分类： world

A Chinese restaurant operating for eight years in Seongnam, a satellite city just south of Seoul, South Korea, has been the target of a deliberate attack that has drawn cross-border law enforcement attention. According to local police announcements on Tuesday, the Xi Jinping-named eatery was stormed by four masked attackers in the early hours of September 24. The perpetrators smashed the restaurant’s interior furniture and sprayed lacquer across the premises, causing extensive property damage, before fleeing the country immediately after the incident.

Surveillance camera footage retrieved from the restaurant’s security system clearly captured the entire process of the attack, which police have used to identify key characteristics of the suspects. Authorities confirmed the four suspects are Chinese citizens aged between 20 and 40, and after carrying out the vandalism, they returned to China, with investigators tracing their routes to Shanghai and Yantai, a coastal city in Shandong Province. South Korean police announced this Tuesday that they are preparing to submit an application to Interpol for red notices for the four suspects. It should be noted that red notices are not formal international arrest warrants, but global requests to law enforcement agencies in all member states to locate and temporarily detain the individuals involved, pending extradition procedures.

The restaurant owner, in an interview with local Korean media outlet The Chosun Daily, clarified that he chose the name Xi Jinping for the establishment purely out of a desire to build it into the top-rated Chinese restaurant in South Korea, with absolutely no political motivation behind the naming. The eatery, which mainly offers a variety of authentic Chinese cuisines while also adding a small selection of popular Korean dishes to its menu, has maintained a good reputation among local diners, holding an average 4 out of 5 star rating on Google reviews.

However, over the past 12 months, the owner has been facing constant pressure to change the restaurant’s name. The first wave of intense demands came in August last year, when it was announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping would attend the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit hosted in South Korea. During that period, the owner received dozens of phone calls demanding a name change, and even received offers of large sums of money from individuals claiming to run businesses in China, who insisted on purchasing the right to rename the restaurant and repeatedly pressed for an agreement.

In April of this year, an anonymous individual filed an official complaint with South Korea’s Ministry of Intellectual Property over a signature menu item named “Xi Jinping Special Rice”. After a formal review, the ministry found no violation of relevant regulations and closed the case without any penalties or mandatory changes. This latest vandalism attack, however, is the most severe incident of harassment the restaurant has encountered over the past year. The owner estimated that the total property damage from the attack amounts to approximately 15 million South Korean won, equivalent to around 11,100 U.S. dollars or 8,400 British pounds.

Following the attack, the restaurant closed for five days to repair damage and clean the premises, and officially resumed business this Tuesday. After the attack, the owner stated that his operation team is now seriously considering changing the restaurant’s name to avoid further similar harassment and safety threats.

Dramatic new footage has emerged capturing the exact moment a multi-story municipal government building collapsed into a rushing river in western Nepal, as widespread flooding continues to wreak havoc across the Himalayan nation. The structure, which served as the main municipality office for the district of Baglung, was left teetering precariously on an eroded riverbank for hours after days of heavy rain swelled local waterways and eroded the soil supporting the building’s foundation.

Witnesses and local emergency responders reported that the structure began leaning noticeably on Saturday as floodwaters surged through the region, carving away large chunks of the riverbank that the building had stood on for decades. By the time the collapse occurred, local authorities had already evacuated the area, clearing all personnel and civilians from the danger zone, and no injuries or casualties have been reported in connection with the incident.

Nepal has faced repeated extreme weather events in recent years, with climate change driving more intense monsoon seasons that trigger widespread flooding and landslides across the country’s hilly terrain. This collapse is just the latest high-impact event linked to the ongoing flood crisis that has displaced thousands of residents, destroyed critical infrastructure, and disrupted travel across multiple districts this monsoon season. Local officials have confirmed that they are now assessing the full scope of the damage and planning for long-term mitigation efforts to protect other at-risk structures along the region’s vulnerable riverbanks.

In the hours after five men were arrested near a U.S. Air Force base in rural England early Sunday morning, the story looked like a major counterterrorism success: authorities had narrowly foiled a large-scale planned attack against an American facility on British soil, one linked to foreign aggression. Within 24 hours, however, that narrative had completely unraveled, leaving behind a tangled web of contradictory claims from U.S. and UK officials, political opportunism, and ongoing uncertainty about what really unfolded.

