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  • Drone strike by Sudan paramilitary kills 41 near Ethiopian border, rights group says

    Drone strike by Sudan paramilitary kills 41 near Ethiopian border, rights group says

    A devastating drone attack carried out by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on a displaced persons camp in the country’s Blue Nile state, which shares a border with Ethiopia, has left at least 41 people dead, according to a Sudanese human rights organization, Emergency Lawyers.

    The targeted strike hit the Abu Shandi displacement camp on Friday, marking the latest escalation of violence in Sudan’s ongoing 18-month power struggle between the national army and the RSF paramilitary group.

    The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has publicly voiced its horror at the deeply troubling reports coming out of the region. Initial on-the-ground assessments confirm that the overwhelming majority of those killed and injured in the attack are women and children – a detail that has drawn widespread international condemnation.

    Sudan’s brutal civil conflict erupted in April 2023, when tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF boiled over into open warfare over competing claims to state control. To date, the violence has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, forced more than 14 million Sudanese to flee their homes, and created what global aid organizations describe as one of the most severe humanitarian catastrophes on the planet today. Millions of residents across the country now lack consistent access to basic life-saving services, including emergency medical care.

    Current territorial control is split between the two warring factions: the national army holds sway over most of Sudan’s central and eastern provinces, while the RSF maintains its headquarters in the western region of Darfur and also controls significant swathes of territory in the country’s south. Independent human rights monitors have documented repeated drone strikes by both sides of the conflict, with civilian population centers and displacement camps regularly bearing the brunt of the violence.

    In its official statement, OCHA added that the Abu Shandi area, which was hit in Friday’s attack, has already endured weeks of constant bombardment. This sustained violence has already displaced thousands of additional civilians in the region and left countless more vulnerable to extreme harm, as aid groups struggle to reach affected communities with critical supplies.

  • Headmaster detained after BBC investigation into alleged sexual abuse of students

    Headmaster detained after BBC investigation into alleged sexual abuse of students

    A months-long independent investigation by former students and the BBC World Service’s investigative unit BBC Eye has led to the arrest of a former headmaster of an Islamic boarding school in Lombok, Indonesia, who stands accused of repeated sexual abuse of minor students. Ahmad Imanuddin Sumar, affectionately known to generations of pupils as “Abah”, led the prominent Abul Barokat boarding school for years before allegations of abuse were finally brought to official attention.

    The case was first sparked when former star pupil Ziadatur Rahmah — widely known as Zia — confided in a former classmate, Yusron Azzahidi, that Sumar had sexually assaulted her when she was just 17 years old. At the time of the confession, Zia was studying abroad in Cairo, Egypt, while Azzahidi was based in Jakarta. Recognizing the weight of the allegation, Azzahidi proposed that the pair conduct their own systematic search for evidence and other potential victims.

    Their investigation quickly led them to another former student, Sukma Rohana Fajar, who alleged that Sumar had attempted to rape her while she was enrolled at the school. Azzahidi compiled all the testimonies and gathered evidence into a detailed seven-page report, which the group submitted to leaders of Nahdlatul Wathan Diniyah Islamiyah (NWDI), the Islamic organization that oversees the running of Abul Barokat. Expecting institutional support for their claims, the former students instead reported facing intense pressure to retract their accusations and drop the case entirely.

    In a secretly recorded phone call obtained by the BBC, Sumar can be heard pleading with Azzahidi to cover up his actions, saying, “Cover the shame of your teacher. Everyone makes mistakes, my child.” Sumar also reached out directly to Zia, who also recorded that conversation and shared it with BBC investigators. In that recording, Sumar offers a vague apology but begs Zia to keep the abuse hidden from public knowledge.

    Sukma later told investigators she was coerced into signing a document that falsely claimed her allegations were entirely fabricated. She also recorded a separate conversation with Sumar’s wife, who is known to students as “Umi”, where Umi acknowledged the document was created only to protect Sumar’s public reputation. After hitting a wall with institutional leaders, the former survivors partnered with Joko Jumadi, a Jakarta-based lawyer with extensive experience handling similar sexual assault cases, to reignite their push for official justice.

    When BBC Eye published its full investigation in late 2024, the report triggered immediate widespread public outrage across Indonesia. Within days, 12 more former students came forward to police to share their own allegations of abuse by Sumar. The revelations also prompted hundreds of panicked parents to travel to the Lombok campus, many from other Indonesian islands, to withdraw their children from the school immediately. One mother, speaking to reporters on campus, said she broke down in tears when she learned of the allegations while thinking of her own daughter enrolled at the school. “I’m moving her right now,” she said. “I absolutely want my child to leave this school.”

