Global Pulse

分类： world

  • ‘People are destitute’: Lebanon’s spiralling prices fuel fears of social unrest

    ‘People are destitute’: Lebanon’s spiralling prices fuel fears of social unrest

    In the wake of the escalating US-Israel-Iran regional conflict, Lebanon has been hit by a crippling new shock: fuel prices have doubled in a matter of weeks, sending already catastrophic living costs soaring even higher and pushing a population worn down by decades of crisis to the edge of survival.

    This week, local fuel prices jumped to nearly $1.60 per liter, a surge that aligns with a global uptick in energy costs that has already sparked mass demonstrations across neighboring Syria. For Lebanon, this new price shock does not exist in a vacuum — three years of open conflict with Israel, layered on top of ongoing regional military tensions, has already gutted an economy that was on its knees long before the latest crisis.

    The Lebanese Trade Union Federation has issued an urgent ultimatum to the national government: declare a formal state of economic emergency by next week, or face an open-ended general strike across the country. While newly seated President Joseph Aoun has publicly pledged to address the unions’ demands, decades of financial collapse have left the cash-strapped state with almost no fiscal room to cushion the blow of rising prices for essential goods that Lebanese residents already struggle to afford.

    Fears of widespread social unrest have been amplified by the recent wave of protests across Syria, where demonstrations erupted immediately after the government enforced sharp fuel price hikes of its own. For ordinary Lebanese citizens, the pain of the current crisis is not an abstract economic statistic — it is a daily reality of hunger and financial ruin.

    Bassam, a furniture moving truck driver based in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area that bore the full force of Israel’s intense bombardment during the most recent conflict, described the situation as unlivable. “It’s really difficult for everyone,” he told Middle East Eye. “The cost of living is so high, there are people who can’t afford to eat. There are people who seriously can’t even afford a loaf of bread anymore, especially after going through the war and being out of work, and now this petrol crisis. By God, it’s a disaster.”

    The latest World Bank analysis underscores the severity of Lebanon’s economic trajectory. After a fragile, modest economic recovery followed a 2024 ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, renewed fighting in March shattered that progress. The bank now projects that Lebanon’s economy will contract by 6.4% in 2026.

    The country’s current crisis stretches back to 2019, when a catastrophic financial collapse unfolded after Lebanese banks defaulted on their obligations, locking millions of ordinary depositors out of their life savings. Today, the domestic banking sector carries more than $72 billion in accumulated losses, and the country’s public debt has ballooned to 176.5% of GDP. Inflation has remained in double digits for five consecutive years, and since the 2019 crash, the Lebanese pound has lost more than 98% of its value against the U.S. dollar, wiping out nearly all purchasing power for ordinary households.

    Ihab Abou Zeineddine, a father of two who earns $600 a month working as a private driver, said his income is barely enough to cover basic household needs. “You’re too embarrassed to go into a shop with $20, you can’t buy anything with that,” he said. “People are destitute.”

    Even the most basic staple, bread, has become out of reach for many Lebanese. For years, the government subsidized and regulated wheat markets to keep bread affordable, but rising fuel-driven production costs forced the Ministry of Economy to raise bread prices for the second time this year just last week.

    In response, the Federation of Bakery and Oven Trade Unions issued a warning that continuous price hikes have “placed the bakery sector and the Lebanese people, particularly the working classes, in an extremely precarious situation.”

    More than five months after the most recent ceasefire with Israel went into effect, Lebanon is now bracing for widespread collective action. Transport sector unions and national labor federations have called for a nationwide mobilization next Wednesday, raising the prospect of large-scale unrest as public anger simmers. Some ordinary residents are already questioning why mass action has not erupted sooner.

    Ibtissam, an aesthetician who lives roughly 20 kilometers southeast of Beirut, told reporters she has started carpooling to work appointments in the capital just to cut down on fuel costs. “People are angry. Why are they not going on strike or protesting? I don’t know. I don’t know why people are staying silent like this,” she said.

  • ‘It has broken us as a family,’ mother of poison seller victim tells hearing

    ‘It has broken us as a family,’ mother of poison seller victim tells hearing

    As the sentencing hearing for Canadian convicted poison seller Kenneth Law entered its second day, grieving family members of multiple British victims delivered raw, emotional impact statements, laying bare the irreversible damage Law’s illegal business has inflicted on households across the world.

