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On a Sunday in May 2026, a contingent of at least 199 Israeli ultranationalists carried out a deeply provocative incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, under the direct protection of Israeli police. During the raid, the group raised the Israeli national flag, sang the country’s national anthem, and multiple participants openly conducted Talmudic prayers — actions that directly violate long-standing agreements governing the holy site.

Al-Aqsa Mosque ranks as one of the most sacred sites in Islam, and its governance has been guided for decades by a globally recognized status quo arrangement. This binding international framework, widely accepted by major world powers, explicitly designates the entire mosque complex as an exclusively Islamic place of worship, where only Muslim followers may conduct religious rituals. While non-Muslim visitors are permitted limited access under specific conditions, all administrative, maintenance, and worship oversight falls to the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which operates under the custodianship of Jordan’s king, with Jordan holding formal protection responsibility for the site.

For years, however, Israel has faced growing international condemnation for systematically eroding this status quo. Successive Israeli governments, and particularly the hard-line administration led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that took office in 2022, have increasingly facilitated near-daily incursions by ultranationalist Jewish groups into the compound, allowing activities that were banned for decades to prevent regional unrest. For generations, Israeli leaders enforced restrictions on displays of the Israeli flag and formal Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa, out of explicit concern that such actions would ignite widespread violence across Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories. But ultranationalist factions, which openly advocate for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Jewish temple in its place, have pushed relentlessly to lift these restrictions, and Netanyahu’s government has largely capitulated to their demands.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency following Sunday’s incursion, Omar Rajoub, media department director for the Jerusalem Governorate, framed the action as part of a deliberate, state-backed campaign to reshape the identity of East Jerusalem. “Raising the Israeli flag inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with performing provocative rituals, is part of a systematic and deliberate official Israeli policy led by the extremist occupation government,” Rajoub stated. He added that these targeted practices are intended to forcibly impose new realities on occupied East Jerusalem, and fundamentally undermine the site’s centuries-old historical and legal status quo.

Rajoub warned that the repeated incursions by settlers and ultranationalists are a core component of an ongoing colonial project to Judaize Jerusalem and erase the city’s existing Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic religious and historical identity. He emphasized that these incursions, which are enabled and protected by Israeli security forces, amount to a clear violation of international law, and held the Netanyahu government fully accountable for any subsequent escalation of tensions in the region.

On the day of the incursion, Israeli police imposed additional strict restrictions on Palestinian worshippers seeking entry to the mosque, multiple witnesses confirmed. Several worshippers reported that their identity documents were seized by officers at the outer gates of the compound, barring them from accessing the site for worship. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf added that the Israeli settlers deliberately provoked on-site guards and worshippers by taking photos throughout the mosque courtyards, including in front of the iconic Dome of the Rock, one of the most recognizable and sacred landmarks in the city.

In the wake of the December 2024 lightning rebel offensive that toppled 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria, a quiet crisis over land ownership is unfolding in northern Hama, the historic core of Syria’s once world-leading pistachio industry, threatening to derail fragile efforts to build intercommunal peace.

The conflict traces back more than a decade to the earliest days of Syria’s civil war, when northern Hama’s pistachio-growing hills became a brutal frontline between regime forces and opposition factions. What were once scenic, multi-sectarian villages descended into sectarian bloodshed between majority Sunni communities, which made up most of the anti-Assad rebellion, and Alawis, the Shia offshoot sect to which Bashar al-Assad belonged. By the end of Assad’s rule, thousands of Sunni landowners had been displaced from their properties, while Alawi landholders fled en masse after the regime’s collapse, fearing retaliatory violence from returning rebels.

For Ahmed Ali, a former Syrian civil servant who lost his government job in 2019 for refusing mandatory military service on principle, the collapse of the Assad regime should have cleared the way for him to return to his 15-hectare family pistachio farm, a plot that has been in his family for more than half a century. Instead, Ali has become one of hundreds of landowners trapped in the messy new system of property administration implemented by the new Syrian government, led by former HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Ali’s story is familiar to many displaced landowners. When he returned to his property after Assad’s ouster, he found his former Alawi neighbor Karim al-Khattib occupying his home, after Khattib’s own property was destroyed in the fighting. Ali initially agreed to let Khattib stay in exchange for a share of the annual pistachio harvest, only to discover that the state-owned agricultural investment firm Iktifaa had seized control of his land, branding him an Assad-aligned “shabih” without providing evidence of any crime.