    For the original group of survivors, the wave of testimonies that followed the BBC report confirmed what they had long suspected: many other victims had stayed silent out of fear. “It was beyond what we expected,” Azzahidi said, noting that he and Zia — who recently married — were inundated with messages from survivors across social media platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp. Zia added, “They thought they were the only ones — and it’s been really shocking for them to learn, like I did, that they weren’t alone.”

    Following the public outcry, Indonesian police reopened the previously stalled case and officially named Sumar a suspect, taking him into custody for formal questioning. In the immediate aftermath of the BBC publication, Sumar held a press conference where he denied all allegations of abuse. While he did not dispute that the voice on the secret recordings was his, he claimed the recordings had been misrepresented and were not an admission of guilt. Sumar has since resigned from his position at Abul Barokat and has stated he will comply fully with the ongoing legal process.

    NWDI, the organization that runs the school, has issued multiple public statements addressing the case. Initially, the group denied any attempts to cover up the allegations, saying it had launched its own internal probe and noted it had a responsibility to protect the organization’s reputation from damage caused by individual actions. After public pressure intensified following the BBC report, NWDI publicly vowed to implement sweeping reforms to prevent future student abuse and pledged to protect the legal rights of all survivors who come forward with claims.

    Survivors have welcomed the police action as a long-overdue step toward accountability. Sukma said she felt a profound sense of relief that her claims are finally being treated seriously by authorities. “It’s not about revenge. It’s more the acknowledgement that what he did was wrong. I’m waiting for the day when he admits that himself,” she told the BBC. Outside the United Kingdom, the full BBC documentary on the investigation, titled *Catching My Teacher*, is available to stream on YouTube.

  • Public executions in the US stopped nearly a century ago – why are they resuming now?

    Public executions in the US stopped nearly a century ago – why are they resuming now?

    Nearly 90 years ago, a sweltering August morning in Owensboro, Kentucky drew a crowd of 20,000 spectators from across the region to witness the public hanging of Rainey Bethea, a 20-something Black orphan convicted of the robbery, rape and murder of 70-year-old white widow Lischia Edwards. That 1936 event would go down in history as the last high-profile public execution in United States history – a spectacle so sensationalized and dehumanizing that it pushed Kentucky’s governor to ban public executions just 18 months later, aligning the state with a national shift toward more private, humane capital punishment practices.

    Accounts of that 1936 event paint a picture of public spectacle rather than solemn justice. Spectators camped out overnight near the gallows to claim prime viewing spots, while pre-execution “necktie parties” were held the night before, and child vendors sold popcorn and soda to the crowd that included men, women and children. A circus-like atmosphere surrounded the execution, amplified by rumors that the job would fall to a local widow – the deceased sheriff’s wife, who had inherited the role. She ultimately declined to pull the lever, leaving the task to a hired executioner. For decades after, many Kentuckians who witnessed or learned of the event remained haunted by its grotesquery, author Sonya Lea – whose own grandparents were in the crowd – has documented.

    Now, that dark chapter of American history has been thrown into new relief by a shocking announcement from U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: the U.S. military plans to publicly execute Nidal Hasan, the Army major convicted of killing 13 unarmed fellow soldiers and wounding dozens more in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting in Texas. The execution, scheduled for December and set to be carried out by firing squad, will be livestreamed for global audiences to watch, Pentagon officials have confirmed.

    “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said in justifying the unprecedented modern decision. But the announcement has sparked fierce condemnation from scholars, activists and even some within the Trump administration, drawing sharp comparisons to the 1936 Owensboro spectacle that turned capital punishment into public entertainment.

    Michael Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado and one of the nation’s leading scholars on capital punishment, said he never expected to see a return to public executions in the U.S. He noted that public support for the death penalty has fallen steeply over the past three decades, dropping from 80% in 1994 to just 52% today, as most Americans now prefer life without parole over execution as the ultimate punishment. “The justification for the death penalty becomes entertainment… bring your popcorn, invite your friends,” Radelet said, echoing the carnival atmosphere of the 1936 hanging.

    Lea, who published a book detailing Bethea’s 1936 execution, said she felt “absolute horror” when she heard of the livestream plan. “What they called it in 1936 was a carnival of sadism,” she said. “That we now have the technology that can make it go wider than the 20,000 people who showed up… to witness in Owensboro, Kentucky, it just makes it even more horrific.” Lea, who discovered after her grandmother’s death that the elderly woman had been close enough to the gallows to hear Bethea’s neck snap, said she always believed the U.S. had left this level of grotesquery behind, reserved today only for a handful of authoritarian regimes including Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan. “Are we now, as the United States of America, considering ourselves to be part of that kind of government? It’s just horrific,” she added.

