disrupted daily life in the two affected cities. While full details on damage assessments and potential impacts to local infrastructure and residents have not been released in the initial reporting, the video documentation has brought global attention to this rare severe weather event in central China.

  • Militants kill 9 police officers in attack on post in southwest Pakistan

    Militants kill 9 police officers in attack on post in southwest Pakistan

    A coordinated overnight assault by dozens of militants on a southwest Pakistani security outpost has left nine police officers dead and multiple personnel wounded, officials confirmed Tuesday, marking the latest sharp escalation of insurgent violence in a region that has seen a steady spike in anti-security force attacks in recent weeks.

    The attack unfolded in a sparsely populated remote zone of Ziarat district, located in Balochistan province, Pakistan’s largest geographically but most thinly populated administrative region. Along with the casualties among police, the attackers abducted eight officers during the incursion, according to Shahid Rind, a spokesperson for the Balochistan provincial government. Rind confirmed that all eight abducted personnel were later rescued unharmed by responding security forces.

    Immediately after the assault, security forces launched a clearance operation to sweep the area for remaining attackers. The operation concluded with 15 militants killed, Rind said. He added that targeted, intelligence-driven counterinsurgency operations will continue across the province, and pledged that Pakistani authorities would meet all future attacks on security personnel with decisive force.

    No militant organization has immediately stepped forward to claim responsibility for the Ziarat district attack. Security analysts and officials widely expect blame to fall on the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a banned separatist insurgent group that the U.S. Department of State designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. The BLA already claimed a suicide bombing targeting a security outpost in the coastal Balochistan town of Jiwani over the weekend, though Pakistani federal and provincial authorities have not yet publicly confirmed or rejected that claim.

    Independent of the BLA’s claim, Pakistani officials have confirmed that another separate attack targeting civilians on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, also took place over the same weekend. In response to that assault, local villagers have organized a public sit-in protest near Quetta, calling on provincial and federal authorities to boost security infrastructure and guarantee better protection for local communities from future attacks.

    Pakistan’s federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi issued a statement attributing the latest Ziarat attack to what he called Indian-backed militants. Naqvi did not release any public evidence to support this allegation. India has consistently and repeatedly denied Pakistan’s long-running claims that it provides backing to Baloch separatist insurgents or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants operating within Pakistan’s borders.

    In his statement, Naqvi also paid formal tribute to the nine police officers killed in the assault, extended his deepest condolences to the families of the fallen personnel, and emphasized that violent attacks like this would not undermine or derail ongoing efforts to secure peace across Balochistan.

    Beyond the BLA’s separatist insurgency, Balochistan also hosts a significant presence of the Pakistani Taliban, officially known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, which has carried out dozens of high-profile attacks against security and civilian targets across the province for years. For decades, the province has been a hotbed of overlapping insurgent activity, with both separatist factions and extremist militant groups targeting state infrastructure and security personnel in a bid to undermine government control.

  • Landslides in Bangladesh kill at least 8 Rohingya refugees while monsoon rains batter India

    Landslides in Bangladesh kill at least 8 Rohingya refugees while monsoon rains batter India

    Annual monsoon season has brought devastating loss of life and destruction to South Asia this year, with deadly landslides hitting Rohingya refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh and widespread flooding claiming victims across northern and western India. As of the latest official updates, at least 21 people have been confirmed dead across both countries, with dozens more injured and thousands displaced from high-risk zones.

    In Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, home to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees who fled violence in neighboring Myanmar, the disaster unfolded between late Sunday and early Monday. Intense downpour loosened unstable soil on hilly slopes where thousands of makeshift refugee shelters are built, triggering multiple hill collapses that buried structures as residents slept. Dollar Tripura, a senior official with the district’s Fire Service and Civil Defense, confirmed to the Associated Press that eight bodies were recovered: seven by professional rescue teams, and an eighth by refugee residents themselves. All remains have been returned to their families, and two injured children have been pulled from the debris for medical treatment.

    The Cox’s Bazar refugee camps have long faced high risk of monsoon-related disasters. Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that between 2021 and 2026, 36 Rohingya refugees have been killed and at least 86 injured in similar landslide events across the camp network. In response to this latest disaster, local authorities have accelerated relocation efforts, moving vulnerable households away from steep, erosion-prone hill slopes. So far, more than 1,000 people have been moved to safer designated areas, but the Bangladesh Meteorological Department’s Dhaka office has forecast continued heavy rainfall in the region over the coming days, raising fears of further disasters.