Khattib, who has signed a new contract with Iktifaa to farm Ali’s land for 2026, says he will vacate the property once he earns enough to replant his own destroyed pistachio orchard. Last year, a weak harvest worsened by Syria’s worst drought in decades yielded around $4,000, 60% of which went to Khattib, with the remaining 40% going to Iktifaa. Ali estimates his losses from 2025 alone top $50,000, and he has been blocked from even selling the land he has owned for decades.

Founded in 2021 through a merger of two Idlib-based agricultural firms active in former opposition-held territory, Iktifaa is now the central body managing “absentee lands” across most of Syria, under the oversight of the newly created Illicit Gains Committee. The committee, an extrajudicial body independent of Syria’s court system, is tasked with investigating ties to the former Assad regime and seizing assets from those linked to the old government. It is overseen by Abraham Succarieh, a Lebanese-Australian national who remains under Western sanctions over allegations of terrorism financing, and all revenue from seized assets flows to the Syrian state’s sovereign wealth fund.

During the war, Iktifaa and its predecessor firms managed lands owned by displaced Druze and Christian minorities in HTS-held Idlib. While those properties were returned between 2020 and 2023 as HTS sought to improve its standing with minority communities, many landowners reported they never received compensation for years of use of their property, with all revenue going to the former Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s pre-2024 governing body. Today, Iktifaa applies the same model to lands abandoned by displaced Alawis who fled after Assad’s fall.

Monzer Khattab, head of Iktifaa’s Hama and Homs branch, defends the firm’s approach, arguing that state oversight was necessary to prevent widespread land grabbing and chaos in the immediate aftermath of the regime’s collapse. He acknowledged that 2025 was a chaotic year, with much of the harvest in Hama and Homs stolen due to the firm’s limited capacity, but confirmed Iktifaa still earned between $1.5 million and $2 million in profits from the region last year, 90% of it from absentee lands. This year, the firm will deploy additional staff across all producing regions to monitor the upcoming June mid-harvest, he said.

But for displaced Alawi landowners who have already been cleared of any ties to the Assad regime, the system still leaves them locked out of their livelihoods. Ammar al-Aassad, an Alawi farmer from the northern Hama village of Maraiwid, received official clearance for his 29 dunam pistachio and olive orchard last month, but has still been unable to access his land. After a Bedouin faction occupied his property and Iktifaa signed a cultivation contract with the group, Aassad lost his entire 2025 harvest, with estimated losses of $40,000. He has yet to receive any compensation, and fears to return to his village even with official clearance: three days after Assad’s ouster, one of his Alawi neighbors who tried to return was killed by unknown assailants, and no other displaced Alawi residents have dared come back since.

“There should be evidence – the previous regime was oppressive, we don’t want oppression again,” Ali says of the current system.

Syrian provincial authorities in Hama acknowledge the growing tensions and say they are working to resolve the crisis. Hama Deputy Governor Hassan al-Hassan says the national presidency has issued formal directives supporting the return of displaced Alawis to their lands, and that new appeal offices linked to the Illicit Gains Committee will open in every province within weeks to allow landowners to challenge seizures. To resolve the immediate housing crisis that has displaced Sunnis and Alawis alike, the provincial council is planning to build temporary caravan housing for displaced Sunni farmers who returned to destroyed homes and now occupy abandoned Alawi properties.

“Our goal is to restore civil peace, and our thinking is that of a state and its institutions, not that of an armed faction. The state’s vision is that people return to their regions,” Hassan said, adding that priority must first go to Sunni farmers who returned after years of displacement to find their homes destroyed and trees uprooted. He gave no clear timeline for when full property returns would be completed.

Local intercommunal reconciliation committees, made up of both Sunni and Alawi community leaders, are already working to resolve disputes at the village level. Alaa Ibrahim, an Alawi landowner from Maan village who serves on one such committee, says his 138 dunam family property remains under Iktifaa control because his brother worked at an army-owned shoe factory, placing him under suspicion. With the 2026 harvest approaching, the Illicit Gains Committee has not issued a ruling on his case, and Ibrahim warns that if Alawi landowners are locked out of another harvest, the economic impact will be catastrophic for already vulnerable families, pushing many to sell their land at rock-bottom prices.

