Global Pulse

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  • Houthi missile attacks kill 58 Saudi-backed Yemeni govt forces: source

    Houthi missile attacks kill 58 Saudi-backed Yemeni govt forces: source

    A devastating wave of missile and drone strikes carried out by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has claimed the lives of at least 58 troops aligned with the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government, marking one of the deadliest single days of conflict in the country’s civil war in four years, a senior military source confirmed Thursday.

    The lethal assault comes as Yemen is increasingly drawn into the expanding regional conflict centered on escalating tensions between the US-Israeli bloc and Iran, with Houthi forces ramping up attacks on both Yemeni government positions and neighboring Saudi Arabia, a key American ally and primary backer of Yemen’s official administration.

    Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree stated that the strikes targeted government military outposts in retaliation for what the rebels claim is a Saudi-backed military buildup by government forces in contested regions. Initial casualty reports from medical sources had put the death toll at 38, but an updated figure from an anonymous military source confirmed 58 troops killed, with dozens more wounded.

    A senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that Thursday’s coordinated attacks on multiple military camps represent the worst single loss of life for government forces since 2022. Yemen’s defense ministry issued a brief statement following the strikes, affirming that the country’s armed forces would respond to the assault “at the appropriate place and time.”

    The escalation of violence spilled across Yemen’s northern border into Saudi Arabia on Thursday, with Saudi officials confirming that Houthi cross-border attacks wounded 11 civilians in the southern Saudi region of Najran. Coalition spokesperson Major General Turki al-Malki told the official Saudi Press Agency that the wounded casualties included seven Saudi citizens, one Yemeni, two Egyptians, and one Pakistani national.

    Saudi Arabia has led a regional military coalition supporting Yemen’s government against Houthi forces since the conflict escalated in 2015. Al-Malki condemned the rebels for carrying out “indiscriminate shelling against civilian objects” and reaffirmed that coalition forces would continue all necessary measures to protect civilian populations on both sides of the border.

    Houthi forces have significantly increased provocations against Saudi Arabia over the past month, amplifying regional chaos that followed the eruption of open US-Iran hostilities in late February. The coordinated strikes Thursday hit three key government positions: a major military camp in the al-Ruwaik district of Yemen’s central Marib province, and two additional camps in the Al-Abr and Al-Wadiah areas of Hadramawt governorate, located near the Saudi border.

    One of the deadliest single strikes hit troops during their morning formation at the Marib province camp, leaving “at least 45 personnel killed and wounded,” according to a military source who requested anonymity for security reasons. Saree confirmed Al-Ruwaik, al-Thaniyah, and al-Abr as targeted locations, and warned that Houthi forces remain “prepared to confront any escalation” from government and coalition forces.

    Yemen has been mired in full-scale conflict for more than a decade, after Houthi forces seized the capital Sanaa and much of the country’s populous northern region in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile and later into control of most of southern Yemen. The conflict, which has already killed hundreds of thousands of people through direct fighting and humanitarian crisis, created what the United Nations has long called the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

    A UN-negotiated truce brokered in 2022 largely froze frontline fighting, and the truce agreement broadly held even after its official expiration. That fragile calm collapsed last month, however, as Houthi forces allowed an Iranian plane to land directly in Sanaa in a move that violated truce terms, triggering escalating tit-for-tat strikes. The rebels later announced a self-declared maritime blockade of Saudi ports and began attacking Saudi commercial tankers. Just last month, Houthi strikes killed 16 government-aligned troops south of the strategic port city of Hodeidah, two medical officials confirmed to AFP.

  • Sudan’s invisible children – born in war with no legal identity

    Sudan’s invisible children – born in war with no legal identity

    Eight months after holding her newborn son for the first time, 17-year-old Amira – her name changed to protect her from harm – still cannot secure the one document that would guarantee her son a shot at basic rights: a birth certificate. Her story, one of thousands unfolding across war-ravaged Sudan, lays bare the invisible crisis plaguing children born from sexual violence amid the country’s 28-month civil war.

    Sudan’s brutal power struggle between the national military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted in April 2023, turning the Darfur city of el-Fasher into one of the conflict’s bloodiest battlefields. For 18 months, the city held out as the military’s last major stronghold in Darfur, before falling to the RSF and its allied Arab militias in October 2024. For the tens of thousands of civilians trapped through the months-long siege, daily life was a cycle of relentless bombardment, violent street clashes, and crippling hunger. Desperate to survive, Amira and her family joined a wave of displaced residents fleeing the city in early 2025. But their escape turned to horror when three armed RSF fighters abducted Amira as the group snuck along a southwestern road out of el-Fasher.

    “They blindfolded me and took me to the Tabit area south of el-Fasher. I was locked in a room for two months, and every day one of them raped me in turn,” Amira recounts quietly, her trauma still raw. Weeks into her captivity, she discovered she was pregnant and fell severely ill. When her captors chose to abandon her, they dumped her near the site of her abduction, where other fleeing el-Fasher residents found her and arranged for emergency medical care. Months later, she gave birth at an International Medical Corps-run hospital in a humanitarian hub outside RSF control, where local Sudanese aid group Nada Al-Azhar Foundation for Disaster Prevention and Sustainable Development (Nada) stepped in to support her and help track down her displaced family, who had reached a sprawling refugee camp hosting hundreds of thousands of other el-Fasher escapees. The reunion was a moment of profound relief for the whole family, but new, ongoing struggles quickly took its place.