    The crisis is not isolated to Bangladesh: monsoon rains have also battered large swathes of neighboring India, leaving 13 people dead in rain-related incidents across the country in recent days. In western India’s Maharashtra state, where the financial capital Mumbai is located, widespread flooding has closed schools, submerged critical road infrastructure, and disrupted daily life. In Pune district, landslides forced a temporary closure of key sections of the busy Mumbai-Pune Expressway, cutting off the primary traffic link between the two major urban centers. The India Meteorological Department has issued warnings for more heavy rainfall across Maharashtra in coming days, noting that low-lying areas face ongoing flood risks.

    Further north, in the Himalayan regions of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, torrential downpours have sparked flash floods and additional landslides. These events have damaged critical road networks, suspended public transport services, and cut off connectivity to dozens of remote mountain villages. Emergency response teams have already been deployed to the affected areas to evacuate stranded residents and deliver life-saving aid.

    India’s annual southwest monsoon, which runs from June through September, is a double-edged sword for the country’s 1.4 billion people. The seasonal rains are critical to the nation’s agricultural sector, which supports more than half of the country’s population, and replenishes critical freshwater reserves across the subcontinent. However, the intense annual rainfall also routinely causes widespread death and destruction, fueled by unplanned urban development, poor drainage infrastructure in dense population centers, and increased soil erosion in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region.

    Compounding the crisis in Bangladesh, recent renewed fighting between Myanmar’s military government and the Arakan Army in Rakhine State has sparked international concern that a new wave of Rohingya refugees could cross the border into Bangladesh, placing even more strain on the already overcrowded and high-risk Cox’s Bazar camp network.

  • Yacht owners and public housing residents once shared Venezuela’s coast. Now they share its ruin

    Yacht owners and public housing residents once shared Venezuela’s coast. Now they share its ruin

    Along Venezuela’s sun-dappled Caribbean coastline, Caraballeda long stood as a rare experiment in cross-class coexistence. Wealthy yacht owners with marina-access apartments and working-class public housing residents shared the same curving waterfront street, both waking every morning to sweeping views of powdery white sand and clear turquoise waters. This intentional integration, designed by successive Venezuelan governments to break down socioeconomic segregation, became a testament to the country’s long-running housing policies—until a devastating earthquake struck on June 24. In seconds, violent shaking reduced dozens of buildings to rubble, killing hundreds of residents mid-holiday or rest, and leaving thousands of survivors facing an uncertain future.

    The official death toll from the disaster has now climbed above 3,500, with roughly 17,000 people left homeless in a country already grappling with years of economic collapse. For these survivors, the path to secure housing runs through the same Venezuelan government that has faced widespread condemnation for its botched disaster response and decades of politicizing access to homes. Even amid the national crisis, housing has remained a defining aspiration for Venezuelan people stretching back more than half a century. When an oil boom in the late 20th century flooded state coffers, the government funded large public housing complexes, wealthy Venezuelans bought multiple vacation properties, and low-income families built informal brick-and-cement homes called ranchos. Even after Venezuela’s economy collapsed in 2013, most citizens still retained some form of shelter—whether through state handouts from the socialist government, deeply discounted purchases from families fleeing the country, informal stacked ranchos, or occupation of abandoned properties.

    Most public housing units built by the ruling socialist party, which has held power for 27 years and is currently led by acting President Delcy Rodríguez, do not grant residents formal property deeds. Still, for many low-income families, these assigned homes offered a stability they had never known. Carlos Ortega, a local resident, lost 11 of his relatives when the public housing tower where they lived collapsed. The family had received the apartments more than a decade earlier, after a previous mudslide left them homeless. “It was their home, their house. It was an immense joy when they were assigned these houses here,” Ortega explained. “Imagine, they were given a home after losing everything, but now they’ve lost everything, even their lives.” Only one of Ortega’s siblings survived the collapse; his son, who worked at a nearby convenience store when the quake hit, remains missing more than a week after the disaster. As Ortega sifts through rubble looking for any trace of his family, a short distance away rescuers work through the wreckage of an upscale apartment building adjacent to a yacht club, where a military general’s wife waits for news of her husband and children.