Ibrahim and other committee members are negotiating direct sharecropping contracts between Alawi landowners and their Sunni neighbors, while working to resolve long-running intercommunal violent disputes. If successful, he says, the agreements could pave the way for the safe return of displaced Alawis and ease sectarian tensions. If not, he warns, growing resentment will undermine the entire project of building post-war civil peace in Syria’s once-prosperous pistachio heartland.

In the late evening of April 26, an Egyptian-registered merchant vessel, the Sward, was boarded and seized by armed assailants just a few nautical miles off the shoreline of Somalia. The hijackers diverted the captured ship toward a mooring point near the port of Garacad in Puntland, the semi-autonomous regional state in northeastern Somalia. In the days following the initial seizure, additional hijacking personnel arrived aboard the Sward, accompanied by a negotiator brought in to coordinate ransom demands with the vessel’s ownership. As of the time of this report, the Sward and its crew remain fully under pirate control. This incident is far from an isolated attack: two additional commercial vessels, the Palau-flagged oil tanker Honour 25 and the Togo-flagged tanker Eureka, were hijacked in the same window and also redirected to the Puntland coast.

In recent weeks, Somali pirate factions have also seized multiple traditional ocean-going sailing vessels called dhows to repurpose them as “motherships.” These converted vessels allow pirate crews to stay at sea for extended periods, putting them in position to launch strikes hundreds of miles from the Somali coastline. This string of coordinated attacks has reignited widespread international concern that Somali piracy, a threat largely suppressed for more than a decade, is making a dangerous comeback.

To understand the gravity of the current resurgence, it is necessary to revisit the history of piracy in the region. Between 2005 and 2012, Somali pirate groups carried out more than 1,000 attacks on international commercial shipping, successfully hijacking 218 vessels and taking more than 3,700 sailors hostage. Over that period, shipowners paid an average of $50 million in annual ransom payments, while the cumulative economic cost of disrupted trade, increased insurance premiums, and expanded security measures reached as high as $18 billion per year for the global economy.

For more than a decade after that peak, Somali piracy was kept under control through a combination of armed private security on commercial vessels, coordinated international naval patrols, and targeted land-based development programs. However, the underlying structure of piracy was never fully dismantled: very few top pirate leaders were ever brought to trial, and the extensive onshore support and logistics networks that sustained the trade were never rooted out. Experts have long warned these networks were merely dormant, and the recent spate of hijackings suggests that warning was well-founded.

So is the old hijack-for-ransom business model poised for a full resurrection? Analysts point to three key factors that create fertile ground for a widespread return of piracy. First, piracy in Somalia has always been deeply tied to political instability. Academic research on the local dynamics of 2000s-era Somali piracy found that peaks in pirate activity consistently aligned with periods of constitutional crisis, political upheaval, and military conflict across the country. Today, Somalia is mired in just such a crisis: in March 2026, the federal federal government indefinitely postponed the scheduled 2026 general election without following legal protocol, and recently ordered the dissolution of the newly elected parliament of Somalia’s South West state, forcibly replacing its regional leadership. Additionally, Israel’s December 2025 recognition of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland has reshuffled regional alliances, pitting Arab states led by Saudi Arabia — which views Somali territorial integrity as critical to Red Sea and Gulf of Aden security — against the breakaway region. This pattern of political fragmentation mirrors the conditions that allowed piracy to flourish between 2005 and 2012, when regional elites in Puntland and south-central Somalia turned to pirate revenue to fund political and military campaigns. There is growing concern these elites could be tempted to revive the practice.

The second key driver is widespread economic desperation. Skyrocketing prices for food, fuel, and agricultural fertilizer, compounded by the Trump administration’s sudden elimination of U.S.-funded development and humanitarian programs, have created widespread hardship across Somalia. U.S. humanitarian aid to the country plummeted from $467 million in 2024 to just $70 million in 2025, with only $3 million in federal assistance disbursed in the first three months of 2026 alone. For many coastal communities, piracy is remembered as a reliable source of income: during the 2005-2012 peak, pirate groups distributed ransom revenue broadly across local communities to build onshore support, earning a reputation as generous employers for young people with few other economic options. With widespread poverty leaving many Somalis desperate for alternative income, pirate groups are finding a ready pool of new recruits.