    Under current Sudanese administrative rules, birth registration requires formal identification details for the child’s father – information Amira cannot provide. Even the initial birth notification from her delivery hospital demands this data, locking her son out of official legal recognition before he can even access basic services. “I can’t get him vaccinated, or enrol him in nursery or school,” Amira explains. “I’m afraid for his future because he isn’t registered at all. My economic situation is very difficult, and I can’t afford his treatment or care. I can’t even go to work for fear of being exposed to violence again.”

    Amira’s ordeal is far from unique. Aid workers report this pattern repeats across every conflict zone in Sudan, where widespread sexual violence by armed groups has left hundreds of underage and adult survivors pregnant, with no path to register their children. “Many children are being born in complex circumstances, often without the knowledge of the father – meaning their births cannot be registered,” explains Abu Bakr Yousif Yaqoub, Nada’s director of protection programmes. “Registering a child requires identity information, a national number and a birth certificate. But when the father is absent or unknown, it becomes extremely difficult. The mother is often alone, and sometimes she herself is still a child who needs care, which limits her ability to care for her baby. There are also health challenges related to the lack of follow-up on essential vaccinations, which begin at birth and continue through the child’s early years.”

    Yaqoub warns the impact stretches far beyond early childhood: unregistered children are barred from formal education, blocked from travel, and unable to obtain any official identity documents as adults, leaving them effectively stateless for life.

    Capturing an accurate count of these children is nearly impossible. Deep social stigma attached to sexual assault in Sudan prevents most survivors from coming forward, meaning the true scale of the crisis remains unrecorded. “Women who experience such assaults do not feel comfortable reporting them,” says Shaza Ahmed, Nada’s director general, speaking from the army-held eastern city of Port Sudan. “Unfortunately, most of the mothers of these children are themselves children – girls under the age of 18. Therefore, they cannot make the decision to go officially to court or the police, as they need a guardian to accompany them.” Ahmed adds that 90% of the cases Nada has documented involve families refusing to allow official reporting of the assaults that led to pregnancy, out of fear of social judgment.

    “As a Sudanese woman, my greatest fear and concern for children born as a result of rape is that we are facing a whole generation that will live under stigma, danger and fear,” Ahmed says. “These children will not receive respect from society, their well-being will not be truly protected, and above all, they will not have access to services or their rights. For Ahmed they are not being treated as if they are “fully human”, even though Sudanese law does grant all children the right to obtain an identity.

    On paper, Sudan’s 2010 Child Act already protects the right to birth registration for children born outside of marriage, including those conceived through rape. The law allows for children to be registered under their mother’s name if she files a formal report of assault, which triggers a social services documentation process before the civil registry issues the birth certificate. But the collapse of state institutions across large swathes of Sudan, particularly conflict-ravaged Darfur, has rendered this legal protection meaningless on the ground. Civil registry offices are shuttered, administrative systems are broken, and many survivors lack the access or support to navigate the fragmented remaining bureaucracy.

    “The absence of documents does not just mean the absence of a piece of paper – it means denying the child access to education, healthcare and legal recognition,” explains Sudanese lawyer Majida Idris. She says urgent action is needed: civil registry operations must be reactivated in safe, accessible areas, and expanded legal support must be offered to survivors to help them secure their children’s rights.

    For now, Amira and her son remain stuck in administrative limbo in Darfur, their future uncertain. While Amira’s grandmother says the reunion of the family after Amira’s captivity is a miracle she never expected, the weight of the unregistered child’s future hangs over the entire household. Nada has provided Amira with psychological counseling and practical guidance, a small source of comfort amid ongoing hardship. But without a birth certificate, Amira’s son remains locked out of the basic rights every child is owed – one of hundreds, likely thousands, of Sudanese children growing up invisible in their own country.

  • 2 killed, 13 wounded in bus blast near Syrian capital: state media

    2 killed, 13 wounded in bus blast near Syrian capital: state media

    A deadly improvised explosive device detonated inside a civilian minibus on Thursday in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, a multi-religious town home to large Druze and Christian communities, killing at least two people and injuring 13 others, Syrian state media has confirmed, citing official data from the country’s health ministry.

    Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographers on the scene documented the extensive damage caused by the blast: the minibus’s roof was completely blown off, its internal chassis was reduced to mangled wreckage, and scattered debris covered a major thoroughfare that was immediately closed to traffic by responding authorities. Multiple ambulances were spotted rushing emergency personnel and supplies to the blast site, while forensic medical teams have begun the process of recovering and identifying human remains, according to reports from Syria’s official state news agency SANA.

    Preliminary government investigations confirm the blast was a targeted attack, with the explosive device pre-planted on the vehicle before detonation, an official source told Syrian state television. As of Thursday evening, no armed faction had issued a claim of responsibility for the attack.

    This latest incident comes amid a sustained wave of instability across Syria, nearly 12 months after former long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in December 2024. Since taking control of the country, Syria’s new Islamist-led administration has made restoring national security and extending full state authority across its territory a top policy priority, but the capital Damascus and its surrounding suburbs have emerged as a repeated flashpoint for attacks targeting both civilians and state security forces.

    Jaramana itself has already experienced sectarian violence earlier this year, in spring 2025, and this bombing fits a pattern of frequent attacks that have rocked the country in recent months. Just one month prior, during a historic visit to Damascus by French President Emmanuel Macron—the first EU head of state to travel to Syria since Assad’s ouster—two homemade bombs detonated, leaving one dead and 36 injured. Macron was unharmed, as he was not at his nearby hotel when the blasts went off, and Syrian security forces later announced they had captured an Islamic State (IS)-affiliated cell responsible for the attack.