    Experts say the announcement comes amid deep political polarization that has shifted popular discourse around punishment and justice. Kurt Gray, a social psychology professor at Ohio State University, noted that while some Americans crave harsh retribution, many others have become desensitized to the spectacle of state violence. “It’s not like they’re cheering a public execution – they’re just like, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess that’s where we’re at now,’” Gray said.

    Public health and violence prevention experts echo critics, noting that national surveys show a steady declining appetite for public violence among Americans. “This morning, the chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops labelled this [livestream execution announcement] as barbaric, and I think he speaks for a lot of people,” said Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley. “A public execution is not who we are. It’s not who we aspire to be as a country.”

    The plan has already exposed rifts within the White House. Days after Hegseth’s announcement, Vice President JD Vance told reporters he was uncertain whether the execution would proceed as planned, and that he would not watch the livestream if it goes ahead. Hours later, President Donald Trump contradicted Vance, saying he “absolutely” approves of the livestream plan, though the Pentagon is still finalizing its decision. When asked if he would watch the execution himself, Trump declined to answer. “I really don’t care how he goes as long as he goes,” he said. “And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”

    It remains unclear how the American public will ultimately respond to the prospect of a widely accessible livestreamed execution, but experts estimate millions of people could tune in if the plan moves forward – a far larger audience than the 20,000 who gathered in Kentucky nearly a century ago to watch what was then thought to be America’s last public execution.

  • Film shares ‘rich tapestry’ of Windrush children’s lives

    Film shares ‘rich tapestry’ of Windrush children’s lives

    Decades after the mass migration of Caribbean workers to post-WWII Britain, the children of the Windrush generation are stepping into the spotlight with their personal stories in a new documentary. *First Born Second: Voices of the Children of the Windrush Era* centers on seven residents of Bristol, offering intimate first-person accounts of what it was like to grow up as Black Britons during the 1970s and 1980s.

    The Windrush generation refers to the hundreds of Caribbean migrants invited to the UK to help rebuild the nation after World War II. Most of the early arrivals came from Jamaica, with others journeying from islands including Trinidad, St. Lucia, Grenada and Barbados — many aboard the HMT Empire Windrush, the vessel that became a defining symbol of this mass migration movement.

    The documentary’s co-producer and project curator, Roger Griffith MBE, explained that the project was born from a desire to honor the pioneering work of the first-generation Windrush migrants, while also capturing the unique experience of their children growing up navigating overlapping cultural identities, systemic racism, institutional discrimination and intercultural tension. For the second-generation Black Britons of Bristol, he described their collective experience as a “rich tapestry” woven from threads of triumph, tragedy and joy. “Our parents were pioneers, but we were pioneers in a different way because we had to grow up in those two cultures — being Black and British,” Griffith shared, noting that the project grew out of years of personal research and that seeing it come to life has been overwhelming.

    One of the documentary’s contributors, veteran broadcaster Sherrie Eugene-Hart, says she hopes audiences leave the film feeling a sense of pride, hope and achievement. Growing up, Eugene-Hart recalls, community joy was central to her childhood: “There was a lot of joy growing up — when any celebration happened everybody was invited. It’s something I’ll always cherish.” She explained that her parents, like many Windrush generation migrants, intentionally protected their children from the harsher realities of anti-Black racism, shielding them from stories of racial harassment by groups like the 1950s white supremacist youth subculture Teddy Boys, and the routine job discrimination that many first-generation migrants faced. “We didn’t really see the negative side of life until we grew up, so while we were young and impressionable and naive, that’s how our parents wanted it to be — they were protective,” she said, adding that recounting these unshared stories remains painful for many families.

    Documentary director Michelle Pascal notes that the untold narratives shared by contributors paint a broader picture of community resilience, evolving identity, and a growing sense of belonging in the UK. For Pascal, the project felt deeply personal: many of the contributors, who have gone on to build successful careers across sectors, are people she has long admired, and she connected with them over shared cultural touchstones from childhood. One shared memory that comes through in the film is the iconic “Caribbean front room” — a formal living space kept for special occasions, often decorated with matching small decor items such as glass fish ornaments that were a staple in many Caribbean-British homes. “The thing that connected us a lot was the household — the Caribbean front room that you couldn’t go into. There are items that we all shared — the glass fish that were in all the Caribbean homes. They popped up in the film,” Pascal explained.

    To complement the documentary, contributors Eugene-Hart and Beverly Douglas have curated a companion exhibition called *Dominican Front Room*, which recreates a classic mid-century Caribbean-British front room for visitors to explore. The exhibition is open at Bristol’s Undershed venue ahead of documentary screenings.