Third, the strategic conditions for piracy are more favorable today than they have been in more than a decade. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing conflict with Iran, paired with Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, has forced thousands of merchant vessels bound for Europe to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope — a path that runs directly along the length of the Somali coast, bringing a flood of new targets within pirate reach. At the same time, the risk to pirates has dropped sharply: most of the international naval vessels that previously patrolled the Somali basin have been redeployed to the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz to address other security threats. This leaves pirates free to operate from hijacked motherships for weeks without detection or intervention. Compounding this, rising operational costs have led many smaller shipping lines to cut back on expensive counter-piracy measures, such as traveling at the high speeds needed to outrun pirate skiffs or hiring armed private security teams. While armed security has proven an effective deterrent, vessels that cannot afford these protections are extremely vulnerable to hijacking.

Looking ahead, the near-term trajectory of Somali piracy will depend heavily on the outcome of the current round of hijackings. Pirates depend on ransom payments to reinvest in their operations and attract new recruits to their performance-based, no-win no-fee contracts. If shipowners meet the hijackers’ demands — including the $10 million ransom the group has demanded for the Eureka — the quick payoff will incentivize more attacks and raise risk for all shipping in the region. Marine insurers could respond by reclassifying the Somali Basin as a high-risk area, as they did in 2008, which would drive shipping away from the coast and push up consumer costs across global supply chains. Unlike the 2010s, no major global power or international alliance currently has the political will or capacity to deploy a large-scale counter-piracy naval mission on the scale seen in 2011 and 2012, when the international community spent more than $1 billion annually on patrols off Somalia.

Experts emphasize that while piracy appears as a maritime security problem, a permanent solution will require addressing its root causes on land. Rather than relying exclusively on naval enforcement, investing in infrastructure to boost regional trade and inclusive local economic development offers a more sustainable long-term path to suppressing piracy. The cumulative economic damage of higher trade costs and large-scale naval operations far outweighs the limited benefits pirate activity brings to local Somali communities, making targeted onshore investment a far more cost-effective solution for the international community.

On a midday Sunday in Shan State, northeastern Myanmar, just kilometers from the Chinese border, a catastrophic detonation of improperly stored mining explosives ripped through Kaungtup village in Namhkam Township, leaving dozens dead and scores injured. By Monday, more than 14 rescue and charitable organizations had deployed heavy excavation equipment to comb through the blast site, recovering fragmented remains as teams worked to finalize an accurate casualty count.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the ethnic rebel organization that controls the Namhkam region, released an official statement Monday evening updating the death toll to 43, including seven young children. Earlier preliminary estimates from first responders had fluctuated between 38 and 45 fatalities, with the extreme force of the explosion turning many bodies to fragments making exact accounting a grueling, complicated process. The group added that 112 people were hurt in the incident, 25 of whom are children, and 37 remain in critical condition—leaving emergency responders bracing for the death toll to climb in the coming days. Rescue operations and casualty data compilation are still ongoing, the statement confirmed.

The incident has thrown a harsh spotlight on Myanmar’s sprawling, largely unregulated mining sector, which operates across resource-rich territories mostly controlled by armed ethnic groups locked in long-running sporadic conflict with the national military government. Unregulated extraction operations have seen frequent deadly accidents, including repeated catastrophic landslides at mining sites across the country in recent years.

According to the TNLA, the blast originated from stockpiles of gelignite, a common explosive used for small-scale mining and stone quarrying operations in the region. While gelignite is standard for industrial extraction, it becomes dangerously unstable over time when it is not stored following correct safety protocols. Shockingly, none of the roughly 200 households that call Kaungtup village home were ever notified that large quantities of explosive materials were being stored in their community. An official investigation into the exact root causes of the detonation remains ongoing.

Local residents told the Associated Press that silicon ore mines, which supply raw material for semiconductor manufacturing, solar panel production, and aluminum alloys, operate in the mountainous terrain roughly 10 miles southwest of Namhkam town. Speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for their personal safety, the residents claimed these mines are jointly run by the TNLA and Chinese business partners, and are closed off to most local residents. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify this claim.

Myanmar’s extractive industry is one of the world’s largest suppliers of rare earth elements, copper, tin, and high-value precious gems including jade and rubies, with nearly all extracted materials sent to China for processing and refining. China maintains a complex diplomatic and economic position in Myanmar: it is a key strategic ally of the military-led government that seized power in the 2021 coup, while also maintaining open ties to the country’s ethnic minority armed groups.

Following the blast, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian issued a statement of deep condolences, confirming that one Chinese national was injured in the incident and is currently receiving medical care. Beijing has also offered to provide assistance to help manage the aftermath of the explosion.

