Global Pulse

分类： world

  • Full list of Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza, seven months on

    Full list of Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza, seven months on

    Seven months have passed since the United States announced a mediated ceasefire designed to end Israel’s two-year military campaign in Gaza, but the fragile truce has failed to deliver on its stated goals, with consistent Israeli violations and a still-unresolved humanitarian disaster continuing to unfold across the Palestinian enclave. While the intensity of Israeli operations has dropped from the pre-truce level, near-daily military strikes and breaches of the agreement have become the new normal, and Israel’s crippling land, air and sea blockade remains firmly in place, leaving Gaza’s civilian population trapped in a worsening crisis.

    Israeli military officials have repeatedly attempted to justify their violations by claiming Palestinian armed factions have broken the terms of the ceasefire. However, verified data from Palestinian and international bodies confirms that the overwhelming majority of people killed, displaced and detained during this seven-month period have been unarmed civilians, including hundreds of children.

    A core stumbling block remains the failure to implement even the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, and Washington has been unable to push forward negotiations for the planned second stage. That phase was originally intended to deliver tangible progress: the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups, deployment of international peacekeeping stabilisation forces, large-scale reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure across Gaza, and a full withdrawal of all Israeli military forces from the enclave. This stalled progress has cast deep uncertainty over the future of the already fragile truce, as Israel continues to amass additional military units along Gaza’s borders and issues repeated threats of a large-scale new ground offensive.

    According to official documentation released by the Gaza government media office, Israeli forces committed no fewer than 2,400 verified ceasefire violations between 10 October 2025 and 10 April 2026, with dozens of additional breaches recorded in the weeks since that six-month window. These violations break down into more than 1,100 air strikes and artillery shelling attacks, alongside 921 incidents of direct gunfire targeting civilian populations.

    Official figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health show that as of 14 May 2026, these ongoing attacks had killed at least 857 Palestinians and injured another 2,486 people. Of those killed, UNICEF confirms that at least 229 were children. The Gaza government media office also adds that Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained at least 50 Palestinians within Gaza during the ceasefire period.

    Documented violations span a wide range of targets: attacks on civilian community gatherings, strikes on internally displaced person camps, targeted killings of Palestinian police officers, journalists and international aid workers, and repeated incursions into civilian areas. Israeli naval units have also consistently opened fire on Palestinian fishermen and civilian communities along Gaza’s coastline, arresting multiple fishermen. In one high-profile incident last month, Israeli gunboats shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian woman off the northwestern coast of Gaza.

    Overall, the confirmed death toll from Israel’s military campaign, which began in October 2023, has now reached more than 72,700 Palestinians killed, with thousands more still missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble of destroyed residential and public buildings across the enclave.

    The initial October 2025 ceasefire agreement included a core provision that all existing battle lines would remain frozen in place until subsequent phases of the agreement could be negotiated and implemented. This arrangement led to the creation of what Israel calls the “Yellow Line”, a unilateral Israeli demarcation that declared vast swathes of Gaza territory as off-limits to Palestinian civilians, barring them from returning to or accessing their own land. When the ceasefire was first signed, Israeli forces already controlled approximately 53 percent of Gaza’s total territory, spread across the enclave’s northern, southern and eastern regions. The agreement stipulated that future phases would include a gradual full withdrawal of Israeli forces from all of Gaza.

    Instead of withdrawing, however, the Israeli military has expanded the area behind the Yellow Line, bringing roughly 64 percent of Gaza’s total territory under direct Israeli military control and forcing the enclave’s 2 million-plus civilian population into just 36 percent of their own land. Israeli forces have also carried out near-daily home demolitions across the enclave, another clear violation of the ceasefire terms. While most demolitions have occurred in areas Israel now claims beyond the Yellow Line, multiple demolitions have also been recorded in areas officially designated as under Palestinian control. An analysis published by The New York Times in January 2026 found that Israel had demolished more than 2,500 residential and public buildings in just the first three months of the ceasefire.

    One of the most high-profile commitments Israel made under the ceasefire agreement was to ease its restrictions on humanitarian aid deliveries, and allow up to 600 trucks of food, fuel, medical supplies, emergency shelter materials and commercial goods to enter Gaza every single day. To date, these commitments have never been met, according to official United Nations data. Human rights organisations have repeatedly warned that ongoing Israeli restrictions on aid have prolonged the humanitarian catastrophe and severely limited the ability of relief groups to deliver life-saving support to Gaza’s population.