    Law, a 50-something former chef, has pled guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide in Canada for his scheme: he connected with vulnerable people in online suicide forums, then shipped roughly 1,200 packages of lethal toxic substances to customers in 40 countries. Roughly 25% of those packages were sent to the United Kingdom, where British investigators have confirmed 79 people died after consuming poisons purchased from Law. Under a plea deal reached with Canadian prosecutors, Law will never face criminal charges in the UK for any of these deaths, a ruling that has done little to ease the suffering of bereaved families, who were given the opportunity to share their stories during the four-day Ontario sentencing hearing this week.

    Tanya Whitaker, mother of 19-year-old Samuel Whitaker, a University of Warwick student who died after taking Law’s poison, opened her video statement breaking down in tears. “He barely had a chance,” she told the Canadian court. Samuel, Whitaker explained, was her husband Paul’s only biological son, and his death has left the entire family shattered. “The enormity of losing a child is catastrophic,” she said. “It has broken me completely and utterly. It has broken us as a family and me as a mother. Our son died alone at university 100 miles away from his family. We will never be able to forgive ourselves for this happening. He is a shell of himself today. Broken and devastated beyond repair.”

    Debbie Cornish, mother of Danielle Cornish, another British victim who died years ago, echoed that agony in a written statement that only referred to Law by his initials KL. “Words on paper can’t even begin to describe the painful loss of our amazing daughter,” she wrote. “Nothing will be the same ever again as we are part of a surreal nightmare. Nearly four years on, we are still fighting to keep our family together… not to mention the constant thoughts of how she may have died. KL has changed the life of many many families all across the world as well as ours. We are living a constant nightmare.”

    Other families shared equally devastating accounts of their losses. Faith George, mother of Faith Ike-Elechi, recalled finding her daughter — nicknamed Chimma — unresponsive on the floor after she ingested the poison, saying her daughter’s final words echo in her mind every single day. Maurice Dunham, father of Michael Dunham, opened up about the permanent guilt he carries: the last time he saw his son alive, the pair argued during a family holiday in Croatia, before Michael cut the trip short and returned home. When Dunham arrived back days later, he found Michael dead. “The feeling I had was like an electric shock going through me,” he wrote. “I blamed myself for not stopping Michael from leaving the hotel room. I planned to take my own life. I didn’t care if I lived or died.”

    Adele Zeynep Walton, sister of 20-something Southampton native Aimee Louise Elif Walton, told the court her sister died in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city, accompanied only by a stranger she had met in an online suicide forum who had flown from the U.S. to stay with her in the 11 days leading up to her death. “She died in a strange place, in a strange city, in the company of a stranger,” Adele said. “You only need to listen to the recording of the emergency call to know how much she suffered during the last moments of her life.”

    Multiple other parents shared their trauma, with Maureen Cooper, mother of victim Gary Cooper, calling the pain of losing her son “unbearable”, and the mother of Yeanu Mistry describing news of her son’s death as “the news every parent fears”.

    The hearing also heard from a rare British survivor of Law’s poisons: Elisabeth Belien, who was saved by a rapid dose of antidote after consuming the toxin she bought. Even for those who survived, the damage runs deep. “I feel guilty for surviving. Although I survived, it has also impacted my loved ones,” Belien told the court. “I feel like my vulnerability was exploited. I still feel a lot of shame about what happened.”

    Law was first arrested in May 2023, after a multi-national, multi-agency investigation that included law enforcement from at least 12 countries including the UK, the U.S. and Italy. The sentencing hearing is ongoing, with a final sentencing decision expected by the end of the four-day proceeding.

  • Four civilians killed in Pakistani strikes in Afghanistan, Taliban says

    Four civilians killed in Pakistani strikes in Afghanistan, Taliban says

    Cross-border tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have surged to their highest level in months after Pakistan conducted a second wave of air strikes across Afghan territory this week, marking a sharp collapse of the brief three-month ceasefire that held between the neighboring nations.

    Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban administration confirmed Thursday that the air raids hit three Afghan provinces – Kandahar, Paktia, and Khost – the country’s southern and eastern border regions. According to the Taliban, four civilian lives were lost in the strikes, which follow a deadly September 18 attack on a police compound in northwestern Pakistan that left 31 people dead. That attack was claimed by a faction aligned with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an anti-Islamabad militant group that Pakistan has long accused the Afghan Taliban of sheltering – a charge the Taliban repeatedly denies, arguing that cross-border militancy is an internal issue for Pakistan.

    Local witnesses on the ground have painted a chaotic picture of the strikes. In Kandahar, the Taliban’s political and military heartland, a resident told reporters the sound of military jet engines was quickly followed by a massive blast that ignited large fires across the targeted area. In Khost, midnight strikes damaged civilian residential properties, though no fatalities were reported in that province. “People were shouting, and there was panic all around,” local eyewitness Abdullah told news outlets. Another Khost resident, Salamat Khan, insisted the area hit held no military infrastructure: “there is no military base here, nor are there any military personnel, there are only the homes of ordinary civilians.” In Paktia, strikes targeted the 203 Mansouri Corps of the Taliban-controlled Afghan Armed Forces, though no casualty figures have been released for that strike.

    Pakistan’s government has defended the operation as a targeted counterterrorism measure. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar described the strikes as “deliberate, precise, calibrated, and proportionate,” noting they were “strictly limited to identified military objectives directly linked to the attempted attacks against Pakistan.” A prior statement from Pakistani forces confirmed 10 separate targets were hit across Afghan territory, though officials declined to share specific locations.

    This latest wave of attacks comes just one week after Pakistan’s first cross-border air strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. In that earlier strike, Pakistan claimed it killed 28 militants, but local Taliban officials and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) confirmed at least three civilian deaths and four additional injuries.

    Tensions have built steadily since the September 18 police compound attack, and even escalated in the 48 hours before Thursday’s strikes. On Wednesday, Pakistan announced it had intercepted and neutralized multiple drones launched from Afghan territory, a claim the Afghan Taliban immediately rejected as unfounded.

    The current escalation reflects a long-running failure to resolve cross-border hostilities despite international mediation efforts. After a particularly deadly Pakistani air strike in March that killed more than 260 people – which the Taliban said hit a civilian drug rehabilitation center, a claim Pakistan denied – the two sides agreed to a temporary ceasefire that held for roughly three months. That calm dissolved with the September 18 compound attack. Unama data underscores the heavy human toll of ongoing violence: between October 2025 and June 2026, cross-border clashes between Pakistani security forces and Taliban-led Afghan forces killed at least 499 civilians and injured more than 1,200 others.

    Diplomatic efforts remain deadlocked. Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly earlier this week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar called for “concrete and verifiable” guarantees from Kabul that Afghan territory would not be used to stage terrorist attacks against Pakistan. For their part, Taliban officials have promised an “appropriate response” to Thursday’s strikes, with spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemning the attacks as “reckless, careless, and hostile” and warning the action “will have adverse consequences for the Pakistani military.” Pakistan has in turn warned that it will match any further “provocative act” from Afghan soil with a forceful response, leaving the border region on high alert for further escalation.

  • Iranian press review: Iranian elite profit billions from oil sanctions

    Iranian press review: Iranian elite profit billions from oil sanctions

    A series of unfolding developments from inside Iran, compiled from local Iranian media reports, have shed light on overlapping political, economic, and human rights crises worsened by decades of international sanctions on the country. This roundup of independent Iranian reporting outlines four major ongoing issues affecting both ruling elite insiders and ordinary citizens.

    First, an investigation by a veteran Iranian investigative journalist has exposed a multi-billion dollar illicit oil trading network that has flourished directly because of international sanctions, with key links to the country’s top security and ruling institutions. Yashar Soltani, a reporter who has previously been imprisoned for exposing financial corruption in Iran, alleges that Iran’s state-owned Ministry of Petroleum has effectively ceded full control over national oil marketing and exports to a closed network of just four brokers who operate by circumventing global sanctions.

    According to Soltani’s allegations, this network has a direct vested interest in blocking any future diplomatic détente between Iran and the United States. If sanctions were to be lifted, the shadow trading networks that generate the group’s massive profits would be put out of business, giving the brokers strong incentive to undermine any political agreements between the two nations.