    *First Born Second: Voices of the Children of the Windrush Era* will make its world premiere at Bristol’s Watershed on October 29. Griffith praised Pascal’s directorial vision, saying that watching her bring these deeply personal stories to the screen was a moving experience that honors the legacy of both generations of the Windrush community.

  • Nord Stream trial: How German police followed the evidence – to Ukraine

    Nord Stream trial: How German police followed the evidence – to Ukraine

    On a sun-dappled afternoon last August, a former Ukrainian Special Forces soldier checked into a glamping resort along Italy’s Adriatic coast, appearing entirely at ease alongside his wife and young children. Dressed casually in shorts, sandals, and a dark baseball cap, Serhii Kuznetsov — identified in German court documents only as Serhii K under the country’s privacy rules — chatted with front desk staff and helped himself to complimentary snacks, unaware that a years-long international manhunt had finally closed the net around him.

    Next week, nearly three years after a string of coordinated underwater explosions ripped through three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany, Kuznetsov will go on trial in Hamburg. Charged with causing intentional explosion and committing a war crime through the deliberate attack on civilian energy infrastructure, German prosecutors allege he acted on direct orders from Ukrainian state intelligence to carry out the largest act of coordinated sabotage on European soil in modern history. Both Kuznetsov and the Ukrainian government have repeatedly denied any involvement in the 2022 blasts.

    The attack unfolded in the early hours of 26 September 2022, when the first timed explosive detonated 80 meters beneath the Baltic Sea’s surface. Two subsequent blasts damaged sections of both the fully operational Nord Stream 1 — which for years supplied roughly half of Germany’s annual natural gas demand — and the completed but never-activated Nord Stream 2. The damage left both pipelines permanently inoperable, releasing massive plumes of methane into the atmosphere and cutting off a critical energy artery that had shaped European energy policy for more than a decade.

    Prosecutors allege the attack was carried out using four high-performance explosive devices weighing up to 27 kilograms each, planted by a team of deep-sea divers led by Kuznetsov. The group allegedly chartered a private yacht, the *Andromeda*, to stage the operation before slipping back across the border into Ukraine, leaving behind critical DNA evidence on the vessel that would ultimately unravel their plot. In the immediate aftermath of the blasts, most Western commentators and some governments quickly pinned blame on Moscow, pointing to the Kremlin’s long history of hybrid attacks and weaponizing energy supplies for political leverage. German investigators, however, set aside the public noise and followed forensic evidence that ultimately led them to Ukraine.

    The case file shows Kuznetsov entered Germany using a forged passport, which German investigators believe was issued by Ukraine’s national security services. For more than a year after the attack, he traveled freely across Europe and North America; a copy of his actual passport reviewed by the BBC shows more than two dozen entry stamps from France, Spain, Canada and other nations, all dated after the 2022 bombings. That freedom ended in August 2025, when German authorities formally identified Kuznetsov as their prime suspect and flagged his passport to border agencies. When he checked into the Italian glamping resort, an automated alert triggered an immediate response from local Carabinieri, who arrested him late that night as he stayed with his family.

    The trial marks an unprecedented moment that strains diplomatic ties between two close wartime allies, and exposes deep divides over what constitutes a legitimate military act amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Many in Ukraine view the Nord Stream pipelines as a strategic asset that strengthened Russia’s hand in the war by allowing the Kremlin to export gas to Western Europe without transiting through Ukrainian territory, eliminating Kyiv’s leverage over energy flows. Sources close to the case told the BBC that many Ukrainians see the attack as a legitimate strategic action against Russian interests, and express frustration that Germany, a top military backer of Kyiv, is pursuing prosecution of a Ukrainian citizen.

    A close associate of Kuznetsov complained that the Ukrainian government has remained entirely silent on the case, leaving the former soldier to face justice alone. Ahead of his extradition from Italy, his legal team said Kuznetsov felt abandoned by his own government. “At the very minimum, he’s a military man, so if there are any questions, they should be addressed to the state, not to him,” the associate said. Germany’s public prosecutor’s office has insisted the prosecution is a matter of independent justice, not politics, noting that sabotage of German infrastructure violates the country’s constitution regardless of motive.

    Kuznetsov is the first suspect to go on trial, but German authorities have named a second person of interest: Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, a civilian deep-sea diver who has lived in Warsaw with his family since shortly before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Zhuravlyov was arrested in August in Croatia while working as a consultant on a thriller film about the Nord Stream blasts, and is currently fighting extradition to Germany. He denies any role in the attack. A Polish judge previously refused to extradite Zhuravlyov when he was arrested in Warsaw, ruling that if a Ukrainian did carry out the attack, it would be a “just” act amid Russia’s “bloody and genocidal war.”