    The policy of integrating low-income public housing into wealthy coastal neighborhoods predates Hugo Chávez’s 1999 rise to the presidency, but Chávez’s socialist movement expanded the strategy to gain political advantage, explained Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory of Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario. Building public housing in opposition-leaning wealthy neighborhoods diversified the local voter base, helping the ruling party maintain political control. But the signature Grand Housing Mission launched under Chávez, continued by former president Nicolás Maduro until his ouster by U.S. military intervention in January, carried a critical catch: no residents receive formal property ownership. “What Chavismo tries to do is maintain political dependence,” Rodríguez said. “That is, if at any point you turn against me and stop supporting me, then I’ll take away the roof I’ve given you.” This political arrangement leaves survivors particularly vulnerable now, as many have openly criticized the government’s slow and inadequate search-and-rescue response to the earthquake.

    To date, the Rodríguez administration has not released any timeline for long-term housing reconstruction or support for displaced survivors. Satellite analysis conducted by Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab estimates that at least 10,000 structures—roughly one-third of all buildings in Catia La Mar, a coastal city west of Caraballeda in La Guaira state—sustained damage. Decades of substandard construction, aging infrastructure and hazardous coastal geography left the entire region disproportionately exposed to damage from strong seismic activity.

    Today, thousands of survivors are living in makeshift tent camps set up in public parks and private parking lots across the affected region, each grappling with their own loss and uncertainty. In a Catia La Mar pharmacy parking lot, 68-year-old Benito Mantilla lives in a small tent after his privately owned home was destroyed. His wife fled to the Dominican Republic for safety, but Mantilla stayed to salvage what he can and look for work in Caracas, 40 minutes away; the earthquake also destroyed the car repair shop he co-owned with his brother. Not far from Mantilla’s tent, a woman whose daughter is a local ruling party organizer holds out hope the government will quickly assign her a new home. For 44-year-old Caryudedi González, who bought her working-class home at age 21 after years of hard work, the goal is not a new handout—she just wants to rebuild the half of her property that slid into a nearby ravine. “In many countries, it’s very difficult to own a home, and here, we work so hard to have what’s ours,” González said.

  • Zelensky to press Nato for air defence systems after intense Russian strikes

    Zelensky to press Nato for air defence systems after intense Russian strikes

    As a new wave of devastating Russian ballistic missile attacks has left dozens of Ukrainian civilians dead and key infrastructure damaged, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is heading to a NATO gathering in Ankara, Turkey, with a clear and urgent priority: convincing Western allies to deliver the large-scale air defense systems Kyiv desperately needs to fend off Moscow’s escalating aerial campaign.

    Zelensky’s appeal carries unprecedented urgency, coming just days after Russia launched two separate missile barrages on Kyiv that struck residential apartment blocks, claimed more than 50 civilian lives, and laid bare critical gaps in Ukraine’s current air defense network. During the most recent Monday attack, Ukrainian air defenses successfully intercepted nearly all incoming Russian drones, but failed to shoot down a single ballistic missile — a failure that exposes the dangerous shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles, the primary system capable of countering the high-speed weapons that travel at thousands of kilometers per hour.

    In a blunt, frustrated video address delivered on the eve of the summit, Zelensky condemned the slow pace of military production, calling it “absurd” that output has not been scaled up to meet the clear need to protect Ukrainian civilians from what he terms “ballistic terror.” He has repeatedly called on European NATO members to release their stockpiled Patriot missiles, arguing that stockpiling weapons while Ukrainian civilians die serves no strategic purpose. “Russia is placing its bets on ballistic weapons, and those who want peace must place their bets on protection against ballistic attacks,” Zelensky stated, laying out his core argument for allied leaders in Ankara.

    Beyond the urgent push for air defense, the Ankara summit will also give Zelensky a high-stakes opportunity to meet with former U.S. President Donald Trump, where he will make the case that Russia’s brutal current aerial offensive is actually a sign of weakness, not strength. Zelensky will argue that mounting Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian military and energy targets have severely strained Moscow’s capabilities, opening a narrow window of opportunity to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiations for a “dignified” peace that preserves Ukraine’s sovereignty.

    Over recent weeks, Ukraine has ramped up its deep-strike drone campaign, hitting targets hundreds of kilometers inside Russian territory with growing frequency and accuracy. Strikes have taken out key oil refineries across Russia, from western regions to as far east as Omsk in Siberia, 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, triggering widespread fuel shortages that have seen Russians queuing for hours to buy gasoline and even fighting over limited allocations. Drone strikes have also hit Moscow and St. Petersburg ahead of major Russian political events, and daily attacks on Russian-held Crimea have disrupted military logistics, energy infrastructure, and civilian supply chains, prompting local authorities to declare a state of emergency over widespread power, fuel, and food shortages. One local Crimean resident described the situation as “catastrophic,” comparing current conditions to the economic chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s — a direct rebuke of Putin’s core political claim that he pulled Russia out of post-Soviet chaos and restored national stability.

    NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has already echoed Zelensky’s call, urging alliance member states to “pull their weight” and deliver the military assistance Ukraine needs to defend its sovereignty. Rutte noted that Ukraine has already shifted the battlefield dynamic, stalling Russian ground advances in eastern Ukraine and gaining a critical upper hand through its deep-strike drone campaign.

    Despite this momentum, critical challenges remain. Patriot defense systems and interceptor missiles are in short supply globally, and it remains unclear how many additional systems Ukraine can secure even after Zelensky’s push. To address long-term gaps, Zelensky has also raised the possibility of Ukraine producing its own domestic equivalent of the Patriot system with NATO support.

    Moscow has framed Ukraine’s deep strikes as “terrorist” attacks, echoing the same language Russia has used for years to justify its own strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, including widespread winter attacks on power generation facilities that left millions without heat. For Zelensky, however, the drone campaign is a deliberate “influence campaign” designed to erode Russian public and political support for the war and force Putin to the negotiating table on terms acceptable to Kyiv — terms that do not include surrendering the entire eastern Donbas region, as Moscow continues to demand.

    Trump, who spoke with Putin for 90 minutes by phone earlier this week to hear the Russian leader’s perspective on the conflict, has recently signaled cautious support for Ukraine, adding uncertainty to the outcome of the upcoming meeting. For Kyiv, the summit comes as a critical moment: Ukrainian leaders aim to end the war before another harsh winter sets in, whether through continued military pressure or diplomatic negotiations. But Zelensky will make clear that to secure that outcome, Ukraine first needs the air defense capabilities to protect its people and cities from Russia’s intensifying missile terror.

  • ‘We were scared to die’: The West Bank workers hiding in bins to reach Israel

    ‘We were scared to die’: The West Bank workers hiding in bins to reach Israel

    It was a sweltering April day when 70 Palestinian laborers squeezed into the back of a garbage truck, crammed between rotting waste and heavy trash bags, all clutching one desperate hope: to slip undetected across the border into Israel for a day of work that could feed their families. Thirty-seven-year-old Majd, a resident of Beit Furik just south of Nablus who asked to protect his identity, was among them. The unmarked crossing did not go undetected — Israeli forces stopped the truck at a West Bank checkpoint within minutes. For more than two hours, the men were left trapped under piles of refuse in the scorching heat, as soldiers processed their case. “At the beginning when they stopped us, we were afraid to go to jail,” Majd told independent outlet Middle East Eye. “Then when it took longer to get out, we were scared to die.” When they were finally pulled out, all were taken into custody. Majd, who had no prior convictions, was released the next morning and forced to walk home past Israeli settlements.

    Majd’s terrifying journey is far from an isolated incident. It is the direct outcome of a cascading economic collapse in the West Bank triggered by Israel’s decision to revoke roughly 150,000 Palestinian work permits in the immediate wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks. As household savings evaporated over months of closures, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian breadwinners have been left with no option but to risk arrest, injury, or death to cross into Israel for informal work.

    This current crisis did not emerge overnight. It is the end result of decades of structured economic control that has left the West Bank uniquely vulnerable to collapse, analysts say. When Israel first occupied the West Bank, initial access to Israeli labor markets pushed wages up temporarily, but the decades that followed brought a deliberate process of “de-development” that stunted the growth of local Palestinian agriculture and industry, leaving the territory almost entirely dependent on Israeli labor and revenue streams.

    A 1984 United Nations report first documented this structural dependence: restrictions on local production, rigid controls on imports and exports, and the absence of a sovereign financial system eliminated most viable employment opportunities within the West Bank, forcing a growing share of the Palestinian workforce to commute to Israel for jobs. By the 1980s, one-third of all Palestinian workers were employed in Israel. To manage this flow of labor, Israel introduced a general exit permit system in 1972 that allowed relatively free movement for workers without case-by-case approval. That system was scrapped entirely in 1991, replaced by an individualized permit regime that shifted the default from free movement to requiring specific, often denied authorization. The completion of Israel’s separation barrier in the early 2000s further tightened control over movement, labor, and trade, according to Walid Habbas, an analyst with the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies.