    Just days before the Macron visit bombing, a separate explosion at a central Damascus cafe killed 10 people and wounded roughly 20 others. The deadliest attack to hit Syria this year occurred in June 2025, when a suicide bombing targeting a Damascus church left 25 people dead. While a Sunni Islamist faction initially claimed the attack, Syrian authorities have pinned the blame on IS.

    While current Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has repeatedly pledged to protect the country’s minority communities in Syria’s multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian society, the past year has seen widespread sectarian bloodshed: massacres of Alawite communities in their coastal heartland, and violent clashes involving the Druze minority in southern Syria. In a December address marking the one-year anniversary of Assad’s ouster, al-Sharaa called for national unity, saying all Syrians must work together to “build a strong Syria.”

    Syria joined the U.S.-led global coalition against IS last year, more than six years after the jihadist group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq and Syria in 2019. Despite the loss of all occupied territory, IS retains an extensive network of dormant sleeper cells across both countries, and continues to issue calls for armed attacks against the new Syrian authorities.

  • Saudi Arabia’s last major oil route comes under Houthi pressure

    Saudi Arabia’s last major oil route comes under Houthi pressure

    In a significant escalation of maritime hostilities against Saudi Arabia, the Houthi movement announced Wednesday it had launched ballistic missiles targeting the Saudi-flagged oil tanker NCC Wafaa off the coast of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia’s key northern Red Sea export hub. This assault marks the northernmost attack the Yemeni militant group has carried out since it declared a full blockade of Saudi shipping on July 22, a strategic shift that analysts warn could amplify economic pressure on Riyadh and disrupt critical global trade lanes.

    Prior to this strike, Houthi attacks on maritime traffic were almost entirely concentrated off Yemen’s own coast, spanning the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The group claims the NCC Wafaa violated blockade terms and ignored multiple pre-strike warnings before coming under fire.

    The attack comes amid a wider regional crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, which forced Saudi Arabia to reroute the vast majority of its oil exports through the Bab al-Mandab strait and Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal for delivery to its primary Asian market. Ibrahim Jalal, a prominent Yemen-based analyst, framed the northern strike as a deliberate attempt to close off this alternative export corridor that Riyadh has become increasingly dependent on.

    Jalal outlined two core drivers behind the Houthi’s northward expansion: externally, the move bolsters Iran’s bargaining power in negotiations surrounding the Strait of Hormuz standoff; internally, it aims to reassert the group’s coercive leverage over the Saudi government.

    Maritime security analysts warn the situation has reached its most severe point since the crisis began. Matthew Wright, an analyst at leading ship-tracking firm Kpler, noted this week that threats to global crude trade have never been higher since the Houthi blockade was implemented. To date, the Houthis claim to have struck eight commercial tankers since July 22: five Saudi-flagged vessels and one Indian-flagged tanker that sank near Bab al-Mandab on August 4. Only four of these strikes have been independently verified by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO), the global authoritative body for maritime security incident reporting, and Saudi government officials have yet to publicly confirm any of the attacks.

    Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree claimed on August 5 that at least 29 Saudi commercial vessels have already diverted away from Bab al-Mandab in the first two weeks of the blockade. Framing the campaign as “blockade for blockade”, Saree reiterated the group’s commitment to matching any Saudi escalation with proportional counteraction.

    Salah Ali Salah, a security researcher at the Sanaa Centre, warned that the Houthi movement remains on a clear escalatory trajectory, and has not yet deployed the full scope of its maritime strike capabilities against Saudi shipping. As the threat grows, shipping operators are adapting in uneven ways: Bloomberg reports that while some Saudi tankers have chosen to take the far longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa (six vessels took this alternative route this week alone), others have disabled their onboard transponders to cross Bab al-Mandab undetected.

    The strategic importance of this waterway can hardly be overstated: Saudi oil shipments typically make up roughly 66 percent of all commercial traffic passing through Bab al-Mandab, and the Red Sea as a whole carries 10 to 12 percent of all global traded goods.

    Ryan Bohl, senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at global risk intelligence firm RANE, noted that it is unlikely the Houthis can fully block all commercial traffic in the northern Red Sea. Instead, their strategy is to establish themselves as a credible persistent threat to shipping near Egypt and the Suez Canal, forcing Saudi shipping firms to adopt costly risk-mitigation measures that cut into their bottom line. These measures include disabling transponders, paying substantial hazard pay to crew members, and absorbing the full cost of war risk insurance for all transits.

    Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope also introduces major logistical hurdles: tankers sailing for Asia must still pass through the Suez Canal to reach Yanbu, adding a minimum of four weeks to total voyage time. Furthermore, the Suez Canal’s limited depth restrictions prevent fully loaded Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) – the standard vessel for Saudi crude exports, which carry roughly 2 million barrels of oil – from transiting fully loaded. Instead, Saudi exporters must use smaller Suezmax vessels (with 1 million barrel capacity) or sail VLCCs partially loaded, drastically reducing export efficiency. Bohl explained that this means more voyages are required to deliver the same total volume of crude, adding approximately $1.6 million in extra fuel costs plus a $1 million Suez Canal toll per transit.