    Those who know Kuznetsov describe him as a Ukrainian patriot who volunteered to defend his country after the 2022 full-scale invasion, even though he was exempt from service due to having multiple young children. He remained on active duty until December 2023, and his military ID confirms he was still in service at the time of the Nord Stream blasts — a detail that suggests senior Ukrainian military command was aware of his whereabouts and activities at the time of the attack, though no senior officials have been linked to the plot publicly. Kuznetsov’s legal team plans to argue that he is not authorized to reveal details of any activities he carried out as an active-duty soldier, and will submit sworn statements from two of his former military superiors to back that claim. One of those superiors, the BBC has learned, is the individual widely identified by investigators as the mastermind of the entire operation.

    The case has already had ripple effects across European politics. Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which currently leads in national opinion polls, has seized on the allegations to argue that Berlin should end all military aid to Ukraine. For both the German and Ukrainian governments, the trial creates an awkward diplomatic balancing act, while raising broader unresolved questions about what actions qualify as legitimate military targets outside the formal boundaries of an active war zone. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the blasts. “I find it very unfortunate that this entire discussion has come to focus on who blew [the pipelines] up, rather than who built them,” Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi told the BBC. Tykhyi noted that Kyiv had long warned that Nord Stream gave Russia greater geopolitical freedom to wage war, adding: “Did we warn about this? We did. Did anyone listen to us? No, no-one did.”

  • Flydubai attacker began a ‘drift towards extremism and terrorism’ in Australia, UAE says

    Flydubai attacker began a ‘drift towards extremism and terrorism’ in Australia, UAE says

    A botched alleged hijacking attempt on a Flydubai passenger flight has sparked global scrutiny of aviation security gaps after United Arab Emirates officials revealed the Omani co-pilot accused of masterminding the suicide plot developed radical extremist views while studying in Australia.

    The incident, which unfolded on 30 September aboard flight FZ1073 traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, left the flight captain wounded by an emergency crash axe before passengers intervened to subdue the 29-year-old suspect, identified widely as Hamam al-Hammami. With the cockpit compromised, another crew member took over flight controls and diverted the plane safely to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where all 170+ passengers and crew exited without further harm.

    In an official statement released through UAE state news agency Wam, Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi laid out details from ongoing interrogations of the suspect. Al-Shamsi confirmed the co-pilot told investigators he planned to crash the aircraft into Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv in a suicide attack, inspired by al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. Officials trace the first signs of his radicalization back to 2017, when he was completing studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. During his time in the country, al-Shamsi said, the suspect was exposed to takfiri radical ideology through extremist print materials and online content that glorified terrorist groups and suicide attacks.

    The suspect further told interrogations he spent years preparing both mentally and physically for the attack: he increased his consumption of terrorist propaganda and trained in boxing with a private coach to build physical capacity for the plot. While the suspect claims he acted entirely alone with no co-conspirators, al-Shamsi noted that investigations remain ongoing to confirm this assertion.

    RMIT University has since confirmed that al-Hammami enrolled in an engineering program at the institution but left before completing his degree. Australian public records confirm the suspect received a student visa in 2014 and studied in Australia between 2015 and 2017. Deleted posts from his former X account, unearthed by the Sydney Morning Herald, saw al-Hammami describe the five years he spent studying across Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand as “the golden years of my religious commitment”.

    In the wake of the incident, Australian counter-terrorism authorities have launched a formal investigation into the suspect’s past connections to the country. The Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, a joint unit comprising the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police, and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, is leading the domestic probe.

    Two aviation industry figures have already been hailed for their quick action that prevented mass casualties: Indian co-pilot Capt Smit Machchhar, who managed to unlock the cockpit door to let passengers in despite being attacked with the axe, and the unnamed crew member who successfully diverted the plane to Saudi Arabia. Passengers who entered the cockpit to overpower al-Hammami have also been praised for their decisive intervention.

    The incident has also sparked urgent questions about widespread aviation security failures that allowed the alleged plot to progress. Regional officials confirmed that Oman’s national flag carrier Oman Air had already barred al-Hammami from flying years earlier, reassigning him to an administrative role specifically over concerns about his extremist views. Despite this red flag, the suspect was later hired by UAE-based Flydubai after passing routine background checks that did not include screenings for potential radicalization.

    Additional security gaps have also been highlighted: Israeli aviation regulations explicitly ban pilots who hold citizenship from countries like Oman, which does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Israel, from operating flights into Israeli airspace — a rule that was seemingly overlooked in the lead-up to the FZ1073 flight.