    By the end of April 2026, the Gaza government media office confirms that just over 4,500 aid trucks had entered the enclave – that is only 25 percent of the 18,000 trucks that were stipulated under the terms of the agreement. That works out to an average of just over 200 trucks per day, less than a third of the agreed 600-truck daily threshold. Even the limited aid that has been allowed in has excluded many of the most urgently needed supplies, including emergency shelter materials like tents and prefabricated mobile homes, as well as essential life-saving medications, medical equipment and fuel for civilian infrastructure and emergency services.

    These ongoing restrictions have triggered a new wave of severe food insecurity in recent months, with many Gaza residents now fearing a return to the full-scale famine conditions that the United Nations officially declared in parts of Gaza in August 2025, during the height of Israel’s siege. Doctors from Gaza’s Ministry of Health and civil defence rescue teams have repeatedly stated that shortages of fuel and medical supplies have left them unable to provide even basic adequate healthcare to injured and sick civilians, or carry out effective rescue operations for people trapped under rubble after Israeli strikes.

    Another key commitment under the ceasefire agreement was that Israeli forces would withdraw from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in southern Gaza, and allow unimpeded free movement of people through the crossing. With thousands of Palestinians suffering from severe war injuries requiring urgent specialist treatment that is not available inside Gaza, full reopening of the Rafah crossing was widely seen as a critical measure to reduce civilian suffering. Instead, Israel kept the Rafah crossing fully closed for nearly four months after the ceasefire agreement was signed.

    In February 2026, Israel began allowing a maximum of 50 Palestinians a day to enter Gaza from Egypt, while limiting the number of people allowed to depart Gaza for treatment or other purposes to roughly 150 people per day. Even these greatly reduced quotas have not been consistently respected, with Israel repeatedly blocking movement for travellers who had already received official approval, and shutting the crossing down for extended periods. One of the longest shutdowns came in late February, during Israel’s military strike campaign against Iran.

    Official data from the Gaza government media office shows that between 2 February and 30 April 2026, only 1,567 people crossed through Rafah, out of the 6,000 people that the agreement allowed to cross during this period. That puts Israeli compliance with the Rafah crossing terms at just 26 percent. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, these movement restrictions have contributed to the deaths of up to 10 Palestinian civilians every single day, who die before they can access the urgent medical treatment they need abroad.

  • Pope decries the rise of AI-directed warfare, saying it leads to a spiral of annihilation

    Pope decries the rise of AI-directed warfare, saying it leads to a spiral of annihilation

    On a historic Thursday visit to Rome’s La Sapienza University, the largest institution of higher education in Europe, Pope Leo XIV delivered a stark warning to the global community: unregulated investments in artificial intelligence and cutting-edge military weaponry are pushing the world toward a dangerous “spiral of annihilation.” The appearance marked a pivotal moment for the Vatican, coming 16 years after Pope Benedict XVI canceled a planned visit to the 14th-century campus amid widespread protests from faculty and students, a controversy that left a long shadow over Vatican-university relations.

    Unlike the fraught planned visit in 2008, Pope Leo was met with a warm welcome from the La Sapienza community, highlighted by a special greeting for a group of recently arrived Palestinian students from Gaza. These young scholars entered Italy this week via a humanitarian corridor organized by the Italian government in partnership with Catholic organizations, an initiative that has brought hundreds of Gazans to Italy for higher education and critical medical care since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023.

    During his time on campus, Pope Leo met with several of the newly arrived Gaza students twice: once during an informal greeting at the university’s chapel, and again after his keynote address in the institution’s main lecture hall. La Sapienza, founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303, is one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world, adding historic weight to the pope’s address focused on global conflict and ethical progress.

    In his speech, Pope Leo called out the dramatic surge in global military spending this year, with a specific note on exponential increases across Europe. He argued that this growth in military budgets has come directly at the expense of underfunded public education and healthcare systems, enriching a small cohort of elite stakeholders who show little regard for collective global well-being.

    The pontiff extended his critique to the rapid development of artificial intelligence, urging the creation of stricter, more transparent monitoring frameworks for AI innovation across both military and civilian sectors. He stressed that AI must never be allowed to remove human accountability for life-or-death choices, nor should it be allowed to worsen the already devastating human cost of ongoing global conflicts.

    “What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” Pope Leo told the assembled audience. He pushed back against this trend, arguing that education and academic research must chart a different course centered on the inherent value of human life—“the lives of peoples who cry out for peace and justice.”