The arrests took place near RAF Fairford, a British Royal Air Force base that has recently hosted U.S. bombers that launched strikes against Iranian missile sites. Following the detentions, multiple media outlets cited early police and intelligence suggestions that three vans seized near the base held barrels containing homemade explosives, indicating a pre-planned bomb plot against the installation.

In response to the perceived threat, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham called an emergency COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) meeting on Monday afternoon to assess the situation and coordinate the government’s response. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was quick to seize on the incident to advance his longstanding political agenda, claiming the alleged plot proved his argument that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) should be designated a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK. He repeated unsubstantiated claims he had made earlier this year that the Iranian regime was smuggling operatives into Britain via small boats crossing the English Channel, claiming British authorities were allowing individuals who would carry out lethal attacks to enter the country.

U.S. officials also quickly embraced the narrative of a joint counterterrorism success. Former U.S. President Donald Trump released a statement Sunday hailing the collaborative effort between U.S. and British law enforcement, claiming the men had been under surveillance for a long time and that the operation had prevented “big damage” to the American base. “We had them under view for a long time, and we got them,” Trump said, praising the partnership with British authorities.

But that narrative of a foiled major terrorist attack began to crumble just hours after it first circulated. Investigations revealed that all five arrested men are British nationals in their twenties, not foreign operatives as Farage and some U.S. commentators had speculated. All five were subsequently released on police bail without being brought before a judge, a step that former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal noted strongly suggested they were not facing credible terrorism suspicions.

Farage refused to backtrack from his claims, however, taking to social media platform X to question why the five suspects were granted bail while anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas—known publicly as Danny Tommo, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal damage for allegedly slashing a migrant dinghy in the English Channel—remains in custody. He decried what he called a “two-tier” system of justice in Britain.

Further contradicting early claims of an explosives plot, authorities confirmed Monday afternoon that tests of the materials in the three white vans found no viable explosive devices. Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) said officers were still pursuing multiple lines of inquiry, including the possibility the activity was linked to proxies acting, knowingly or unknowingly, on behalf of a foreign state. But senior Whitehall officials pushed back against the U.S. claim of a long-running intelligence-led operation, noting that the arrests were not part of a pre-planned tracking operation involving CTP and MI5, contradicting Trump’s assertion that the men had been under surveillance for an extended period.

Even after the suspects’ release, Trump doubled down on his original claims, saying he was surprised by the bail decision and insisting “We know everything about them, we would not have released them.” He reaffirmed that U.S. and UK authorities had worked “very closely” on the case. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also maintained the severity of the incident, saying over the weekend that the situation was “very serious” and “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor.”

Iran’s embassy in London was quick to condemn the unsubstantiated speculation linking the country to the incident, calling the claims “unfounded and malicious” and arguing that they only served to fuel anti-Iranian propaganda in the UK. Prime Minister Burnham has urged the public and media to avoid jumping to conclusions, saying “people should not speculate while the authorities establish the full facts.”

Despite the prime minister’s call for caution, the British public is now left with two starkly conflicting narratives about what transpired near RAF Fairford. Official UK sources have walked back nearly all early claims of a foiled major terrorist plot, while senior U.S. officials continue to stand by their original characterization of the incident as a successfully disrupted large-scale attack linked to foreign actors. As investigations continue, the full truth of the incident remains far from clear.

Twenty-three years after a US-led invasion toppled former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the United States has finalized the full withdrawal of all its military forces from Iraqi territory, marking a historic turning point for a nation shaped by decades of foreign intervention and internal conflict.

The Iraqi government has framed the departure as a long-awaited restoration of full national sovereignty after more than two decades of direct American military presence. In an official statement, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi declared October 1, 2025 will stand as a new milestone in Iraq’s modern history: a day when the nation is finally cleared of all foreign military forces, and full sovereign control over its territory is formally secured.

However, Zaidi’s claim of a complete end to foreign military presence overlooks a lingering deployment from neighboring Turkey, which continues to maintain troops in northern Iraq. Even so, Ankara has committed to transferring control of its Bashiqa-Zilkan military base near the city of Mosul back to Iraqi authorities in the near future.