The TNLA, a core member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance anti-military coalition, seized full control of the Namhkam region in late 2023 during a large-scale offensive against the military government. This offensive is part of the wider nationwide unrest that followed the February 2021 military coup, which ousted the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and sparked widespread armed resistance across the country. Though the TNLA signed a China-brokered ceasefire with the military government at the end of 2023, peace in the border region remains fragile. Control of mineral and gem extraction operations is a critical source of revenue for both the national military government and the ethnic armed groups opposing it, fueling continued low-level conflict and unsafe operating conditions for workers and nearby communities.

In a landmark move that escalates international scrutiny of Israeli actions against aid workers, Australian participants in the Global Sumud Flotilla bound for blockaded Gaza have joined a formal legal submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, detailing allegations of systemic sexual assault, torture, and inhumane treatment while they were held in Israeli captivity. The 2026 spring flotilla mission, organized by the Global Sumud Flotilla group, aimed to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, an enclave that has faced repeated Israeli military actions and a years-long air, land and sea blockade that has restricted the flow of most civilian and aid supplies. According to an official statement from the flotilla organizing committee, the ICC filing includes comprehensive evidence: firsthand survivor testimonies, independent medical examination reports, and sworn legal affidavits from detainees.

Israeli military forces intercepted the aid flotilla in international waters, abducted the 430 participating activists, held them in Israeli detention facilities, and ultimately deported all detainees to Istanbul, Turkey. Video footage captured upon the activists’ arrival in Istanbul showed them exiting planes in grey prison tracksuits, wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and raising their fists in defiance as they were reunited with waiting family members and supporters. It was immediately after this release that detainees began sharing graphic accounts of their treatment: they reported being fired on with rubber bullets during the interception, brutally beaten throughout detention, and subjected to repeated sexual assault while in Israeli custody.

The legal submission formally alleges that the interception, detention, and abuse of flotilla participants amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, and repeated violations of international humanitarian law. Flotilla organizers emphasize that the evidence they have presented directly contradicts the official public narrative released by Israeli officials about how detainees were treated. “The Israeli Ambassador looked Australian families in the eye and said our people were treated with great sensitivity,” said Subhi Awad, a lead organizer for the Global Sumud Flotilla, in an official statement. “Our people were beaten. Our people were tortured. Our people suffered sexual violence.” Awad added that the Australian public is fully entitled to full and transparent answers about how their citizens were treated by Israeli authorities.

Local Australian media has confirmed that Australian lawyer Bernadette Zaydan is part of the legal team presenting the evidence to the ICC. Among the most disturbing new allegations is the claim that one Australian humanitarian worker was forcibly injected with an unidentified chemical substance while in Israeli custody. “Neither the survivor nor the Australian public has been told what the substance was, why it was administered, or what the potential health consequences may be,” Awad explained.

This ICC submission comes at a moment of heightened global attention to allegations of Israeli sexual violence in conflict: the United Nations has formally added Israel to its official blacklist of actors credibly accused of sexual violence in conflict zones, following a years-long investigation that included multiple documented reports from independent human rights organizations and media outlets, including Middle East Eye, that documented allegations of rape and other forms of sexual assault committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian people starting in October 2023. Israel’s Jerusalem Post, which was the first outlet to publicly report on the UN listing, confirmed that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) will be named specifically in the 2026 updated blacklist, while other Israeli security and state bodies remain under active monitoring for potential future inclusion.

Additional controversy emerged after Israel’s far-right Interior Minister Itamar Ben Gvir publicly posted footage of himself taunting detained flotilla activists inside an Israeli holding facility. The video and accompanying images show more than 100 handcuffed activists forced to crouch on the floor of the facility, while Israeli guards manhandled some detainees and waved Israeli flags directly in their faces. The footage drew immediate unified condemnation from the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, and Canada.

Australian detainee Juliet Lamont, one of the Australian activists involved in the mission, has publicly criticized Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for refusing repeated requests from the survivors for a meeting following their return to Australia. “Australian survivors have travelled halfway around the world seeking justice through international legal processes. Yet the prime minister will not even meet with them,” Lamont said in a statement. “If Australian survivors can be heard in The Hague but not in Canberra, something has gone badly wrong.” The 11 Australian participants confirmed to be part of the mission are Neve O’Connor, Juliet Lamont, Zack Schofield, Surya McEwen, Sam Woripa Watson, Anny Mokotow, Bianca Pullman Webb, Ethan Floyd, Violet Coco, Gemma O’Toole and Helen O’Sullivan.