    Addressing ongoing conflicts, Pope Leo explicitly repeated his call for immediate ceasefires and negotiated peace in both the Middle East and Ukraine, two conflicts that have dominated global headlines and displaced millions of people over the past several years. This address aligns with Pope Leo’s long-stated position that AI regulation is one of the most critical existential challenges facing humanity, particularly when it comes to its unregulated use in warfare and daily life. Vatican observers confirmed he plans to expand on these themes in his first encyclical, a major papal teaching document set for release in the coming weeks.

    For 19-year-old Nada Rahim Jouda, one of the Gaza students who met the pope just two days after arriving in Italy, the visit marked a surreal moment in a life upended by war. Jouda, who will study business science at La Sapienza, described Rome as “like heaven for me,” contrasting the city’s lush, calm landscape with the constant instability and destruction of Gaza, where “everything is gray and troubles everywhere and miserable people in the streets.”

    Even as she begins her new life, Jouda carries the weight of the family she left behind. Her mother is recovering from leukemia and was unable to access consistent cancer treatment or check-ups amid the war, which forced her entire family to flee their home four times. Her two younger sisters, ages 13 and 17, remain in Gaza with her mother. “They all rely on me. I’m the only hope that they have,” Jouda said.

    This Associated Press religion coverage is produced through a collaboration between AP and The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains sole editorial responsibility for all content.

  • BBC at the scene of Russian strikes in Kyiv

    BBC at the scene of Russian strikes in Kyiv

    Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the capital Kyiv has faced repeated threats of air attacks, but a new wave of strikes stands out as one of the most intense assaults the city has seen in the entire conflict. According to on-the-ground reporting from the BBC, multiple civilian apartment blocks were directly hit in the latest offensive, bringing immediate danger to residential neighborhoods that are home to thousands of ordinary Ukrainians. The attack comes amid a prolonged period of heightened tensions across Ukraine, with Russian forces continuing to target infrastructure and populated areas in a campaign that has disrupted daily life for millions. BBC correspondents present in Kyiv in the aftermath of the strikes documented the extent of the damage, with visible impacts to residential buildings that serve as primary homes for local families. This assault marks a significant escalation in air activity directed at the Ukrainian capital, reinforcing the ongoing volatility of the conflict that has gripped Eastern Europe for more than two years. Local residents have been forced to seek shelter amid the attack, with emergency services responding quickly to the incident to assess damage, rescue trapped civilians, and address the aftermath of the strikes.

  • Rescuers search rubble of Kyiv flats after massive Russian strikes kill two

    Rescuers search rubble of Kyiv flats after massive Russian strikes kill two

    Three straight days of deadly Russian aerial assaults have rocked Ukraine, leaving at least two people dead and 40 others injured after a massive overnight barrage of missiles and drones targeted multiple cities across the country, including the capital Kyiv. Ukrainian officials confirmed the attacks marked a sharp escalation of hostilities that began immediately after a three-day US-brokered ceasefire expired late Monday. The truce, which saw only minor violations along the frontline and no large-scale air attacks, gave way to renewed violence on Tuesday, when nine Ukrainians were killed. An additional six people lost their lives in strikes across the nation on Wednesday, three of them in the western city of Rivne.

    In Kyiv, one of the hardest-hit targets in the latest overnight wave of attacks, a nine-story residential apartment building suffered partial collapse after being directly hit. Emergency rescue teams launched a search operation at dawn Thursday to pull any remaining survivors trapped under the rubble of the destroyed structure. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klychko, who toured the damaged site early Thursday, confirmed that 18 apartments were completely destroyed in the strike, and critical civilian infrastructure was also damaged, disrupting the capital’s municipal water supply for local residents. As of Thursday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that dozens of people had already been pulled from the rubble, though emergency workers still hold fears that more victims remain trapped beneath the debris.

    Beyond the partially collapsed apartment block, the overnight attack left damage to multiple other civilian sites, including additional residential buildings, a local school, and a veterinary clinic, Zelensky added. In a public statement following the strikes, Zelensky pushed back against any suggestions that Russia is seeking to de-escalate the conflict, saying the large-scale assault was “definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end.” He called on Ukraine’s international allies to speak out firmly against the renewed attacks, rather than remaining silent.