    Israel has long weaponized this permit system as a political tool, freezing thousands of permits after Palestinian attacks and during the 2000–2005 Second Intifada. Economic control was further formalized during the Oslo Accords through the Paris Protocol, which gave Israel the authority to collect tariffs, purchase taxes, and VAT on goods imported to the West Bank on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). These funds, called clearance revenues, make up roughly 70 percent of the PA’s total annual income — and like the permit system, Israel has repeatedly withheld or delayed transfers as political leverage against the Palestinian leadership.

    “Treating the Palestinian economy as separate from Israel’s is misleading,” Habbas explained. “We are talking about a system in which Israel is dominating, and imposing severe restrictions in order to control and manage the Palestinians.”

    In the months before October 7, one-fifth of the West Bank’s entire labor force crossed into Israel for formal work. After the attacks, Israel pulled both of its core economic levers at once: it revoked all work permits and froze all clearance revenue transfers. The dual shock rippled through every corner of the West Bank economy, even hitting Palestinians who never worked in Israel, according to Misyef Misyef, an economist at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. “The private sector is suffering and cannot sell their product because the purchasing power of the family is now very low,” Misyef told Middle East Eye.

    Majd knows this collapse firsthand. For six years before the war, he worked construction in the Tel Aviv area, waking at 3 a.m. every day to cross the border and returning home each night. The work was exhausting, but it came with benefits, and he could save roughly half of his 7,000 to 8,000 shekel monthly wage to support his two children. Those savings kept his family afloat for the first year of the permit ban. When the money ran out, Majd had no local work options to fall back on. “I looked for jobs here [in the West Bank], and I couldn’t find anything,” he said. “When there is a pressure on you to provide, you have to think of a way.”

    He twice crossed the separation wall illegally to work in Israel for weeks at a time, but unpermitted crossings have grown far deadlier since the ban. Even before the war, an estimated 50,000 Palestinians worked in Israel without permits, but current far-right Israeli policies have encouraged deadly force against undocumented laborers. Around 50 Palestinian workers have been shot and killed during attempted crossings, and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has publicly stated that the shootings are “starting to bring the numbers down.” For his third attempt to cross, Majd opted for the garbage truck, after being told hiding in the trash would keep him out of sight of snipers. “No one sees you, so at least you don’t get shot,” he explained.

    Nearly three years after the permit ban was implemented, there is little sign of a full reversal. Israel has restored just 7,000 permits for workers in industries it deems critical, leaving more than 140,000 formal laborers unemployed. The unemployment rate in the West Bank has skyrocketed from 15 percent pre-crisis to 30 percent today — a level Misyef says is unprecedented in modern global economies. Widespread joblessness has pushed the poverty rate to more than double its pre-war level, jumping from 12 percent to 28 percent.

    Today, Majd and his family survive on the small income his father earns from a tiny herd of sheep, a far cry from the financially stable life they once had. Unsure if he will risk another crossing, Majd spends his days worrying about his children’s future. “What’s going to happen to them in the future? I am worried I am not able to provide what they need,” he said. “I am depressed from everything that happened. I have become like a dead body.”

  • Hamas decision to dissolve Gaza government is a nod to Trump, expert says

    Hamas decision to dissolve Gaza government is a nod to Trump, expert says

    In a calculated strategic move aimed at positioning itself as a cooperative partner in long-stalled Middle East peace efforts, Hamas has announced the dissolution of the Gaza Strip administration it has led for nearly 20 years, with regional experts framing the step as a deliberate signal to U.S. President Donald Trump that the group does not intend to block his flagging Gaza peace initiative.

    The official announcement came Monday, confirmed by Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Hamas’s government media office, in statements to Agence France-Presse. According to al-Thawabta, Mohammed al-Farra, leader of Hamas’s emergency governing committee, formally submitted his resignation and issued an order to dissolve the entire body to clear the way for an administrative handover to the newly established National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

    Hamas first seized governing control of Gaza in 2006, when the group won a majority of seats in Palestinian legislative elections and formed its own cabinet. The electoral victory quickly sparked open conflict between Hamas and its long-standing secular rival Fatah, leading to a bitter split of Palestinian territories: Hamas consolidated full control over Gaza, while Fatah retained authority through the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    Regional policy experts explain that this latest administrative shakeup is rooted in the terms of the 2025 ceasefire and peace framework brokered for Gaza by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, which was reached to end Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the enclave that has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians to date. The NCAG was created under that agreement as a body of independent Palestinian technocrats tasked with overseeing day-to-day civilian governance of Gaza in the post-conflict period. To date, the committee has operated out of Cairo, Egypt, having been blocked from entering the territory.

    Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Middle East Eye that Hamas’s decision is a clear message to the Trump administration that the group is not the barrier to progress on the peace plan — that title, he argues, belongs to Israel, which has continued lethal strikes and expansion in Gaza despite the signed ceasefire.

    “Instead of the Palestinian Authority, which has been far less willing to cede authority, Hamas has actually been more open to stepping away from civilian rule in Gaza to make way for the NCAG,” Elgindy noted, adding that while the move was widely expected among regional analysts, its strategic implications make it a notable development.

    Since the ceasefire agreement was signed, Israel has violated the terms repeatedly: more than 1,000 additional Palestinians have been killed in ongoing Israeli attacks, the Israeli government has severely restricted the entry of life-saving humanitarian aid into the blockaded enclave, and Israeli military forces have expanded their ground presence to occupy nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s total territory. The core agreement requires Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza in exchange for Hamas decommissioning its armed arsenal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated his intent to maintain permanent Israeli control over large swathes of the territory.

    Elgindo summarized Hamas’s core motivation for dissolving its administration simply: “Hamas wants to remove a pretext for Israel to continue attacking Gaza.”

    Trump’s U.S.-led “Board of Peace,” tasked with overseeing implementation of the peace plan, has so far refused to condemn Israel’s ongoing attacks and territorial seizures in Gaza. Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom has reported that the body is advancing a controversial plan to relocate Palestinians into tightly controlled “Hamas-free humanitarian zones” inside the enclave. Following Hamas’s announcement, the Board said it “took note” of the decision and called for all weapons in Gaza to be consolidated under NCAG control.

    For its part, the NCAG has confirmed it is fully prepared to assume civilian governance responsibilities as soon as the necessary conditions are met. “We affirm that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is fully prepared to assume its national responsibilities as soon as the necessary resources and capabilities are available,” Ali Shaath, the committee’s leader, wrote in a post on X. Shaath added that the foundational requirements for the committee to succeed are a single unified governing authority, a single legal framework with a clear mandate, and a single armed force under the control of that unified entity.

    Israeli officials responded to Hamas’s announcement by doubling down on their demand for the “complete demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip” — a demand that goes beyond the terms of the 2025 framework agreed by all parties. Elgindy pointed out that Hamas’s move allows the group to signal good faith participation in the peace process while putting off the most contentious issue of weapons decommissioning for later phases of negotiations. He added that Netanyahu has little incentive to end the conflict, regardless of Hamas’s concessions: “Netanyahu wants a permanent war, and the issue of Hamas’s weapons is the trickiest topic to resolve.”

  • Three tankers hit in latest attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, British military says

    Three tankers hit in latest attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, British military says

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A series of coordinated attacks targeting commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, has sent shockwaves through global maritime and geopolitical circles Tuesday, as Iran grapples with the state funeral of its longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed earlier in an ongoing regional conflict.

    The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a British military-run maritime security body, confirmed that three separate tankers were struck in attacks within the narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Two vessels were hit by projectiles in the early part of the day, while a third was targeted by a drone hours later. Officials confirmed no fatalities or serious injuries across all three incidents.

    Of the two initial projectile strikes, one liquefied natural gas tanker sailing off Oman’s coast caught fire following the impact. Iranian state television claimed the vessel ignored official warnings before the attack, but stopped short of directly claiming responsibility for the assault. Initial assessments indicate the second tanker sustained structural damage, though its exact location at the time of the strike has not been publicly disclosed. The third vessel hit by the drone only suffered minor damage and was able to continue its scheduled voyage after the attack, UKMTO added. No environmentally hazardous leaks have been reported from any of the damaged vessels, and local maritime authorities have launched a full investigation into the coordinated assaults.

    Qatari officials later identified the attacked LNG tanker as the Al Rekayyat, which was carrying Qatari natural gas through the strait. Majed Al-Ansari, spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, condemned the strike as an unacceptable violation of international navigation rules and global energy security, calling it a “serious and explicit violation” of international law. In a post on X, Al-Ansari said Qatar holds Iran fully legally responsible for the attack.

    The attacks come amid escalating tensions over shipping access in the strait, which historically carries roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil and natural gas in peacetime. Last Thursday, Iran’s joint military command issued an official warning requiring all tankers transiting the waterway to use only Tehran-approved shipping lanes, and threatened “rapid and decisive reaction” to any interference by U.S. forces in the area. Just one day before the attacks, the U.S. Navy-led multinational Joint Maritime Information Center reassured shipping companies that the expanded route along Oman’s coast remains open and safe for all commercial traffic.

    Negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which aim to secure full reopening of the strait, roll back Iran’s disputed nuclear program, and end the ongoing regional conflict that began on February 28, have been paused this week as Iran mourns Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike earlier this month. The 86-year-old supreme leader’s body was transported Tuesday to Qom, the holy center of Shiite seminary education, ahead of his final burial in his native Mashhad at the Imam Reza shrine. Massive crowds of hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered at Jamkaran Mosque just south of Qom to pay their respects, with many holding banners featuring images of Khamenei and his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has been named as the new supreme leader. The younger Khamenei has not appeared at public funeral events, and is widely believed to be in hiding after sustaining wounds in the same airstrike that killed his father. Israel, which has targeted top Iranian leaders throughout the ongoing conflict, has openly threatened to kill Mojtaba Khamenei as well. Many mourners chanted calls for the death of U.S. President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s processions.

    U.S. President Trump reignited tensions Monday during a White House appearance, warning Iran that it must “make a deal, or we’re going to finish the job.” “I’d rather make a deal, because I don’t want to affect 91 million people,” Trump said. “We can knock down their bridges in one hour. We can knock out their energy supply.”

    The current standoff over the strait stems from an interim 60-day truce deal that allowed commercial ships to transit the waterway without fees, but Iran has since insisted it retains the right to control shipping routes and impose passage fees – a move that upends decades of established open-access practice for the international waterway. The U.S. and a coalition of Gulf Arab states have rejected Tehran’s demand for tolls. Prior attacks on shipping in the strait have sparked U.S. retaliatory strikes in the past, worsening regional conflict.

    Despite the escalating tensions, data from shipping analytics firm Kpler shows that at least 108 commercial vessels crossed the strait via multiple routes over last weekend, indicating ongoing commercial activity even amid the standoff.

  • Jailers and officials at Russia’s ‘torture prisons’ in Ukraine exposed by BBC

    Jailers and officials at Russia’s ‘torture prisons’ in Ukraine exposed by BBC

    Three years of unthinkable captivity left 64-year-old Liudmyla Huseinova with permanent physical and emotional scars — and a relentless mission to see the men she accuses of brutal abuse held accountable for their actions. Her harrowing account, at the core of a new BBC World Service investigation, has helped unmask three alleged perpetrators who now live seemingly ordinary lives in Russia and occupied Ukraine, shedding rare light on a shadowy detention system that has operated beyond the reach of global justice for nearly a decade.

    Liudmyla’s nightmare began on an early October morning in 2019, when she left her home in Novoazovsk, a Donetsk region city that had fallen under Russian-backed paramilitary control after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Working as a safety engineer at a local poultry farm, Liudmyla had quietly supported Ukrainian forces and cared for local orphans under occupation; she believes a photo of a Ukrainian flag she shared with trusted friends tipped off separatist authorities, leading to her abduction. A group of masked men seized her bag, threw her into the back of a waiting car, and delivered her to Izolyatsia — a former factory and modern art centre that had been converted into one of the most notorious detention sites in the occupied region, where widespread accounts of torture have emerged from survivors for years.

    The first days inside Izolyatsia were defined by unrelenting cruelty and terror. Liudmyla recalls being surrounded by men who subjected her to dehumanizing verbal abuse immediately upon arrival. Detainees were forced to stand continuously from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day, and bright lights were kept on around the clock to prevent sleep. “I have never heard such terrible screams before,” she told the BBC, describing the constant sounds of abuse echoing through the facility’s walls. Two weeks after her arrival, she was taken to a second-floor room where the worst of her abuse unfolded. A man known to prisoners only as “Koval” sexually assaulted her, she says — while Yurii Temerbek, a former Ukrainian traffic policeman who had joined the Russian-backed separatists, stood by laughing and making sarcastic comments.

    The BBC’s investigation, carried out in partnership with two Ukrainian open-source investigators working with local non-profit Truth Hound, has confirmed Temerbek’s identity and uncovered his current circumstances. Now 56, Temerbek is a husband, father, and grandfather who studied Ukrainian language at university. Pre-2014 social media posts confirm he worked as a local traffic officer in the Donetsk region before joining the separatist Ministry of State Security (MGB). Ukrainian prosecutors have already launched criminal proceedings against him for participation in a terrorist group, and Liudmyla says he repeatedly threatened her during her captivity, including a late 2021 encounter where he called her a slur and threatened to send her to Siberia. Investigators found Temerbek and his family now reside in Russia’s Rostov region, just across the border from Ukraine, living an ordinary life far from the detention centre where he allegedly abused detainees.