  • How the Red Sea came to the brink of a new regional war

    How the Red Sea came to the brink of a new regional war

    Decades of simmering ethnic, political, and territorial rivalries in the Horn of Africa have pushed neighboring Ethiopia and Eritrea to the brink of all-out war, a crisis that analysts warn risks drawing in global and regional powers and destabilizing a Red Sea region already roiled by ongoing conflicts in Sudan and Yemen.

    Mutual overconfidence among decision-makers on both sides, rooted in miscalculations of their opponent’s weaknesses and underestimation of their own vulnerabilities, has elevated the risk of a broad regional conflict far beyond the likelihood of containing the current violence, according to regional analysts and serving and former officials briefed on the situation. As former CIA officer and Africa specialist Cameron Hudson put it, “All the leaders in the region say ‘we don’t want a regional war’, but that doesn’t prevent us from walking backwards into one.”

    The unfolding crisis unfolds across three interconnected layers: deep internal political fissures within Ethiopia, century-old historic tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and competing interventions by Middle Eastern powers that have amplified existing flashpoints.

    At its core, the conflict stems from a power struggle over Ethiopia’s governing structure, a challenge made complex by the country’s 80 distinct ethnic groups, five of which – Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan, Somali, and Afar – hold major demographic and political influence, many with their own heavily armed militias. Current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has advanced a controversial push to restructure Ethiopia’s long-standing ethnic federalism system into a more centralized national government, a shift that has galvanized opposition from multiple ethnic factions.

    Hostilities reignited in September when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a once-ruling Ethiopian rebel group, launched a major offensive aimed at ousting Abiy’s government. The TPLF seized the Tigray regional capital Mekelle in its opening gains, but Ethiopian federal forces quickly reversed those advances.

    The second layer of the crisis is the decades-long hostile rivalry between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Once an Italian colony, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia after World War II, before being unilaterally annexed by Addis Ababa in 1962. After a 30-year independence insurgency, Eritrea secured sovereignty via a UN-monitored referendum in 1993. Though the two nations aligned to fight the TPLF in Ethiopia’s 2020–2022 Tigray civil war, underlying tensions have never been resolved: Abiy’s government has staked revisionist claims to Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline, while Eritrea has long backed anti-Addis Ababa militias inside Ethiopia.

    This month, Addis Ababa accused Asmara of deploying thousands of troops across the border to support the TPLF’s offensive. Multiple current and former officials from the U.S., European Union, and African nations have confirmed to Middle East Eye that Eritrean forces have entered Tigray to participate in active combat. Monitoring group the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) confirmed that Ethiopia launched drone strikes on Eritrean troops positioned in Tigray earlier this week.

    The last full-scale war between the two nations ran from 1998 to 2000 and remained largely contained, but a new conflict would almost certainly draw in regional powers that had no stake in the 1990s conflict. Both nations have closed their respective embassies in each other’s capitals this week, and a former senior European official with direct knowledge of the situation says Ethiopia could issue a formal declaration of war against Eritrea in the coming days.

    In a Thursday letter to the United Nations, Ethiopia framed Eritrea’s troop deployment as “a blatant act of aggression” that triggers the country’s inherent right to self-defense, stating, “Eritrea is the aggressor, Ethiopia is the victim. Eritrea is violating Ethiopia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    Eritrea has pushed back firmly against these accusations. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel noted Friday that Abiy already announced to Ethiopia’s parliament on October 13, 2023 that his government would secure “sovereign access to the sea” via negotiation if possible, and by force if necessary – a statement Gebremeskel says amounts to a pre-existing declaration of war against Eritrea. Veteran Ethiopian diplomat and former UN ambassador Tekeda Alemu says the two states are already effectively at war, even without a formal declaration. “It’s very clear Eritreans have penetrated deep into Ethiopian territory. We are in the midst of war, even though it hasn’t been declared. The war is going on,” Alemu told MEE.

    A critical complicating factor is the domestic opposition alliance the TPLF has forged in recent weeks. In September, the TPLF announced a coalition with six other armed Ethiopian groups united by the goal of overthrowing Abiy’s government. The coalition includes Fano, an Amhara militia that views itself as the guardian of Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic state; Amhara leaders dominated both the imperial rule of Haile Selassie and the Soviet-backed Derg junta that governed from 1975 to 1991. The coalition also includes the Oromo Liberation Army, an armed faction from Abiy’s own Oromo ethnic group, which has turned against the prime minister.

    Not all members of the allied ethnic groups back the anti-Abiy coalition, and analysts disagree on how formidable the alliance truly is. Alemu argues the coalition cannot be dismissed: “What is not clear is what the alliance is intending to do. They haven’t begun to start a full-scale war. The alliance can not be brushed aside. It is formidable, as is the government side.” But an anonymous Addis Ababa-based analyst told MEE that the TPLF has overstated both its own strength and the level of popular support it can expect from Amhara and Oromo communities. Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of orchestrating the anti-Abiy alliance – a claim Asmara denies, though senior Eritrean officials have publicly acknowledged the threat the coalition poses to Abiy’s government.