    Soltani claims the network is overseen by Mohammad Javad Bavand, a former economic deputy with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence apparatus. Over the past three months alone, Bavand granted these four brokers exclusive rights to sell 80 million barrels of Iranian crude, Soltani says. From just the discounted pricing on these shipments, the network has pocketed an estimated $1.5 billion in illicit profits. Two of the four brokers, Hossein Shamkhani and Rouhollah Razavi, were publicly named by Soltani in a YouTube interview, who noted both men have close ties to Iran’s ruling establishment. Beyond the profits from state-approved discounts, Soltani alleges all four brokers have failed to meet their financial obligations to the state, leaving hundreds of millions in unfulfilled payments. He added that an additional 100 million barrels of oil have gone missing within this non-transparent supply chain, with no public record of who was assigned to sell the crude or where the proceeds from any sales went.

    A second major development confirmed by local Iranian student media has sparked international outcry over the rising use of the death penalty to suppress anti-government dissent. Khabarnameh Amirkabir, an independent Iranian student-focused news network that covers youth activist movements, has reported that five detained Iranian students have already been sentenced to death. The outlet named the condemned students as 19-year-old Omidreza Heydari, 23-year-old Najmeh Amini, 23-year-old Sepehr Amirzadeh, 27-year-old Armin Nourmohammadi, and 22-year-old Ehsan Faridi in an Instagram post. The news network warned that additional students currently in detention face the same threat of execution, and it pledged to continue investigating unreported cases.

    Of the five, Amirzadeh, Amini, and Heydari were arrested during nationwide anti-government protests that swept Iran in January. Nourmohammadi and Faridi were detained for their political activism in 2023 and 2024, respectively. All five were convicted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Courts on a series of broad political charges, including collusion against national security, insulting the Prophet, moharebeh (waging war against God), and efsad-e fel-arz (corruption on earth). Human rights observers have long warned that Iran often uses these vague charges to target political dissent. Following U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iranian targets in February, international activists and human rights organizations issued an explicit warning that Iranian authorities would ramp up executions to crush domestic unrest. Amnesty International reported in July that since the start of 2025, Iranian authorities have executed at least 26 people convicted of crimes connected to the January protests, plus an additional 26 people on politically motivated charges.

    Third, a heated debate has erupted within Iranian political circles over a controversial proposal from hardline principlist lawmakers to withdraw Iran from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), though many senior political and diplomatic figures argue the move would cause severe harm to Iran’s national interests. Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a veteran diplomatic analyst and former chair of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, characterized the withdrawal proposal as largely political rhetoric, noting that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council holds ultimate authority over all decisions related to the country’s nuclear program.

    Falahatpisheh argued that exiting the NPT would only backfire on Iran by creating the groundwork for a broad international consensus against the country. “Leaving the NPT signals that Iran could pursue a military nuclear programme, but when there is no such programme, the only effect of this proposal is to make it easier for people like [US President Donald] Trump to achieve a global consensus against Iran,” he said. Lawmaker Mohammad Seraj also opposes the proposal, pointing out that Iran has repeatedly stated it has no interest in developing nuclear weapons, so exiting the treaty would serve no strategic purpose. Seraj added that a withdrawal would almost certainly cost Iran critical diplomatic and economic support from its key global allies, Russia and China. “If we withdraw from the NPT, it means that we want to pursue nuclear weapons, and as a result we will lose our friends, who may then no longer support us,” he explained.

    Finally, the suspension of all major international language proficiency tests in Iran, a direct consequence of U.S. sanctions, has created new, crippling barriers for ordinary Iranians seeking to study abroad, secure international employment, or migrate, according to reporting from Iran’s independent Etemad daily. The newspaper emphasized that sanctions designed to target the Iranian government in practice impose the heaviest burdens on ordinary, private citizens who have made long-term plans for their futures abroad. “A decision framed as sanctioning the government is, in practice, imposing its costs on citizens who have planned to study or work in another country,” the outlet wrote.