Israeli officials have pushed back against all allegations: the country’s foreign ministry has claimed the flotilla operated on behalf of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, labeled the entire aid mission a deliberate provocation against Israel, and repeated Israel’s long-standing claim that Gaza is already “flooded with aid.” For their part, the Global Sumud Flotilla has reiterated its call for fully independent international investigations into all the allegations of abuse, and for full legal accountability for any officials and personnel found responsible for the violations documented in the ICC submission.

After a 14-year collaborative partnership, UK-headquartered Sky has formally exited its co-ownership of pan-regional Arabic-language broadcaster Sky News Arabia, ceding all strategic and operational control to its United Arab Emirates-based co-founder International Media Investments (IMI). The transition, announced Sunday, includes a multi-year brand licensing arrangement that will allow the broadcaster to retain its existing Sky-branded identity going forward.

The original partnership between Sky and IMI dates back to 2010, when the two entities laid the groundwork for a new 24-hour Arabic news outlet designed to challenge established regional players across the Middle East and North Africa. Sky News Arabia launched its official broadcast in 2012, entering a competitive landscape long dominated by Doha-based Al Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya. No financial details of the full ownership transfer deal have been made public.

In an official statement marking the transition, David Rhodes, Executive Chairman of Sky News Group, framed the handover as a natural next step for the broadcaster. “The time is right for this change and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the next phase of Sky News Arabia,” Rhodes said, adding that the group was proud of the platform built through its collaboration with IMI and viewed the ownership shift as a natural progression for the outlet’s development.

IMI, a major Abu Dhabi-based media investment firm controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Vice President and owner of the Manchester City Football Club, echoed this framing in its own comments. The company emphasized that the full ownership transfer reflects how Sky News Arabia has grown into a fully mature regional media institution, and that sole control will position the outlet to pursue accelerated expansion and innovative editorial development.

However, the ownership restructuring comes on the heels of significant public scrutiny over Sky News Arabia’s editorial coverage of the ongoing civil conflict in Sudan. In November last year, former senior Sky executives based in the UK told The Daily Telegraph that the outlet had devolved into a mouthpiece for UAE leadership, failing to provide accurate, independent reporting on atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary group that UN-appointed international investigators have found targeted ethnic minority communities in Darfur.

While the UAE government has repeatedly denied allegations of backing the RSF, independent outlet Middle East Eye has published extensive on-the-record reporting documenting the UAE’s support, citing a wide range of evidence including satellite imagery, flight logs, weapons serial numbers and multiple anonymous and named sources inside the region. In the same November that the original allegations emerged, Sudan’s transitional government formally banned Sky News Arabia from operating within the country’s borders, after the outlet published a report from El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, that claimed security conditions in the conflict-torn city were stabilizing.

The Guardian later reported that top executives at Sky’s UK headquarters had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the outlet’s editorial choices, particularly around how it framed the Sudan conflict. The newspaper also noted that Sky News Arabia had published multiple pieces questioning the credibility of evidence collected by international investigators and conflict survivors documenting RSF atrocities.

In February of this year, a UN-mandated independent fact-finding mission concluded that actions carried out by the RSF and its allied militias across parts of Sudan carry the clear “hallmarks of genocide.” Shortly after this UN report was released, Sky News Arabia deployed veteran correspondent Tsabih Mubarak Khatir to cover El Fasher – a move that drew widespread criticism after it was revealed Khatir is married to a senior RSF official. Video footage from the trip later showed Khatir embracing a high-profile female RSF commander who had previously publicly called on RSF fighters to rape Darfuri women, telling the commander, “we are with you.”

A month later, a major joint investigation by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab and NASA’s Harvest programme confirmed that the RSF has carried out a deliberate campaign of mass starvation against civilian populations in El Fasher, destroying dozens of farming villages and wiping out nearly all crop production in the area surrounding the besieged city.

IMI has repeatedly maintained that its ownership negotiations with Sky were rooted in purely commercial considerations, and were unrelated to any disputes over editorial policy. When contacted by Bloomberg News for additional comment following Sunday’s announcement, an IMI spokesperson declined to provide any statement beyond the company’s official release, while Sky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.