    Some Western and regional analysts believe Abiy may have actively welcomed the TPLF’s September uprising, arguing it brought long-simmering tensions with Eritrea to a head and gave him a pretext to pursue his long-stated goal of securing Eritrean Red Sea coastline. A former senior Western official told MEE, “The Eritreans have moved preemptively. The question is, have they fallen into a trap? Ethiopia will not only confront the Eritreans with ground forces, but they will launch aerial attacks on Eritrea. If the Ethiopian army moves, it will be in order to go to Asmara and Assab. They will not stop at the frontier.” Eritrean analyst Sirak Kifle, who regularly consults with senior Asmara officials, agrees that Abiy has long sought an excuse to seize Eritrean port territory: “Abiy is aiming at the ports of Eritrea.” Kifle also cautions that the TPLF remains a capable fighting force that cannot be discounted, noting that while Addis Ababa has deployed 400,000 troops to Tigray, it remains unclear whether the government can sustain a long-term counterinsurgency campaign.

    Hudson notes that Ethiopian federal forces are far better resourced today than they were during the 2020–2022 Tigray war. “Ethiopia has a ripping economy, a ton of money and deep-pocketed allies in the UAE and Israel. Abiy Ahmed has learned from the last war in Tigray and the numbers are on his side,” he said.

    It is these competing regional alliances that make the current crisis so dangerous for global security. Ethiopia already maintains close ties to the United Arab Emirates and Israel, which have supplied Addis Ababa with drones and advanced weapons systems. Eritrea suspects that both countries would back an Ethiopian push to seize its Red Sea coastline, in exchange for access to the strategically critical territory. For its part, Eritrea has built close alliances with Somalia, Egypt, and Sudan’s ruling Sudanese Armed Forces – all of which oppose Abiy’s government – and has recently deepened ties to Saudi Arabia, which has broken with the UAE over competing interests in African hotspots including Sudan and Somaliland.

    If Ethiopia moves beyond Tigray to attempt to seize Eritrea’s Red Sea coast, the shockwave across the Horn of Africa would be unprecedented. Egypt, a long-time rival of Ethiopia that has already been locked in a years-long dispute over Addis Ababa’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile, has repeatedly condemned Ethiopia’s plans to build additional Nile dams, which Cairo says threaten its national water security. Cairo also views an Ethiopian naval presence on the Red Sea as a major strategic threat. Somalia, already tense over Ethiopia’s moves toward recognizing the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, would also oppose an Ethiopian territorial expansion. In Sudan’s ongoing civil war, Ethiopia backs the UAE-aligned Rapid Support Forces, accused of genocide, while Eritrea and the TPLF back the Sudanese Armed Forces.

    Earlier this week, the coalition of states opposed to an Ethiopian advance on the Red Sea – Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea – met in El Alamein, Egypt, where Reuters confirmed they agreed to coordinate military and intelligence sharing if the Tigray conflict expands across the border. As the former senior Western official put it, “This war is still a tussle over Tigray. It is one step away from becoming a war over the Red Sea.”

  • ‘Stain on the country’: Trump criticises Norway over Nobel Peace Prize

    ‘Stain on the country’: Trump criticises Norway over Nobel Peace Prize

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump has reignited his long-running feud with the Norwegian Nobel Committee, launching a blistering attack on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize selection and labeling the honor an uneraseable mark of shame on the country of Norway. The 2025 prize was awarded Friday to veteran human rights advocate and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, a South African jurist who previously served as a judge with the International Criminal Court. Minutes after the official announcement, Trump brought his criticism to a Syracuse, New York rally for his supporters, where he claimed he had never encountered the name of the new laureate, dismissing her as an unknown “mystery person”. “This is an indelible stain on the country of Norway,” Trump told the crowd. “We will not forget.”

    This is not the first time Trump has publicly lamented being passed over for the peace prize. In 2024, when the award went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, he issued similar condemnations of the selection process. Last year, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre attempted to clarify the process for Trump, explaining that the prize is chosen by an independent expert committee, not the Norwegian government itself — a distinction that has done little to temper Trump’s criticism.

    At the New York rally, Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims that his time in office resolved eight active global conflicts, and that he was on the cusp of ending two more before leaving office. He went further to argue that the entire Nobel Peace Prize has been permanently discredited, claiming it is controlled by a small group of anti-democratic “radical ideologues” that he called “enemies of civilisation”.