    The IELTS English test has been unavailable across Iran since January, and over the past month, three other major exams — TOEFL, GRE, and the Duolingo English Test — have also been suspended for test-takers based in Iran. Previously, many Iranians circumvented the domestic ban by traveling to neighboring visa-free countries including Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey to take their required exams. However, a new round of U.S. sanctions imposed in August has forced testing organizers to bar any test-taker holding Iranian residency, even for exams scheduled outside of Iran’s borders. Etemad’s interviews with affected Iranians found that many have already lost thousands of dollars in sunk costs, as well as months of preparation time, derailing their plans for education, work, and migration.

    This compilation of Iranian press reports has not been independently verified for accuracy by Middle East Eye, which curates this type of regional press digest to share on-the-ground perspectives from inside Iran.

  • Dozens of Palestinians killed and wounded in Gaza as Israel continues to bomb civilians

    Dozens of Palestinians killed and wounded in Gaza as Israel continues to bomb civilians

    On Wednesday, a new wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip left at least seven Palestinians dead and at least 35 more injured, shattering the nominal ceasefire that has been in place since October. The Nasser Medical Complex confirmed that among the casualties was an elderly Palestinian woman, who was shot by Israeli forces west of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

    Since the ceasefire agreement took effect last year, Gazan Palestinians have endured near-constant Israeli military incursions and attacks, despite the fact that Hamas and other major Palestinian political and military factions have not launched any large-scale offensive operations against Israeli targets. In the period following the ceasefire, Israel has seized control of the majority of Palestinian-held territory in Gaza, now occupying more than 60 percent of the small enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated the government’s goal to expand this occupied area to roughly 70 percent of Gaza.

    The human cost of Israel’s post-ceasefire military campaign has been staggering. Official data confirms that at least 1,408 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,916 injured in Gaza since October 11, 2025. Since the large-scale conflict began on October 7, 2023, the cumulative death toll has climbed to nearly 74,000 Palestinians killed, with close to 175,000 more wounded. Humanitarian organizations and local monitors widely agree that the actual number of fatalities is significantly higher than reported, as thousands of bodies remain trapped under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

    In recent weeks, senior Israeli officials have explicitly outlined plans that many international observers characterize as ethnic cleansing, aimed at forcing the entire Palestinian population out of Gaza. Earlier this month, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared at a conference hosted by Israeli media outlet Ynet in partnership with the Israel Democracy Institute that Palestinians would be forced to leave Gaza. When speaking to journalist Moran Azoulay, Katz stated plainly, “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without migration.”

    In a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter) on September 23, 2026, independent news outlet Middle East Eye, which has a long track record of on-the-ground coverage from the region, weighed in on the ongoing crisis. The outlet noted: “We continue to condemn Hamas, and we stand with Israel in the face of the ongoing threats, including from Iran, against Israel and Jewish people around the world. But this does not justify the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank.” Middle East Eye provides independent, in-depth coverage of developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions, with ongoing reporting on the humanitarian and political crisis unfolding in Gaza.

  • Yemenis seek safety in Djibouti as African migrants continue arriving in Yemen

    Yemenis seek safety in Djibouti as African migrants continue arriving in Yemen

    The ongoing conflict in Yemen has reshaped migration patterns across the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, creating interconnected stories of displacement, welcome, and unexpected cross-community solidarity that stretch across national borders. For nearly a decade, Yemen’s neighboring Djibouti has stood out as a rare accessible safe haven for Yemenis fleeing violence and economic collapse, offering a stark contrast to wealthy Gulf nations that remain largely closed off to most Yemeni refugees due to prohibitive visa costs and strict entry requirements.

  • 105-year-old investigated for crimes at Nazi PoW camp in Germany

    105-year-old investigated for crimes at Nazi PoW camp in Germany

    Eighty years after the end of World War II, German law enforcement continues to pursue accountability for Nazi-era atrocities, with a new investigation targeting a 105-year-old man accused of serving as an accessory to mass murder at one of the Third Reich’s largest prisoner of war camps.

    The suspect is alleged to have worked as a guard at Stalag 326 VI K, located in Senne in northwestern Germany, Dortmund chief public prosecutor Sonja Frodermann confirmed in an official statement. Frodermann added that a parallel investigation into a second former guard at the same camp has been closed, after the 99-year-old suspect died several months ago. No identifying details about either suspect have been released to the public, a common practice in ongoing German investigations into historical Nazi crimes.