    Salah emphasized that the core challenge for Saudi Arabia is not simply finding an alternative route for exports, but finding one that can match the scale, cost efficiency, and reliability of its pre-crisis export network. Partial workarounds do exist: the Egyptian Sumed pipeline allows exporters to offload part of a VLCC’s cargo in deep water off Egypt’s northern coast, transit the Suez Canal with a reduced load, then reload the cargo onto the same vessel on the other side, partially offsetting the capacity losses from Suez restrictions. Saudi Arabia also uses its domestic East-West pipeline to move crude from the Persian Gulf across the country to Red Sea export terminals, and Bloomberg data shows that export volumes out of Yanbu have tripled since the Strait of Hormuz closed.

    Some analysts warn the strike on the NCC Wafaa could signal a coming expansion of Houthi targeting beyond oil tankers to include non-tanker commercial vessels and import cargo, a shift that would set a dangerous precedent for wider regional maritime disruption. Bohl, however, argues that such a move would run counter to the Houthis’ own strategic interests, as it would likely trigger a major new Saudi offensive against Houthi-held territory in Yemen, specifically targeting Hodeidah – the group’s own critical Red Sea supply lifeline.

    To date, the Houthi blockade of Bab al-Mandab has had a less severe impact on Saudi oil exports than the March 4 closure of the Strait of Hormuz. After the Hormuz closure, Riyadh rapidly shifted almost all its export capacity to Red Sea terminals, leading to an eightfold increase in traffic through Bab al-Mandab, according to Kpler data. On August 1, Yanbu recorded one of its busiest single days on record, with five supertankers simultaneously positioned for loading.

    Despite the escalating threat, Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported a 33 percent surge in second-quarter profits this week, driven by elevated global energy prices tied to the regional crisis and the efficiency of Saudi Arabia’s pipeline network for rerouting exports. Aramco CEO Amin Nasser also confirmed that previous Houthi attacks on Aramco infrastructure in July had no material impact on the company’s operations or financial performance.

    This week, emerging hopes of an Iran-Oman agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz led Saudi Arabia to cut its official crude price for Asian buyers by between 50 cents and $2 per barrel, a signal that Riyadh does not currently view the Houthi Red Sea blockade as an existential threat to its export capacity. Still, Salah noted that even a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would not resolve the underlying Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping, leaving continued uncertainty for global energy markets.

  • Israeli bulldozers uproot West Bank olive trees ahead of harvest season

    Israeli bulldozers uproot West Bank olive trees ahead of harvest season

    On a Wednesday just weeks before Palestinian farmers were set to begin their annual olive harvest, Israeli bulldozers moved into two Palestinian villages near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, felling dozens of olive trees in a continuation of a widespread campaign to uproot cultivated groves across the territory.

    This latest round of destruction targeted agricultural plots in Ajjah and Zububa, two villages located in close proximity to Israel’s controversial separation barrier. For local families who have tended these lands for multiple generations, the destruction has delivered a devastating blow to both their livelihoods and cultural heritage.

    Zaki Jaradat, who leads Zubaba’s Village Council, confirmed that the incident on Wednesday is far from an isolated action. He reported that since the beginning of 2024, Israeli forces have already uprooted more than 2,950 olive trees across more than 300 dunams (nearly 75 acres) of prime Palestinian agricultural land in the area.

    Fuad Yahya Maqalda is one of the dozens of local farmers whose generational landholdings were destroyed in the latest operation. From the rooftop of his home, which overlooks his family’s olive groves, he was forced to watch helplessly as bulldozers cleared the land, unable to reach the site to stop the work.

    “We are unable to do anything,” Maqalda told reporters from Middle East Eye. “We cannot understand the intentions behind this uprooting. The occupation uprooted olive trees that have stood on our land since the time of our grandparents.”

    The timing of the destruction has compounded the grief for affected families, with the annual olive harvest – the most economically important event of the year for thousands of West Bank Palestinian households – mere weeks away. Maqalda detailed the full scope of his own loss: three generational family plots were targeted, with 111 trees destroyed on one plot and an additional 215 cleared from a second. “Every single one of those trees has been removed,” he said.

    Tareq Ighbariya, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Commission Against the Wall and Settlements in Jenin, explained that the actual damage on the ground frequently exceeds the limits set out in formal Israeli military orders authorizing land clearing.

    “Military orders may specify a certain area for tree uprooting or land clearing, but when they are carried out, the affected area is often much larger,” Ighbariya told Middle East Eye. “In some cases, bulldozers enter agricultural land and begin clearing it without any prior military order.”

    The mass clearing in Zububa is part of a broader pattern of encroachment on Palestinian agricultural land across the Jenin governorate. Ighbariya noted that the commission has documented similar destruction across roughly 300 dunams of farmland in recent months, adding that ongoing assessments mean the final count of damaged and cleared land may be even higher than current records show.

    For Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, the annual olive harvest holds meaning far beyond economic survival. While the crop provides a critical, steady source of income for thousands of families, it is also deeply woven into Palestinian cultural and social identity, with groves passed from parent to child over centuries.

    In recent years, the lead-up to and during harvest season has brought growing levels of disruption and risk for Palestinian farmers across the territory. Reports have surged of increased restrictions on access to farmland, particularly near Israeli settlements and designated military zones, alongside widespread incidents of settler violence, deliberate vandalism, crop theft, and targeted uprooting of olive groves. For many farming communities, what should be a vital annual harvest has now become a period of significant uncertainty, with families bracing for potential loss of land or attacks as they attempt to tend and collect their crops.