The US withdrawal, which met its September 30 deadline, was originally linked to a core precondition: the full disarmament of unregulated extra-governmental armed groups that have emerged as some of the most powerful political and military actors in Iraq since Saddam’s ousting. Last week, however, Zaidi announced a revised timeline, pushing the final deadline for these groups to disarm or integrate under direct state control to June 30, 2027. Many of the most powerful factions maintain close financial and ideological ties to Iran, and the three largest groups – Kataeb Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada – have already publicly rejected the demand to lay down their arms.

Hamzeh Hadad, a visiting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, explained that there is a split among the factions over integration. “There is a realistic prospect for several armed groups to disarm and integrate within the state, some have already made it public that they are willing to do so and that is because their leaders see a political future for themselves,” Hadad noted. “For the other armed groups, they have a different raison d’être, which is fighting for Iran’s political vision throughout the region. Therefore, they see no reason to disarm or integrate, and so the Iraqi state will have a more difficult time addressing them.”

Most of Iraq’s numerous paramilitary groups formed in 2014, following a call from prominent Shia religious leader Ali Sistani to mobilize against the rapid expansion of the Islamic State (IS) across northern and western Iraq. That same year, US forces returned to Iraq – a decade after their initial full withdrawal in 2011 – to support the campaign against IS. But the most powerful factions predate the IS conflict, and while they are formally part of the state-aligned Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi), they operate as independent entities loyal primarily to Iran. In the decades since Saddam’s overthrow, these groups have embedded themselves into nearly every layer of Iraqi society, building deep ties to the national political establishment, military establishment, and transnational organized crime networks. During the US-led occupation and the war against IS, the factions have been linked to widespread human rights abuses, including the killing, kidnapping, and torture of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and they played a key role in suppressing the 2019 pro-democracy Tishreen protest movement. In recent months, several of these groups have organized under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to launch attacks on US and Israeli assets in the region in response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

Despite Prime Minister Zaidi’s public pledges to bring the unregulated groups under state control, widespread skepticism remains about Baghdad’s ability and willingness to rein in the powerful factions. “I’m not optimistic about that honestly, the situation in Iraq is very complicated,” said Ali al-Bayati, former Commissioner of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, who also warned that the US could easily reinsert military forces into Iraq in the future, just as it did in 2014. Now based in Switzerland after facing repeated threats and harassment for his work exposing human rights violations linked to armed factions, Bayati argued that the outsized power of the groups today is rooted in long-standing failures of the US-led mission after 2003.

“The US-led international mission, yes, overthrew Saddam, and helped to establish a democratic constitution, but they failed to establish real democratic institutions,” Bayati explained. “They fought IS and prevented its expansion in Iraqi territories and stopped its crimes, but the important question is why IS controlled a third of Iraq and the militias [had to be] formed? The answer is simple – they failed to form professional security and military institutions in spite of huge budgets.”

For the Iran-aligned armed factions and their supporters, the US withdrawal is a moment of long-awaited victory. Organizers have issued a public call on social media for Iraqis to gather outside the PMF’s Media Directorate this week to mark the exit with what they are calling the “first annual festival” of liberation. “We invite you to attend to commemorate this occasion, which has come about through the blessing of the blood of the martyrs, the patience of the mujahideen in the Iraqi Islamic Resistance, and their steadfastness in the field,” the invitation read.

But the departure of US forces comes at a moment of escalating regional tension, as the conflict between Israel, the US and Iran intensifies across the Middle East. Washington has ramped up pressure on the Iraqi government to crack down on Iran-aligned factions, and last week US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iraq faces the risk of “Balkanization” if it fails to consolidate state control over all armed groups. The US has also repeatedly intervened to discourage Baghdad from strengthening or expanding diplomatic and economic ties with Tehran.

Iraqi human rights activist Hisham al-Mozani, of the Baghdad-based Al-Amal Association, warned that a rushed push to disarm the factions could plunge the country back into large-scale internal conflict. “For the army and security forces maybe they will have clashes with the militias and that’s a very, very dangerous thing – it will affect the economy, affect security in all of Iraq,” al-Mozani told Middle East Eye. He estimated that even if the process of disarmament and integration begins immediately, it will take roughly five years to complete, noting that many of the factions have deep roots in Iraqi politics stretching back to the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. “Some of these militias are more than 40 years old, since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, so they’ve had a long time and they’re in the political parties, are present in the parliament and some of them are in the ministries,” al-Mozani said, adding that any final resolution will ultimately require approval from Iran, the key backer of the most powerful factions.