    Stalag 326 stands as one of the most brutal and high-capacity POW camps operated by Nazi Germany. Between 1941 and 1945, roughly one in every three Soviet Red Army soldiers captured by German forces passed through the Senne camp complex, according to records from the site’s official memorial. Most prisoners were forced into hard labor for local German industries, while facing catastrophic living conditions characterized by systematic neglect, violent abuse, and widespread starvation. In total, the camp held between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet POWs, and tens of thousands of those captives died from mistreatment. Today, 30,000 Russian POWs remain buried in mass graves at the camp site. Along with Soviet prisoners, the camp also held captured service members from France, Poland, Serbia and Belgium. When Allied forces liberated the camp in 1945, just over 9,000 Russian prisoners were still alive.

    This latest investigation underscores the growing logistical and demographic challenges facing German prosecutors as they pursue remaining Nazi war crime suspects nearly eight decades after the end of the war. The vast majority of people who participated in Nazi atrocities are already deceased, and the few remaining suspects are extremely elderly.

    Germany has eliminated any statute of limitations for murder and accessory to murder stemming from Nazi crimes since 1979, allowing investigations to proceed regardless of how much time has passed. This new probe of the 105-year-old Senne guard is not the only active case: another centenarian former guard at the nearby Hemer Stalag VI A camp is also currently under investigation.

    Recent high-profile efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice have illustrated the hurdles of these late-stage investigations. In 2021, a 101-year-old former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Josef Schütz, was convicted of complicity in mass murder and sentenced to five years in prison. Schütz, the oldest person ever convicted of Nazi war crimes, died in 2023 while appealing his conviction, before he could begin serving his sentence. In 2022, a 97-year-old former secretary for a Nazi concentration camp commander was convicted of abetting murder and given a suspended sentence; she also died in 2023 at the age of 99 before the case could be finalized.

    In Germany, investigations into Nazi war crimes follow a structured process: all potential cases are first reviewed and prepared by the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, based in the southwestern city of Ludwigsburg, before being handed over to local public prosecutors for formal prosecution, in this case Dortmund’s office. As surviving perpetrators age and pass away, these ongoing investigations reflect Germany’s sustained commitment to confronting its historical atrocities, even as the window to secure convictions closes.

  • Tigray capital ‘out of cash’ as fighting escalates, resident tells BBC

    Tigray capital ‘out of cash’ as fighting escalates, resident tells BBC

    Escalating hostilities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have pushed the regional capital Mekelle into a severe cash crisis, a local resident has told the BBC, painting a complex picture of stalled daily life under renewed conflict. While the city itself has not seen active frontline combat in the immediate period following the latest outbreak of fighting, widespread anxiety and uncertainty have gripped the population, the insider source confirms.

    The acute cash shortage has left residents unable to access basic necessities, with local businesses struggling to operate and ATMs running dry after weeks of disrupted financial flows linked to the conflict. Though street-level calm currently holds in Mekelle, the underlying tension is palpable: ordinary people are bracing for further escalation, navigating the double stress of economic collapse and the ever-present threat of expanding violence. The renewed outbreak of hostilities in Tigray has derailed fragile peace efforts that had been building over recent months, leaving regional and international observers scrambling to urge both sides to return to negotiations before the crisis deepens into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

  • Ethiopia’s army says it has repelled attacks in first comment on fresh fighting

    Ethiopia’s army says it has repelled attacks in first comment on fresh fighting

    After two years of a fragile, AU-brokered ceasefire, deadly hostilities have erupted once again across northern Ethiopia, bringing the country to the brink of a resumption of its devastating 2020–2022 civil war. Spiking tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, boiled over into open combat on Wednesday, with both sides moving quickly to secure strategic territory.

    In its first official public statement since fighting began, the Ethiopian National Army announced that it had successfully fended off coordinated assaults from TPLF fighters and their recently formed armed coalition in multiple northern border zones. According to the military’s account, the initial outbreak of hostilities occurred in the Amhara region, along its shared border with Tigray. The military claimed its forces inflicted heavy losses on TPLF combatants and seized a large stockpile of weapons from the attacking group.