    The investigation also unmasked a second Izolyatsia guard, known to prisoners as “Yermak”: 46-year-old Ruslan Yeriomichev, a law graduate from Donetsk National University who was first identified by investigative group Bellingcat and former Izolyatsia detainee and journalist Stanlislav Aseyev. Liudmyla says Yeriomichev once ordered her to eat uncooked food mixed with dirt and rubbish; when she spat most of it out, he beat her for refusing to comply after she answered “I’m for justice” to his question “Are you for Ukraine?”. The trauma of that incident still haunts her today: she cannot bear the smell of cooking food and struggles to maintain a normal diet. Social media posts show Yeriomichev still lives in occupied eastern Ukraine, taking family holidays in Russian-annexed Crimea and sharing photos of trips with friends and family as recently as 2024. Like Temerbek, he holds both Ukrainian and Russian citizenship, and faces multiple charges from Ukrainian prosecutors including cruel treatment of civilians and prisoners of war.

    Beyond the Izolyatsia case, the investigation mapped the full scale of the secret detention network run by Russian and Russian-backed forces across occupied Ukraine and Russia itself. Cross-referencing testimony from survivors, human rights reports, and open-source data, the BBC confirmed 93 active detention sites holding civilians and prisoners of war in occupied Ukraine between 2023 and 2025 — nearly a third of which are unofficial, operating out of repurposed buildings ranging from tax offices to hotels and private garages. An additional 102 detention sites were identified on Russian territory. None of these facilities have been open to unmonitored access by international human rights organizations.

    A second survivor, 42-year-old Kherson-based cargo sailor Oleksii Sivak, shared his own account of abuse to the BBC. After Russia captured Kherson in 2022, Oleksii quietly resisted occupation by cooking for elderly residents and distributing pro-Ukraine leaflets. He was arrested and taken to a former police station repurposed as a detention centre, where he says guards tortured him with electric shocks to the genitals and beat him with blunt objects. When Ukrainian forces retook Kherson in late 2022, Russian-backed forces fled the city, taking most detainees with them; Oleksii escaped only because the departing convoys did not have enough space to hold him.

    The BBC identified the commander of the Kherson detention facility as Andrey Spivak, a 40-year-old former prison guard from Russia’s Omsk region. Ukrainian prosecutors have charged Spivak with cruel treatment of civilians and violations of international war law. Investigators found Spivak has since returned to Omsk, where he works as a taxi driver and posts photos of his outdoor hobbies including fishing, hunting, and cross-country travel on social media.

    The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented that torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, and cruel treatment are systematic and widespread across this network of detention centres. Former detainees have consistently reported beatings, electric shock torture, mock executions, and sexual assault, and families of the detained are rarely given any information about their loved ones’ fates. Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office says more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been captured or disappeared since 2014, and over 400 cases of conflict-related sexual violence against detainees have been documented since Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed these allegations as biased and “groundless lies”, and added Russia to the UN’s global blacklist of countries accused of using sexual violence in conflict in 2024. When contacted by the BBC about the allegations against Temerbek, Yeriomichev, and Spivak, none of the three men responded. The Russian Embassy in London stated that Russia “consistently advocated respect for international law and the rule of law” and that all allegations of abuse are investigated.

    Liudmyla was released in a prisoner exchange in October 2022, three years and 13 days after her abduction. When she was welcomed home by friends, she found she could not cry: years of abuse had frozen her emotions, a condition she still lives with today in Kyiv, where she resides with her husband. She now runs a support organization for other female former detainees, and operates a secret network to deliver parcels from Ukrainian families to their loved ones still held in Russian-backed detention facilities.

    To date, Ukrainian prosecutors have opened proceedings against dozens of alleged abusers, but very few have been arrested. Most are convicted in absentia, and only one senior former Izolyatsia commander has been sentenced to prison in Ukraine. The Izolyatsia facility itself remains operational under Russian-backed control, according to Ukrainian authorities. For Liudmyla and other survivors, unmasking the identities of the men who abused them is a critical first step toward accountability. “If the men I accuse aren’t found and imprisoned, then justice for me will be their names as criminals, and torturers, will be known to their children,” she said. “For me, justice is not revenge. For me, justice is confirming that these people intentionally, deliberately did what they did. I want them to be punished by law.”