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the assault as an “especially difficult night for Kyiv,” and noted that Russian drones and missiles targeted regions far beyond the capital. Strikes were also reported in Kremenchuk, Bila Tserkva, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Odesa, spread across central, eastern, and southern Ukraine. In a social media post, Svyrydenko made an urgent appeal for international support: “Ukraine needs help in strengthening its air defense. This is the only way to save our people and our cities.”

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha condemned the attack as “barbaric” and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of prioritizing aggression and terror over diplomatic efforts to end the war. He pointed out that the large-scale assault coincided with a high-stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and urged the two world leaders to use their diplomatic leverage to force Moscow to end its invasion. “I am certain that the leaders of the United States and China have enough leverage over Moscow to tell Putin to finally end the war,” Sybiha said.

    The latest round of military escalation comes as Ukrainian officials are also grappling with a domestic political corruption scandal. In a separate development in Kyiv on Thursday, a Ukrainian court ordered 60 days of pretrial detention for Andriy Yermak, formerly one of Zelensky’s closest top aides. Yermak is currently a suspect in a money laundering investigation tied to a £7.5 million luxury construction project built outside Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s national anti-corruption agencies. The court ruled that Yermak could be released on bail of £2.35 million ($3.2 million) if he wears an electronic monitoring tag, but Yermak says he does not have the funds to cover the bail amount and will seek financial support from friends and acquaintances. Yermak has forcefully denied all the allegations against him, calling them baseless. He says he will appeal the ruling, and has no plans to leave Ukraine, stating publicly: “I’m staying in Ukraine. I have nothing to hide.”

  • Dust storms and lightning kill at least 96 people in northern India

    Dust storms and lightning kill at least 96 people in northern India

    Deadly extreme weather has left northern India reeling, with official confirmation Thursday placing the death toll from a wave of dust storms, heavy rainfall and lightning at no less than 96, with dozens more injured. The destructive weather system swept across multiple districts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state by population, late Wednesday, leaving a trail of destroyed property and disrupted communities in its wake.

    According to local officials, most fatalities stemmed from falling trees, collapsing poorly built structures, and direct lightning strikes, common hazards during pre-monsoon storm events. Emergency response teams including police and disaster management units quickly mobilized, deploying chainsaws and heavy cranes to clear fallen vegetation that blocked critical road and railway links across hard-hit districts.

    Pre-monsoon storms are a routine seasonal occurrence across northern India between March and June, when hot summer temperatures give way to the annual south Asian monsoon rains that replenish the region’s water supplies. But this latest event brought unusually intense and destructive conditions that have caused widespread harm.
    Narendra N. Srivastava, a senior local administrative official, noted that emergency crews have already been deployed across all impacted areas. Damage assessments confirm widespread destruction to residential buildings, agricultural crops, and electrical power infrastructure, with rural communities bearing the brunt of the impact.

    Residents of the hardest-hit districts described sudden, terrifying onslaughts of extreme wind that upended daily life in minutes. In Prayagraj district, local resident Ram Kishore recalled the rapid onset of the storm, saying that within just a few minutes of the storm’s arrival, the entire sky turned pitch black. Flying tin roofing sent residents scrambling for shelter indoors, he added, with the sound of falling trees echoing through neighborhoods throughout the evening.

    In neighboring Bhadohi district, another local resident, Savitri Devi, shared her family’s narrow escape after their mud-built home was severely damaged by strong winds. Devi said the family fled outside immediately when their home’s walls began shaking from the force of the wind; the roof collapsed just moments after they escaped. The family spent the night taking shelter at a relative’s home, left homeless by the storm.

    In response to the disaster, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has issued urgent orders for all involved agencies: complete full relief operations across affected areas within 24 hours, and expedite the distribution of financial compensation and emergency life-saving aid to all families impacted by the extreme weather.

  • Heavy Russian strikes on Kyiv kill one, wound 31

    Heavy Russian strikes on Kyiv kill one, wound 31

    Fresh waves of Russian drone and missile attacks have targeted Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, leaving at least one civilian dead and 31 others wounded, including a child, local officials confirmed Thursday. The assault comes just days after a short-lived three-day ceasefire brokered amid international diplomacy, ending with Moscow resuming full-scale offensive operations across Ukrainian territory.