Overnight between Monday and Tuesday, a coordinated wave of violent unrest carried out by dozens of Israeli settlers spread across multiple locations in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, leaving Palestinian property destroyed and families displaced once again, just hours after a court-ordered return to their seized land.

The most high-profile incident unfolded shortly after midnight in the village of Jalud, located south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, where roughly 100 settlers launched a targeted raid on properties belonging to the Toubasi Palestinian family. The Toubasi family had originally been forced to abandon their land in July, after repeated incursions by settlers intent on seizing their home. In a rare ruling, an Israeli court had ordered the Israeli military to guarantee the family’s safe return to their property — and the family had only been back for several hours when the large group of settlers arrived.

By the time the violence ended, the settlers had set ablaze two separate homes owned by members of the Toubasi family, forcing the entire clan to flee their land for a second time. Mahmoud Toubasi, one of the property owners, told reporters that when he was eventually able to return to assess the damage, his family was stunned by the scale of the destruction. He confirmed that the fire had completely gutted the home, destroyed all of the family’s belongings, and left the structure completely uninhabitable.

Multiple local media reports indicate that when Israeli military forces finally arrived at the scene, they did not take action to halt the settler attack. Instead, witnesses claim troops provided a security cordon for the settlers, and the Toubasi family was ultimately forced to evacuate their property at gunpoint. The Israeli army later reported that clashes broke out between troops and some settlers as forces attempted to disperse the large crowd. Army officials confirmed that three officers were injured after settlers blocked local roads, ignited tire fires, and threw rocks at responding troops.

Israeli political leaders have publicly condemned the violence between settlers and troops, but notably failed to address the attacks on Palestinian people and property. President Isaac Herzog described the intra-settler clashes as a “moral stain and an attack on the rule of law and our most basic values as a nation”, but made no mention of the displacement of the Toubasi family or the destruction of their homes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that framing, arguing that the “small number of rioters does not represent the law-abiding settler community” and also omitted any reference to the violence targeting Palestinians.

The violence in Jalud was not an isolated incident. Across the occupied West Bank, other settler attacks were reported overnight. In the village of al-Mughayyir, located northeast of Ramallah, settlers set fire to a Palestinian home and multiple civilian vehicles. Large groups of settlers also entered Beitunia and the Jaryout Road west of Ramallah under Israeli military protection, where local sources report they attacked passing Palestinian vehicles, stoned cars, and instilled widespread fear among local civilian residents.

In occupied East Jerusalem, the violence spilled over into the Old City, where dozens of settlers assaulted two Palestinian men near the Damascus Gate late Monday. Graphic footage of the attack, which showed Israeli youth pushing the two men to the ground and repeatedly kicking them, was later shared publicly on social media. The attack came as thousands of Israelis gathered in and around the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, including areas adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, to mark the Jewish religious holiday of Sukkot. Israeli forces imposed sweeping restrictions on Palestinian residents ahead of the holiday, ordering dozens of Palestinian-owned shops to close and forcing local residents to remain confined to their homes to make way for Jewish religious processions through the Old City’s narrow alleyways.

Settler violence against Palestinian communities has been a persistent reality for residents of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for decades, but international monitors and humanitarian groups have recorded a dramatic, sustained surge in attacks since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Today, settlers carry out near-daily attacks targeting Palestinian towns and villages, including arson, property vandalism, physical assault, and efforts to forcibly displace Palestinian communities from their land. Humanitarian data shows that most of these attacks take place under explicit military protection from Israeli forces. Since October 2023, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in attacks and unrest in the occupied West Bank alone.

Earlier this year, the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory labeled the escalation in settler violence “unprecedented and sustained”, and concluded that the Israeli government actively enables these attacks through financial backing, logistical support, and ongoing military protection. “Violence by settlers is the direct outcome of Israeli policies that support, enable and protect their actions,” explained Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission.

Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirms the steep upward trend in attacks. Between the start of January and 14 September of this year, OCHA recorded more than 1,600 separate settler attacks that resulted in Palestinian casualties, damage to Palestinian property, or both. That works out to an average of 6.7 attacks per day, up from five attacks per day in 2025, when 1,836 total attacks were recorded for the full year. Annual totals have risen steadily year over year: 1,500 attacks were recorded in 2024, compared to 1,291 in 2023, and just 853 in 2022.