  • Key details as boxer charged with Athens killing

    Key details as boxer charged with Athens killing

    Greek authorities have formally filed murder charges against Sharif Ahmadzai, an amateur boxer, in connection with the July killing of a woman identified as Elisabeth Ross, whose body was discovered inside a suitcase in the Greek capital Athens.

    The case first came to public attention when local residents stumbled upon the abandoned container in an unspecified neighborhood of Athens earlier this summer, prompting an immediate emergency response and homicide investigation. Forensic teams processed the scene and recovered the remains, which were later formally identified as those of Ross. Following weeks of investigative work, including witness interviews, forensic testing and surveillance analysis, law enforcement officers took Ahmadzai into custody and leveled the killing charge against him.

    As of the latest update, official details about the suspected motive for the killing, the relationship between the accused and the victim, and when Ahmadzai is scheduled to appear in court have not been released to the public. Local law enforcement has confirmed that the investigation remains ongoing as they continue to gather evidence to build their case against the accused.

  • ‘We’ve run out of earthly solutions’: Inside Libya’s electricity crisis

    ‘We’ve run out of earthly solutions’: Inside Libya’s electricity crisis

    This summer, a striking and surreal offer laid bare the depth of Libya’s ongoing energy catastrophe. Al Robyan, one of Tripoli’s most beloved coastal seafood restaurants, took to Facebook earlier this month to advertise a deal no local business would ever normally propose: a full spread of fresh seafood for anyone willing to trade the restaurant “some fuel for the generator”.

    In a raw, frustrated caption, the restaurant wrote, “We’ve run out of earthly solutions.” The post went viral, racking up thousands of comments, many from locals joking that a generator fuel tank would cost far more than the entire seafood spread the restaurant was offering.

    Al Robyan’s desperate gambit is just one small example of how widespread the crisis has become. Across Libya this summer, residents have faced near-daily power outages stretching between six and 10 hours each day. The situation is all the more baffling and infuriating for Libyans, given that their nation is one of the most hydrocarbon-rich countries on the continent: it pumps more than 1.3 million barrels of oil per day, and counts a total population of just over 7.5 million people.

    “Since these massive shortages started, every business in Libya has been affected,” explained Alaeddin Muntasser, a retired Tripoli-based businessman, who calls the current situation an “electricity disaster.” Speaking to Middle East Eye, Muntasser described the cascading impacts of extended blackouts, noting that one local water-bottling facility was knocked offline for weeks, leading to widespread drinking water shortages across parts of the capital. Without power to operate pumps and filtration systems, the plant could not produce bottled product, leaving communities without a reliable supply.

    Muntasser added that the crisis has already pushed countless small local eateries to close permanently. Only a small number of operations that can afford to purchase and fuel a private generator have managed to stay open. For ordinary households, the impact has been equally devastating: many families enduring the longest blackouts have lost all the perishable food stored in their refrigerators and freezers, adding unnecessary financial strain to already stretched household budgets.

    The crippling power shortages have already sparked mass public protests across multiple Libyan cities, including Tripoli, Zawiya, and Misrata. Demonstrators are not only demanding urgent action to restore a consistent power supply; they have also called for the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, whose internationally recognized government controls western Libya.

    To understand why a nation with Africa’s largest proven oil reserves faces such constant power shortages requires looking at decades of structural collapse and political division. Libya generates roughly 70% of its electricity from domestic natural gas, with the remaining share coming from oil. This makes the national power grid extremely vulnerable to declining production and operational disruptions at gas fields and along pipeline networks, problems that have mounted for years.

    “The electricity crisis and related protests is one of those problems that will not go away until Libya’s government can implement a longer-term strategy that ensures a more reliable electricity supply, whether that be through refined fuels or renewable energy sources,” explained Hamish Kinnear, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft, in an interview with Middle East Eye. Kinnear noted that while energy crises are not uncommon across the region, “for citizens of a country with the largest oil reserves and the fifth largest gas reserves in Africa, as well as significant solar power potential, blackouts are a particular source of frustration.”

    The roots of today’s crisis stretch back more than a decade, to the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi and threw the country into years of chaotic division. In the years since the uprising, Libya has split into two rival governing blocs: the internationally recognized administration led by Dbeibah in the west, and a separate eastern government backed by military forces under General Khalifa Haftar and aligned with foreign powers.

    Years of systemic underinvestment in both gas production and power grid infrastructure, combined with this year’s record-breaking heatwave that pushed temperatures above 50°C, have combined to create the perfect storm that collapsed the system this summer.

    “Oil wealth only becomes reliable electricity when institutions can convert it, and Libya’s institutions have been fractured for over a decade,” said Karim Elgendy, executive director of the Carbon Institute, a think tank focused on energy and climate issues across the Middle East and North Africa. “Rival authorities issue competing decisions over the same grid and the utility recovers almost none of its costs. Years of deferred maintenance have left the network running on ageing equipment with no margin for error. So every summer becomes a stress test the grid is not ready for,” Elgendy told Middle East Eye.

    In a bid to ease the immediate shortfall this summer, Libya turned to its neighbor Egypt for emergency assistance. Earlier this year, the two nations signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen energy sector cooperation, with senior officials from both sides meeting in July to discuss expanding energy ties. Following July’s widespread blackouts, Egypt increased its electricity exports to Libya by around 43%, bringing total shipments to 100 megawatts. Even with this sharp increase, however, the additional supply meets only a small fraction of Libya’s total needs, covering less than 10% of the country’s current generation shortfall. Libya also settled $90 million in outstanding unpaid energy dues to Egypt as part of the agreement.