    AFP correspondents on the ground in Kyiv reported air raid sirens blaring across the city hours before a sustained barrage of loud explosions echoed through residential neighborhoods overnight. Thousands of residents rushed to underground metro stations and other bomb shelters to escape the incoming fire, which stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a statement on social media outlining the scale of the assault: Russian forces launched more than 670 attack drones and 56 missiles in the operation, with most strikes concentrated on targets within Kyiv and its surrounding regions. “These are definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end,” Zelensky wrote, adding that he had received preliminary reports of multiple people still trapped beneath rubble at damaged sites. The Ukrainian leader emphasized that Kyiv expects its international partners to condemn the attack explicitly, rather than remaining silent on the escalation.

    Preliminary damage assessments show more than 20 locations across Kyiv sustained damage, including multiple civilian structures: private residential apartment blocks, a public school, a veterinary clinic and other critical community infrastructure. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, initially reported one fatality and 16 injuries in the capital proper, before Ukraine’s State Emergency Service updated the overall casualty count for the broader Kyiv region to 31 wounded.

    Military officials confirmed the strikes hit six districts within Kyiv city limits and an additional six districts in the surrounding suburbs. By dawn Thursday, AFP photographers captured rescue teams combing through collapsed building debris for survivors, with crews pulling one wounded resident out of a partially destroyed residential block. Search and rescue operations remain ongoing as of Thursday afternoon.

    The resumption of large-scale hostilities followed Russia’s formal end to its three-day ceasefire on Tuesday. The temporary pause in fighting was announced last week by former U.S. President Donald Trump, just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a scaled-back annual Victory Day military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

    Zelensky has publicly called on Trump to push for a negotiated end to the ongoing conflict during his scheduled meetings this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The overnight attack on Kyiv marks the second major Russian barrage in as many days: on Wednesday, a wave of at least 800 Russian drones targeted regions in western Ukraine, killing six people and wounding dozens more.

    Russia has carried out sustained bombardment campaigns across Ukrainian population centers for more than four years, with large-scale drone and missile attacks typically launched under cover of darkness. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered the most severe armed conflict on the European continent since World War II, with casualty estimates reaching hundreds of thousands of people killed and more than 14 million Ukrainians displaced from their homes, according to United Nations data.

  • BRICS foreign ministers meet in India as Iran war, oil prices and divisions test the bloc’s unity

    BRICS foreign ministers meet in India as Iran war, oil prices and divisions test the bloc’s unity

    Two days of high-stakes diplomatic talks between BRICS foreign ministers kicked off in New Delhi on Thursday, bringing together representatives from the bloc’s 10 current member states at a moment of deepening geopolitical friction and growing global economic volatility. The summit unfolds against a backdrop of multiple overlapping crises: the ongoing conflict involving Iran has disrupted global energy supply chains, pushed international oil prices sharply higher, and created new rifts among the grouping’s recently expanded membership, while U.S. President Donald Trump holds a landmark meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing concurrently.

    Founded in 2001 and formally established as a coordination bloc in 2006, BRICS was originally built as a collective voice for major emerging economies, designed to counterbalance the influence of Western-dominated global governance bodies such as the G7. South Africa joined the original four members—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—in 2010, marking the bloc’s first expansion. A major wave of new memberships followed in 2024, when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates joined, with Indonesia becoming the 10th full member in 2025. Over the past two decades, the bloc has positioned itself as an alternative leadership channel for the Global South, attracting widespread support from developing nations that have long criticized Western-led financial institutions for skewed representation and unfair policies.

    Attendees at this year’s summit include Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. China is being represented by Ambassador Xu Feihong, as top Chinese diplomat Foreign Minister Wang Yi remains in Beijing to support the Trump-Xi summit. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who holds the 2025 BRICS chairmanship, opened the talks by outlining the summit’s core priorities: addressing pressing global and regional challenges, and identifying actionable pathways to deepen practical cooperation across all member states.

    In his opening address, Jaishankar emphasized that BRICS has a critical role to play in helping developing nations navigate overlapping, cascading crises, from public health vulnerabilities and inadequate development financing to skyrocketing prices for energy, food, and fertilizer. “We meet at a time of considerable flux in international relations,” Jaishankar told delegates, noting that emerging and developing economies increasingly look to BRICS to deliver a “constructive and stabilizing role” amid global uncertainty.

    Despite the bloc’s expanding global influence and growing appeal in the Global South, deep internal divisions have come to the fore ahead of this week’s talks, testing BRICS’ ability to present a unified front to the world. Longstanding regional rivalries, including the competition for influence between India and China, have created persistent frictions, while member states hold widely differing alignments with Western powers. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine already laid bare these ideological and strategic gaps, and the bloc’s 2024 expansion has added new layers of strain, as competing regional interests have made it even harder to align on collective positions.