    Independent verification of the army’s claims remains impossible, as international media including the BBC are barred from entering Tigray and surrounding conflict zones, and the TPLF has not issued any formal response to the military’s statement. Unconfirmed reports from local and humanitarian sources, however, indicate TPLF forces have launched simultaneous offensives into both the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions.

    A senior humanitarian source based in Afar told Agence France-Presse Thursday that TPLF fighters have launched intensive artillery barrages targeting the border town of Yallo, as they push to seize full control of the settlement. Speaking to AFP, TPLF vice-president Amanuel Assefa confirmed the collapse of the 2022 peace agreement, stating bluntly: “We are in the situation of full-blown war now.”

    The latest escalation caps months of gradual deterioration in relations between the two sides, with both the federal government and Tigrayan authorities repeatedly accusing one another of violating the terms of the African Union-negotiated truce that ended the original 2020–2022 conflict. That war was one of the deadliest of the 21st century: the AU’s lead mediator estimated that roughly 600,000 people died from violence, famine, and lack of access to medical care, as the conflict pushed Tigray to the edge of a catastrophic humanitarian collapse. Just days before the current outbreak of fighting, the TPLF announced a new military alliance with six other armed opposition groups, with the explicit goal of ousting Abiy Ahmed’s federal government.

    Since Wednesday, TPLF forces have seized control of three regional airports from federal police forces, including the main airport serving Mekelle, Tigray’s largest capital city. Following the seizure of aviation infrastructure, Ethiopian Airlines has suspended all commercial flights to the region. Multiple residents of Mekelle confirmed to the BBC that TPLF fighters are now visibly deployed across the city’s streets, though direct armed clashes have not yet broken out in the urban center.

    Unlike the 2020–2022 war, which saw intense house-to-house fighting in Mekelle, all active combat is currently concentrated in outlying border areas. A Mekelle resident, who asked to be identified only as Fitsum to protect his safety, told the BBC’s *Newsday* program Thursday that the city remains outwardly calm, despite widespread fear among the population. “Mekelle is calm, except the stress from the people,” Fitsum said. He added that the city’s most pressing crisis is already economic, rooted in months of federal budget cuts that have left public sector workers unpaid and drained physical cash from local financial institutions.

    “People are in a mood where they are distressed because it’s been so difficult, so tough. The last seven or eight months the government has been denying budgets to the civil servants and all the banks were running out of cash,” Fitsum explained. While residents have relied on mobile banking to access funds in recent months, widespread fears that communications infrastructure will be cut off amid the new fighting have left the population extremely vulnerable. “People are going to be in grave danger because there is almost no cash,” he added. Since fighting broke out, residents have largely stayed indoors and limited non-essential travel, leaving the city unusually quiet. “It’s like a curfew has been placed,” Fitsum said.

    Recent drone strikes targeting locations inside Tigray in the days preceding the TPLF’s offensive have further stoked panic across the region, leaving global observers scrambling to de-escalate tensions before the conflict expands across the Horn of Africa.

  • Poland says fire at Starlink station is sabotage as Denmark warns of rising Russian threat

    Poland says fire at Starlink station is sabotage as Denmark warns of rising Russian threat

    Tensions between Russia and Western-backed NATO have escalated sharply this week, following a suspected act of sabotage at a key Starlink satellite internet station in central Poland, new warnings of rising hybrid warfare risks, and a wave of deadly Russian airstrikes across Ukraine that spilled into neighboring EU states.

    Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski has publicly labeled Wednesday night’s fire at the facility in Wola Krobowska, Masovian Voivodeship, as a deliberate sabotage attack targeting internet connectivity supplied to Ukraine’s military. Speaking to public broadcaster TVP Info, Gawkowski said the incident was designed to disable the station, which routes Starlink internet traffic provided by SpaceX through Polish territory to Ukrainian forces and other institutions. While the station remains fully operational despite the damage, Gawkowski noted multiple lines of evidence point to the attack aligning with a new Russian doctrine of asymmetric targeting of critical infrastructure. The Kremlin has not yet issued any response to the accusation.

    Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk struck a more cautious tone during a joint press conference with Bulgaria’s prime minister on Thursday, saying he was reluctant to definitively label the incident as sabotage rather than an accident without conclusive proof, but acknowledged the circumstances looked suspicious. The fire came on the same day Poland confirmed a Russian military helicopter had briefly violated its airspace, prompting the Polish air force to scramble fighter jets to intercept the aircraft.

    Across the Baltic Sea, Denmark’s intelligence service has published an updated national threat assessment that supports the growing consensus across European capitals that Russia is preparing to escalate its campaign of hybrid warfare against NATO members in the coming months. While the assessment stressed that a full-scale military attack on Denmark remains highly unlikely, officials warned the risk of limited, covert Russian attacks against critical infrastructure is low but growing. This warning echoes recent statements from several other NATO European members, who have publicly warned Russia is carrying out preparatory operations to test the alliance’s collective defense commitment amid its ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has consistently denied these accusations.

    Just weeks ago, Germany formally blamed Russian actors for an attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport, while French authorities have ordered a national security plan to harden protections for critical infrastructure and domestic defense industry sites against potential attacks. Hybrid warfare, a term used to describe non-conventional, covert attacks designed to destabilize an adversary without triggering a full-scale military conflict, commonly includes tactics such as infrastructure sabotage, cyberattacks, and misinformation campaigns, with attacks often carried out by proxy actors to allow the sponsoring state to deny involvement. Despite mounting evidence pointing to Russian involvement in a string of such attacks across Europe, Moscow has consistently rejected any claims of responsibility.

    The rising tensions over hybrid threats coincided with one of the deadliest nights of Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, with strikes hitting residential and civilian sites in both Kharkiv and Kyiv. In the Kharkiv region village of Stara Hnylytsia, a Russian strike hit a working vegetable farm, killing six agricultural workers – four of them women – and wounding 12 more. In Kyiv, overnight strikes left two civilians dead, injured eight others, and damaged more than 50 civilian facilities, including a maternity hospital. Remarkably, as the attack unfolded, a pregnant woman sheltering in the hospital’s basement gave birth to a healthy baby boy, with the hospital director noting that “even on such a terrible night, life goes on.”

    The Russian defense ministry claimed it had exclusively targeted legitimate military objectives, including Ukrainian defense facilities, logistics hubs, and telecommunications centers, as well as military vessels. The wave of Russian drones launched in the attack crossed multiple international borders, with Moldova’s president confirming four Russian drones entered Moldovan airspace, at least one of which detonated inside the country. Romania also confirmed one Russian drone crashed on its territory, marking another instance of Russian strike debris landing on NATO sovereign territory amid the ongoing war.

    Russian aerial attacks have grown increasingly deadly and difficult to defend against in recent months, after Russia introduced a new fleet of jet-powered assault drones that fly faster and are far harder to shoot down than older, slower designs. Ukraine’s military is now racing to develop low-cost counter-drone weapons, as existing air defense missiles and fighter jet interceptions are prohibitively expensive to use against the relatively cheap unmanned vehicles.

    Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his appeal to Western allies, particularly the United States, to provide additional ballistic missile interceptors to protect Ukrainian civilian populations from Russian airstrikes. Zelenskyy argued that Russian leader Vladimir Putin must be stopped from expanding the war beyond Ukraine’s borders, saying “Putin is always looking for someone who can help him kill more, kill more people for every kilometre of land.” He also confirmed Ukraine plans to target Russian energy infrastructure through the coming winter months, a tactic both sides have used in previous years of the conflict.

    Zelenskyy’s comments came as a Russian presidential envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, traveled to the United States to hold meetings with former senior officials from Donald Trump’s administration, including ex-special envoy Steve Witkoff and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, according to Reuters, which cited two unnamed sources familiar with the trip. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the UN Security Council that Russia would not agree to any ceasefire or pause in the full-scale invasion it launched in February 2022, when Putin ordered troops across Ukraine’s border. Moscow currently controls approximately 20 percent of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory, including the Crimean peninsula, which it illegally annexed in 2014.

    Russian leaders have repeatedly denied any plans to attack NATO member states, though Lavrov warned this month that if Europe launched an attack on Russia, the resulting conflict would be “completely different” from the war in Ukraine and “very short.”