    On paper, energy cooperation between the two nations makes intuitive sense: Libya holds massive untapped hydrocarbon reserves, while Egypt has existing refining capacity, power generation infrastructure, and engineering contractors that could help Libya develop its resources. “The complementarity between the two economies is real: Libya has the hydrocarbons, Egypt has the refining, the generation fleet and the contractors,” Elgendy noted. But he added that “genuine integration begins when both sides commit to a long-term commercial framework with obligations running both ways,” a commitment that has yet to materialize.

    There is also a hidden risk to Libya relying on Egyptian electricity imports: Egypt itself is facing growing energy security challenges, as its domestic natural gas production has declined amid depleting mature reserves. “Egypt’s own power system leans heavily on imported gas it does not control, and recent supply interruptions showed how quickly that exposure travels down the chain. A country importing electricity from Egypt is, indirectly, importing Egypt’s gas risk,” Elgendy explained. Egypt has already turned to foreign suppliers to meet its growing gas demand, signing a landmark $35 billion deal with Israel in 2025 that will nearly triple Egyptian imports from the Israeli Leviathan offshore gas field.

    Many analysts remain deeply skeptical that the recent energy cooperation agreements between Libya and Egypt will deliver meaningful long-term relief for Libyans. Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, argues that the recent diplomatic outreach is “not to be taken seriously” as a solution to Libya’s electricity crisis. Harchaoui believes that energy needs are not the primary driver of the recent diplomatic engagement, framing it instead as a superficial diplomatic gesture. “I think it would be very incorrect to say that the electricity situation is the reason for the meeting,” he told Middle East Eye. “There has been a pattern whereby Tripoli tends to say to Egypt: ‘Let’s talk. And by the way, I notice you’re suffering from energy shortages. Libya has a small population and a lot of energy, Tripoli is happy to help you, Egypt.’” He called the gesture “more of a diplomatic trick than something really genuine, especially during a summer when Libya itself is grappling with a very serious electricity crisis.”

    Harchaoui argues that the core problem has been ignored by Libyan policymakers for more than a decade. Libya holds massive onshore and offshore natural gas reserves, “but the error that Libya made, and it’s a profound error with long-time consequences, is that it hasn’t kept up in terms of natural gas production capacity.” While natural gas generates roughly three-quarters of the country’s electricity, “years have gone by with no new natural gas project of any significance even being launched.”

    As a result, existing gas infrastructure is seeing declining output, and even if a major new project were approved today, Harchaoui said it would take at least seven to eight years to come online. If current trends continue, he warned, Libya could be forced to import natural gas within just a few years — a deeply humiliating reversal for a major hydrocarbon producer that would eliminate any narrative of complementary energy ties between Libya and Egypt.

    Harchaoui attributes the failure to both cultural priorities and systemic corruption. For decades, Libya’s economy has centered almost entirely on crude oil production, leading policymakers to treat natural gas development as an afterthought, even though it powers the vast majority of the country’s electricity. Systemic corruption has also slowed progress dramatically, not only diverting public funds away from infrastructure projects but also dragging out decision-making as officials negotiate bribes. “To do a corrupt project, you need more time than to do an honest project, because you have to make sure all the key officials are satisfied with their bribes,” Harchaoui said, alleging that some power plant units purchased between 2022 and 2025 were actually secondhand equipment that was misrepresented as new to siphon off public funds.

    Political division has also shaped where public anger over the crisis has boiled over. Harchaoui noted that Dbeibah has repeatedly unfulfilled promises to “resolve” the electricity crisis since taking office in 2021, leading to concentrated unrest in western Libya, where public protest is far easier to organize than in eastern Libya under Haftar’s tighter authoritarian grip. Blackouts have hit eastern and southern Libya just as hard, Harchaoui stressed, but public discontent there has not translated into the same level of visible political unrest.

  • UN chief denounces Russia, Ukraine for civilian deaths

    UN chief denounces Russia, Ukraine for civilian deaths

    After more than four years of full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine, a sharp escalation in long-range mutual strikes has pushed civilian casualty numbers to new highs, prompting the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly condemn attacks on population centers on both sides and call for an immediate end to violations of international humanitarian law.

    The cycle of violence accelerated this week. On Wednesday, a Russian ballistic missile strike hit a commercial warehouse complex on the outskirts of Kyiv, killing at least 17 people and destroying storage facilities held by multiple retail operators. The attack was widely interpreted as a direct retaliation for repeated Ukrainian strikes on assets linked to Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce giant often called “Russia’s Amazon” that has emerged as a recent target for Ukrainian forces.

    Overnight into Thursday, Ukraine launched one of its deepest cross-border drone attacks of the war, striking two key Russian oil refineries located hundreds of kilometers from the front lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that targets were hit in the Yaroslavl region, 700 kilometers from the conflict zone, and Bashkortostan, 1,300 kilometers inland from the front. The governor of Yaroslavl called the assault the “most massive” drone attack on the region since the war began, with Russian defense officials reporting that 92 of more than 600 total Ukrainian drones downed overnight were shot down over the region. A drone also struck a Wildberries logistics center in Russia’s Tver region, extending Ukraine’s recent campaign against the e-commerce firm.