    Now, the escalating conflict in the Middle East has pushed these divisions into the open. Both Iran and the UAE are current BRICS members, but the two nations hold sharply competing interests in the region. On Wednesday, Iranian deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed that disagreements over the conflict had already blocked BRICS from agreeing to a unified statement.

    Gharibabadi told India’s Press Trust of India that one unnamed BRICS member had pushed for the bloc to release language formally condemning Iran, a move that has derailed consensus-building efforts. “We want India’s BRICS chairship to be successful. It is not a good approach to send a signal to the world that the BRICS is divided. One country is insisting on condemning Iran,” Gharibabadi said.

  • ‘They shot my neighbour in the head’ – the lakeside city traumatised by war

    ‘They shot my neighbour in the head’ – the lakeside city traumatised by war

    Years of simmering conflict in the resource-rich eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have erupted into one of the world’s most devastating unaddressed humanitarian crises, with a new bombshell investigation from leading global human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) exposing systematic atrocities against civilians during the weeks-long occupation of the key lakeside city of Uvira.

    The investigation, the first comprehensive on-the-ground account of abuses during the occupation, documents extrajudicial summary executions, widespread sexual violence, targeted attacks on children, and mass civilian displacement, with direct blame placed on both the M23 rebel movement and uniformed troops from neighboring Rwanda.

    M23 forces, long alleged by Western powers and United Nations experts to be militarily backed by Rwanda, seized Uvira – a strategic port city on the shores of Lake Tanganyika that serves as a gateway to Burundi, a key Congolese military ally – in December 2024. The capture came just days after then U.S. President Donald Trump brokered a high-profile peace deal between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, designed to de-escalate years of fighting in the unstable region.

    Over 130 local residents who remained in or fled Uvira during the occupation were interviewed by HRW investigators, who collected firsthand testimony corroborating 53 documented civilian executions carried out during door-to-door search raids across residential neighborhoods. The victims included 46 men, one woman, and five minor boys. Multiple witnesses described watching family members and neighbors killed in cold blood. One survivor recalled, “I wasn’t hit so I just ran to the lake. I saw my brother, his wife, and two of his children fall,” after M23 fighters opened fire on his household. Another witness described seeing fighters execute his neighbor with a point-blank gunshot to the head.

    Beyond extrajudicial killings, HRW verified eight separate accounts of gang rape and sexual assault committed by M23 fighters and Rwandan soldiers, with many survivors describing brutal violence against their families for attempting to intervene. In one account, a woman told investigators that after uniformed men sexually assaulted her, they shot and killed her husband when he tried to stop the attack. Another survivor recalled Rwandan soldiers threatening to murder her if she did not comply with their demands, while a third survivor described fighters debating whether to kill her before deciding to assault her instead.

    Children were not spared from the violence, the report confirms. Multiple children were shot and killed after being falsely accused of being pro-government informants. One 12-year-old boy survived a execution attempt, HRW says, after fighters shot him and stabbed his leg with a bayonet to confirm he was dead before leaving him for dead. Investigators also located three unmarked mass graves in Uvira, including one on a site previously controlled by United Nations peacekeeping forces.

    The Rwandan government has long rejected all claims that it provides military support to M23 or deploys its own troops inside Congolese territory, and neither the Rwandan government nor M23 leadership responded to HRW’s requests for comment on the specific allegations outlined in the report, nor to separate requests for comment from the BBC.

    Following intense regional and international diplomatic pressure, M23 withdrew from Uvira in January 2025, allowing Congolese government forces to retake control of the city. By that point, tens of thousands of residents had already fled their homes to escape the violence.

    HRW says the pattern of documented abuses – which also include widespread abductions, enforced disappearances, and forced recruitment of local residents – meet the international legal definition of war crimes. The organization is calling for immediate international accountability measures to be brought against all parties responsible for the violence.

    This report is only the latest to highlight the catastrophic scale of the ongoing humanitarian disaster in eastern DRC. A separate 2025 analysis from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that more than 35,000 cases of sexual violence against children were recorded across the country in the first nine months of 2025, the vast majority in the North and South Kivu provinces, where M23 controls large swathes of territory. The persistent fighting has displaced nearly two million people in South Kivu province alone, according to UN figures, leaving millions more facing acute food insecurity and limited access to basic medical and humanitarian services.