A years-long human rights case centered on the extradition of a Bahraini opposition activist has drawn new international pressure on Serbia, after the Council of Europe demanded the Balkan nation fully implement a landmark European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that found Serbia violated fundamental human rights protections.

The case traces back to November 2021, when Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini activist who fled his home country amid a 2011 government crackdown on Arab Spring protests and had been living in exile in Iran, arrived in Serbia to apply for asylum. He was taken into custody shortly after arrival based on an Interpol red notice that his legal team has long argued was issued improperly.

By January 2022, the ECHR had issued an emergency interim order barring Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali. The ruling explicitly cited well-documented risk that Ali could face torture or cruel, inhuman treatment if he was returned to Bahrain, and required Serbia to hold the extradition process pending further review of his asylum claim.

Despite the binding court order, Ali was removed from Serbia just three days later. Human rights campaigners confirm he was transported on a private plane chartered by United Arab Emirates-based Royal Jet Airlines and flown directly back to Bahrain. Since his arrival, Ali has been incarcerated at Bahrain’s notorious Jau Prison, where he is serving two consecutive life sentences.

In first-hand accounts shared via monitored prison calls with outside activists, Ali has detailed a pattern of ongoing abuse that matches widespread reports of mistreatment at Jau Prison. He told fellow activists that guards have arranged for violent inmates incarcerated in the same cell block to beat and harass him on repeated occasions, creating a permanent climate of fear. He reported being beaten badly as recently as July this year, and remains in constant fear of further attacks.

Ali is currently held in the prison’s Building Two, a facility designated for inmates convicted of violent offenses and serious drug crimes, rather than political prisoners. He has documented overcrowding so severe that half the cell’s population is forced to sleep on the floor, with inadequate ventilation creating what he describes as “suffocating” conditions. Sanitation facilities are unsanitary, he added, with overflowing drains and only a garden hose available for inmate bathing. Ali has been repeatedly placed in solitary confinement, been denied requested medical care, and has launched multiple hunger strikes to protest the conditions and demand access to basic rights. He also reported that prison staff have insulted his religious faith as part of the ongoing harassment.

In March 2025, the ECHR issued a final ruling that formally confirmed Serbia had violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the core provision that bans torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The court found that Serbian judicial authorities failed entirely to review Ali’s well-founded claim that he would face abuse if returned to Bahrain, and violated the convention by proceeding with extradition in direct defiance of the interim court order. The ECHR ordered Serbia to pay Ali 9,800 euros (approximately $11,100) in damages, plus any applicable taxes and late interest if payment was not fulfilled on schedule.

To date, Serbia has deposited the ordered sum in a domestic court account, but the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the body charged with overseeing compliance with ECHR rulings, has confirmed that Ali’s legal team faces insurmountable barriers to accessing the funds. The unique constraints of Ali’s incarceration in Bahrain make it impossible for him to meet the procedural requirements to release the deposit. In its latest statement, the Council of Europe has called on Serbia to work directly with Ali’s legal representatives and the Council of Europe Secretariat to find an immediate solution that will allow the funds to be released without further delay.

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), who has personal experience being detained in Jau Prison’s Building Two, described the impact of Ali’s first-hand accounts. “It was very hard to hear Ahmed describing to me the degrading conditions he is living in at Jau Prison,” Alwadaei told Middle East Eye. “He is stuck in a severely overcrowded cell, has repeatedly had to resort to hunger strikes just to secure basic rights, and has been in and out of solitary confinement.” Alwadaei added that the ECHR ruling serves as a critical reminder that Serbia cannot take the Bahraini government’s assurances about detainee treatment at face value, and must take all possible action to remedy the harm caused by Ali’s unlawful extradition.

The case comes amid longstanding concerns about systemic human rights abuses in Bahrain. Following the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, thousands of Bahrainis, mostly from the Shia majority population in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, were arrested and imprisoned for their political activity. Last year, Amnesty International reported that an estimated 322 political prisoners remain in arbitrary detention in the country. While the Bahraini government has issued royal pardons for more than 1,500 prisoners since 2024, Amnesty notes that authorities continue to systematically suppress freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly through widespread arbitrary detention and politically motivated prosecutions. Recent regional tensions stemming from the US-Israeli conflict with Iran have also led to a new crackdown, with authorities stripping citizenship from anyone deemed to have expressed support for Iran, which has carried out targeted attacks inside Bahraini territory.