    Russian forces responded quickly to the Ukrainian attack with new strikes across Ukrainian territory. Overnight strikes killed two civilians at a train station in Lozova, located in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. In the Black Sea off Ukraine’s Odesa coast, a Russian strike hit a commercial cargo vessel carrying Ukrainian grain, leaving one crew member dead, according to Odesa’s regional governor. Kyiv’s air defense forces were unable to intercept any of the Russian missiles launched in this wave of attacks, intensifying Zelensky’s urgent pleas for additional air defense supplies from Western allies.

    Speaking through his spokesperson Farhan Haq on Thursday, Guterres highlighted the alarming pattern of escalating strikes on populated areas that has driven the rising civilian death toll. “Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are a clear violation of international humanitarian law, and must stop immediately,” Haq told reporters. Zelensky framed Ukraine’s deep strikes into Russian territory as a step toward eventual negotiations, saying in a social media post alongside footage of burning Russian infrastructure that “Russia must choose peace.” But four years into the full-scale conflict, diplomatic talks remain completely stalled, with both sides continuing to ramp up the intensity of long-range attacks.

    In a parallel development announced Thursday, Zelensky will make his first visit to Serbia since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion this coming Saturday. Serbia has long been a traditional ally of Moscow and is one of the few European countries that has refused to impose sanctions on Russia over the invasion. A senior Ukrainian official told Agence France-Presse that the visit amounts to a “slap in the face for the Russians,” while Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed the official visit, noting that talks will cover both countries’ EU accession bids, as well as economic and energy cooperation. Vucic emphasized that Serbia’s current policy toward the conflict will remain unchanged “until further notice” despite Zelensky’s upcoming visit.

    Separately on Thursday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued an urgent warning over growing safety risks at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility. IAEA Director Rafael Grossi said that the plant has seen a sharp rise in unplanned off-site power outages, a trend that he called “deeply concerning and clearly not sustainable.” Plant personnel continue to report regular military activity and explosions close to the facility site multiple times every day, Grossi added, repeating the agency’s longstanding call for “maximum military restraint” around the plant. Located close to active front lines, the Zaporizhzhia plant has repeatedly lost external power, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators to maintain cooling for its nuclear reactors. The facility most recently lost off-site power briefly on Tuesday, though the cause of the outage remains unconfirmed as of Thursday.

  • Iran: Trump says he’d rather make deal than ‘kill people’ amid reports of weapons shortages

    Iran: Trump says he’d rather make deal than ‘kill people’ amid reports of weapons shortages

    Volatility has surged across the Middle East this week, as overlapping diplomatic and military developments create a fragile security landscape spanning from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean. The most consequential shift came from U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced Wednesday evening during a Las Vegas public event that Washington is currently engaged in direct talks with Iran, and that the administration prioritizes a negotiated agreement over new large-scale military action against Tehran.

    Trump surprised attendees by revealing that the U.S. had finalized plans for what he called “the biggest attack since World War II” before Iranian leadership requested negotiations. “I would rather make a deal with Iran because I don’t want to kill people,” he stated, while doubling down on his long-held policy that Iran will never be permitted to develop a nuclear weapon under his administration.

    Trump’s announcement comes amid conflicting reports surrounding severe munitions shortages within the U.S. military, which multiple anonymous sources have tied to the decision to halt planned large-scale strikes against Iran. The Washington Post first reported last week that Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a cabinet meeting over the unaddressed critical deficit in key weapons stockpiles, which had been depleted by ongoing conflict with Iran. According to sources familiar with the exchange, Hegseth pushed back against criticism and placed blame on Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, accusing him of failing to keep the president fully informed about the true state of U.S. munitions reserves.

    Multiple U.S. outlets have since corroborated the severity of the stockpile shortfall. CNN reported Wednesday, citing three unnamed defense sources, that the Pentagon’s stock of critical air defense interceptors has dropped to dangerously low levels following months of combat operations against Iran. The outlet confirmed that roughly 80 percent of the U.S. military’s pre-war THAAD anti-missile inventory has been expended, while half of all Patriot air defense interceptors have been used since the opening of hostilities. One senior defense source added that “virtually all” of the military’s most accurate long-range surface-to-air weapons have been deployed and exhausted in the same period.

    The White House has forcefully denied all reports of a munitions crisis. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the Washington Post story as “100 percent fake news” and said Trump retains “the utmost confidence” in Hegseth. Trump doubled down on this pushback in posts to his social media platform Truth Social, insisting that the U.S. military maintains massive stockpiles of key munitions and that domestic weapons manufacturing is expanding at historic rates. “The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions’, especially of certain types,” he wrote, adding that large volumes of new weapons are being produced and shipped to the Middle East “as needed”. He also claimed that “Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history”, before threatening harsh action against officials who leaked information about the stockpile issue, writing: “‘Leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down… long term jail sentences will be sought.”

    Simultaneously, violence has intensified along the Lebanon-Israel border even as U.S.-brokered peace negotiations enter their third day in Rome, marking the seventh round of talks to de-escalate the months-long conflict. Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed Thursday that an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Burj Shemali left eight people wounded. The attack followed a broader escalation of Israeli operations across southern Lebanon, including what Lebanese state media called a “wide-scale aggression” targeting the coastal city of Tyre. The Tyre strikes wounded four people, forced their evacuation to nearby hospitals, and displaced dozens of local residents from their homes.