  • Cuba has run out of diesel and oil, energy minister says

    Cuba has run out of diesel and oil, energy minister says

    Cuba’s national energy system has entered a state of unprecedented crisis, with the Caribbean nation completely exhausted of its crude oil, diesel and fuel oil reserves, Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy confirmed in an interview with local state media. The minister made clear that only limited volumes of locally extracted natural gas remain available, placing the country’s entire energy infrastructure in a “critical” condition that he directly attributes to the long-standing U.S.-led oil blockade squeezing incoming supply.

    The acute fuel shortage has triggered staggering disruptions across daily life in Cuba. Multiple districts of the capital Havana are already experiencing scheduled rolling blackouts that last between 20 and 22 hours per day, forcing residents like the man photographed cooking over open firewood during outages to adapt to crippled basic services. De la O Levy acknowledged the public mood across the country has grown “extremely tense”, and on Wednesday, scattered public demonstrations against prolonged power cuts broke out across the capital, according to a Reuters on-the-ground report.

    Critical public services have been brought to a near standstill by the energy collapse. Hospitals can no longer maintain normal operations, leaving vulnerable patients without consistent access to life-saving equipment, while schools and government administrative offices have been forced to suspend in-person operations indefinitely. The crisis has also hit Cuba’s most vital economic driver: the tourism sector, which relies on consistent power and infrastructure to accommodate international visitors, has already reported significant disruptions that threaten already fragile revenue streams.

    Historically, Cuba has depended on fuel imports from Venezuela and Mexico to feed its domestic refining network. But those shipments have all but ceased in recent years, after former U.S. President Donald Trump introduced sweeping tariff threats against any third country that continued supplying fuel to Cuba, pressuring suppliers to cut trade ties.

    Amid the deepening crisis, the U.S. has reaffirmed a controversial offer of $100 million in humanitarian aid, which it has tied directly to demands for “meaningful reforms” to Cuba’s ruling communist system. This offer follows a recent escalation of U.S. pressure: in early May, Washington expanded its blockade with a new round of sanctions targeting senior Cuban government officials, accusing them of human rights violations. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has already decried these new sanctions as “illegal and abusive.”

    Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Cuban authorities had rejected the $100 million aid offer outright, a claim the Cuban government has formally denied. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department repeated the aid proposal, stating the assistance would be distributed in partnership with the Catholic Church and what it described as “reliable” independent humanitarian organizations. “The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical life-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance,” the State Department said in a statement.

  • Somalia is in a deadly drought again. Most humanitarian aid isn’t there this time

    Somalia is in a deadly drought again. Most humanitarian aid isn’t there this time

    In the parched semi-autonomous region of Puntland, northern Somalia, 70-year-old pastoralist Abdi Ahmed Farah guards a rapidly dwindling stock of food that keeps his family of 23 alive. Three years of failed consecutive rains have turned his once-thriving herd of 680 goats into a pile of carcasses littered outside his makeshift tent, leaving just 110 emaciated animals barely clinging to life. Already trapped in debt from purchasing overpriced water, Farah’s family now survives on a single daily meal of rice mixed with sugar and oil. Three weeks after his youngest child was born, his wife produces barely a drop of breast milk to feed the newborn.

    “I have considered abandoning my family because I cannot provide for them,” Farah said, his voice heavy with desperation that echoes across millions of Somali households as the country faces what experts warn could be the worst drought in its recorded history. One of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, Somalia is now grappling with a climate-driven catastrophe that has dried up major rivers, withered entire harvests, and pushed a third of its population to the brink of starvation.

    The crisis has been severely compounded by cascading external pressures: deep cuts to international humanitarian aid, most sharply from the United States, Somalia’s former largest donor, and skyrocketing commodity prices spurred by ongoing tensions in the Middle East. Somalia relies on imports for 70% of its food supply and purchases nearly all of its fuel from the region, leaving its already fragile economy extremely exposed to global market shocks. Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows production of the country’s staple crops—maize and sorghum—during the key October-to-December rainy season fell to the lowest level on record this year.

    Humanitarian agencies now warn that nearly 500,000 children across Somalia are at risk of severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of hunger, a toll higher than that recorded during the catastrophic droughts of 2011 and 2022, according to UNICEF. “2026 is the worst year on record for Somalia in terms of drought,” said Hameed Nuru, country director for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Somalia. “Children have started dying.”