    The current diplomatic push is deadlocked on core demands: Lebanese negotiators are insisting that Israel end all cross-border bombardment and withdraw its forces from roughly 60 Lebanese villages and towns that Israeli forces occupied during a ground offensive launched in March. Israeli negotiators, by contrast, are demanding that the Lebanese military fully disarm and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure across southern Lebanon. Israeli military and political leaders have signaled they are prepared to escalate operations if talks do not deliver their desired outcome. Israel’s public broadcaster reported Thursday that the military’s response to alleged Hezbollah border violations “has not ended”, and that sensitive offensive operations are ongoing. Israeli Channel 12 also reported that senior military commanders are asking the country’s political leadership to approve a “stronger and more decisive” military campaign across southern Lebanon.

    In a separate incident in the Persian Gulf early Thursday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported that a commercial tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz recorded two explosions approximately nine nautical miles southeast of the Omani village of Kumzar. The advisory confirmed that the vessel and all crew members escaped unharmed, and no leaks or environmental damage have been detected. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global energy supplies, with roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil consumption passing through the waterway.

  • Thousands of migrants still in Ceuta after border crisis, local leader says

    Thousands of migrants still in Ceuta after border crisis, local leader says

    Last week, a historic mass migration event unfolded across the waters separating Morocco from the Spanish North African exclave of Ceuta, when approximately 78,000 migrants crossed into Spanish territory over a 48-hour window, leaving behind a devastating humanitarian and political crisis that has rippled across the European Union. The crossing left at least 100 people dead, a toll Ceuta’s conservative leader Juan Jesús Vivas described as an “irreparable tragedy” during an address to the European Parliament this week, where he voiced profound sorrow over the loss of life and slammed the national Spanish government’s response to the emergency.

    In the days following the mass crossing, roughly 75,000 migrants have returned to Morocco, but Vivas confirmed that between 3,000 and 5,000 people remain in Ceuta, thousands of whom are unaccompanied migrant children. The Ceuta mayor-president told lawmakers that the inability of local officials to produce an exact count of remaining migrants demonstrates how severely under-resourced local authorities are to handle the ongoing crisis, adding that repeated prior warnings from local officials about an impending surge in irregular sea crossings were ignored by the national Socialist government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Vivas personally warned Sánchez of the growing risk weeks before the influx, he said, and called the government’s eventual deployment of support late and insufficient. Even with the large-scale returns that have “considerably alleviated” pressure on the small exclave, Vivas added, Ceuta has not returned to normal, with a ongoing humanitarian emergency and persistent disruptions to public order.

    The most pressing unaddressed issue centers on the thousands of migrant children remaining in Ceuta. Spanish authorities have confirmed that €25 million ($28.8 million) in emergency funding has been allocated to support minor migrants in the exclave, but reporting from Spanish outlet El Mundo found volunteer groups have already registered 4,860 migrant children — double the number counted in official government estimates. Local community members have stepped in to house unaccompanied children, volunteers told the outlet, but the current arrangement is unsustainable. To date, no children have been transferred to mainland Spain, according to El País, as right-wing regional authorities across the country have refused to accept the new arrivals. While a bilateral cooperation agreement with Morocco requires joint work to return migrant children to their home families, conservative leaders of Ceuta’s sister exclave Melilla have called for mainland Spain to show solidarity and accept the children instead.

    The root cause of the unprecedented mass crossing remains a matter of dispute between all parties involved. EU and Spanish leaders have pointed to the role of criminal smuggling networks spreading disinformation to encourage migrants to attempt the crossing, a narrative that follows a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling that barred authorities from summarily returning migrants intercepted at sea trying to reach Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco. Morocco, which does not recognize Spanish sovereignty over the two North African exclaves, has blamed the court ruling itself for the crisis. An unnamed Moroccan government source told local media that the ruling “collapsed the deterrent element of the system, and the dam gave way, not under the weight of the criminals, but of a judge’s decision.”

    Vivas has gone further, framing the mass crossing as an “unequivocal attack” on Spanish territory, questioning why Moroccan border forces did not intervene to stop the thousands of swimmers from crossing. Spanish Interior Ministry officials say they are working firmly with Moroccan counterparts to prevent future irregular crossings and aim to return all remaining migrants in Ceuta to Morocco as quickly as possible. EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner has called for the bloc to use all available policy leverage, including trade and visa arrangements, to force Morocco to deepen cooperation on irregular migration. While the European Commission has commended Spain’s swift response to the crisis, which included deploying armed forces to both Ceuta and Melilla, the emergency has exposed deep rifts between EU member states over migration policy. Italy, backed by Finland and Denmark, has suspended its Schengen Area border arrangements with Spain, while the Czech Republic called for Spain’s temporary suspension from the open-border bloc — a move Prime Minister Sánchez pushed back on, noting that Ceuta is not part of the Schengen Area.

    Adding to ongoing tensions, Moroccan media is now reporting that fresh calls for a second mass crossing are circulating across social media platforms. Local news outlet Hespress documented posts and invitations to join closed WhatsApp groups for people planning new crossing attempts, paired with hashtags promoting migration to Spain in search of work. Moroccan authorities have warned that anyone promoting irregular migration faces criminal prosecution, but the new calls have amplified fears among Ceuta’s population that a second surge could overwhelm the exclave’s already stretched resources. Vivas noted that local residents already feel “sad, helpless, anxious, fearful and worried,” with widespread uncertainty over whether another mass influx will occur in the coming weeks.