    Official joint estimates from the Somali government and the United Nations put the number of people facing crisis-level hunger at 6.5 million, a 25% jump since the start of the year that equals one-third of the entire national population. While aid organizations are stretching already thin resources to respond and the Somali diaspora has been sending critical funds to family members back home, humanitarian workers warn the support being mobilized is nowhere near enough to meet the scale of need.

    “This drought is not just another cycle of dry season. It’s a repeated climate shock with shrinking humanitarian support,” explained Mohamed Assair, a senior manager for Save the Children in Puntland.

    In Usgure, the small Puntland village where Farah and his family have taken shelter for 10 days after fleeing their depleted grazing lands, the local economy that relies entirely on pastoralist activity has completely collapsed. Almost a dozen rotting goat carcasses lie within meters of Farah’s tent, and even when herders manage to hold onto livestock, emaciated animals cannot be sold or traded for staple grains like they once could. “There is no market for my goats because they are so thin. Previously we would trade them for rice, but now we can’t,” Farah said.

    Community leader Abshir Hirsi Ali, who heads the 700-family village, says local shops have shuttered and food reserves have run dry. A brief, unseasonable shower that recently passed through the region left behind pools of contaminated rainwater, but desperate families with no other source of drinking water had no choice but to consume it. “Some families were so desperate they drank it … now there is a high number of people with fever,” Ali said. Save the Children occasionally delivers free water to the village, but private water vendors have quadrupled their prices amid scarcity. The cost of a 50-kilogram bag of flour has jumped by a third to $40, out of reach for most displaced and local households.

    For 47-year-old mother of 11 Muhubo Tahir Omar, the drought has erased even the possibility of education for her children. Like other families, she sold all her goats one by one to cover school fees, but when the money ran out, teachers abandoned the village school. Her last remaining goat is now also sick, leaving her with no assets to fall back on. “I’m not only afraid for my family but the future of the whole village,” she said.

    Decades of ongoing conflict in Somalia have already displaced millions of people across the country, and the drought has pushed an additional 200,000 people from their homes this year alone, per U.N. estimates. Many families cross hundreds of kilometers of harsh, arid terrain with almost no food or water to reach the nearest aid distribution sites, a journey that often proves fatal. “People are on the move … and when people move, people die,” said Kevin Mackey, country director for the humanitarian organization World Vision. Mackey recently met with a group of displaced people who walked for nine consecutive days across open desert to reach aid in the southern Somali town of Dollow.

    In a displacement camp outside Shahda village, Puntland, 20-year-old mother of four Shukri—who only provided her first name for safety—says she once managed to scrape together one meal a day for her children from aid handouts. Now, there is no food at all, and clean water remains almost impossible to access. “The children got diarrhea from dirty water and malnourishment worsened,” she said. “I know a few people who have died.”

    Thousands of displaced people flock to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in search of better access to aid, but food scarcity plagues even the capital city. Forty-five-year-old mother of seven Fadumo fled to Mogadishu from Lower Shabelle, a region already besieged by violence from the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab. “The water sources we depended on for farming, including the river, dried up,” Fadumo said. “Conflict made our situation even worse, forcing us to flee.”

    The catastrophic 2022 drought in Somalia killed an estimated 36,000 people, per U.N. data, and today, the level of emergency aid that was rushed to the country during that crisis has all but evaporated. Total international aid funding to Somalia dropped to just $531 million in 2025, down from $2.38 billion in 2022, a collapse driven largely by deep cuts from the United States, which was previously the country’s largest donor.

    “Unless there is a sudden and substantial response from donors, the outlook is deeply concerning. A drought of similar severity in 2022 received a response five times greater than what we are seeing,” said Antoine Grand, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia. WFP originally planned to deliver food aid to 2 million vulnerable Somalis this year, but crippling funding gaps mean the organization has only been able to reach 300,000 people to date.

    At a severe acute malnutrition treatment center run out of the main hospital in Qardho, Puntland, life-saving therapeutic milk for malnourished children is now rarely in stock, forcing nurses to rely on unfortified cow’s milk as a homemade alternative, according to center director Shamis Abdirahman. The center currently treats around 15 children a month, but staff expect cases to surge dramatically as more displaced families arrive from drought-stricken rural areas.

    Four-year-old Farhia, who weighs just 7.5 kilograms—less than 17 pounds—with sunken eyes and visible bones under her skin, is one of the children currently receiving care. Her family fled to Qardho after all of their goats died back in their home village. “I don’t know what to hope for, or see how we can get back to what we had,” said Farhia’s mother, Najma.