    The Norwegian Nobel Committee laid out its reasoning for awarding Pillay the 2025 prize, honoring her decades of work advancing global peace, human rights, and international law. Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes noted that Pillay’s advocacy has been critical to building a more robust global legal framework, and that her work has been instrumental in holding perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable for their actions. The 85-year-old jurist, who received the news while at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice for an event, initially reacted with playful surprise, saying “it must be a joke” before thanking attendees for their applause. In a lighthearted quip directed at Trump, she added: “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump.”

    The current controversy echoes the fallout from last year’s prize, when Trump openly expressed anger at being passed over, with the White House accusing the committee of prioritizing political bias over the prize’s core mission of advancing peace. In January 2025, Machado — the 2024 laureate — gifted her Nobel medal to Trump during a White House meeting, saying the gesture recognized Trump’s support for Venezuelan freedom. Trump called the move “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect” on social media, but the Nobel Committee quickly stepped in to clarify that the prize is not transferable between individuals. “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others,” the committee said in a statement. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”

  • Questions remain over Ebola patient who travelled across three nations undetected

    Questions remain over Ebola patient who travelled across three nations undetected

    A 40-year-old Kenyan businessman who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become Kenya’s first confirmed case of the deadly virus, and died just two days after his diagnosis at a Nairobi hospital on October 5. His cross-border journey that went entirely undetected by health authorities has sparked urgent scrutiny of biosecurity protocols across Central and East Africa amid one of the worst Ebola outbreaks on record.

    The man, who had lived and worked in DRC for seven years, traveled across three Congolese provinces—all of which had confirmed Ebola transmission by early October, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). He spent most of late August and early September in Bas-Uélé province, where a case had already been confirmed in Buta before his visit, though no definitive link to his infection has been established.

    Symptoms first emerged around September 15. After an initial consultation where he was prescribed antibiotics and sent home, he was admitted to a local health center in Bondo four days later. Even with fever and a rash consistent with early-stage Ebola, clinicians misdiagnosed him with a common skin infection and never administered an Ebola test. The overlapping early symptoms between Ebola and other widespread regional illnesses like malaria often complicate quick diagnosis, health officials note.

    On September 20, the businessman flew to Kisangani, the capital of Tshopo province, where he sought further treatment for more than 10 days. No details have been released about the facilities that treated him there. On October 1, more than two weeks after he first fell ill, he flew domestically to Beni before traveling to Kasindi, a busy border town in North Kivu—the province at the epicenter of DRC’s current outbreak, which has recorded more than 1,755 infections and over 1,000 deaths to date. He crossed the border into Uganda the same day.

    Uganda implemented movement restrictions along its DRC border shortly after the outbreak began in May, and successfully eliminated community transmission by August. But the hundreds of kilometers of remote, uncontrolled border territory makes full surveillance extremely challenging. It remains unclear whether the man passed through an official health checkpoint when entering the country.

    From the Ugandan border, he traveled overland to Kampala, then to Entebbe International Airport, where he boarded a commercial flight to Nairobi on October 3. Officials reported his temperature was normal during screening, allowing him to board without further inspection. Public health experts say this case exposes a critical flaw in the widespread reliance on temperature checks and self-declaration of symptoms to screen for Ebola. Dr. Wessam Mankoula, emergency director for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), noted that the patient’s medications could have suppressed his fever, or he may have simply been between fever spikes when he was screened.

    The pattern repeated at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi: he passed screening without issue, and a relative drove him directly to a private Nairobi Hospital. By that point, he was experiencing severe Ebola symptoms including fever, chills, muscle pain, sore throat, and internal bleeding. Laboratory tests confirmed he was infected with the Bundibugyo Ebola strain, the same variant driving the ongoing DRC outbreak. He was placed in isolation but his condition declined rapidly, and he died two days later. His funeral was conducted under strict biosecurity protocols to prevent transmission.

    As of the latest update, nearly 70 potential contacts of the patient have been placed under quarantine in Nairobi, with 66 identified in Kenya to date. Contact tracing efforts are ongoing in Uganda and DRC, and health officials expect the number of people monitored for exposure to rise. Concerns have also been raised among Kenyan healthcare workers about quarantine protocols and how the patient was handled at Nairobi Hospital. Kenyan health authorities say they have screened more than 650,000 travelers, trained nearly 5,000 healthcare workers in Ebola response, and designated five specialized facilities to treat confirmed cases.

    DRC’s current outbreak is the second deadliest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, with more than 4,000 fatalities reported so far this year. Africa CDC has completed a full reconstruction of the patient’s six-week journey, which revealed multiple missed opportunities to detect his infection and prevent potential community spread across three countries.

    In comments on the investigation, Dr. Mankoula emphasized that early reporting of symptoms is critical to both improving survival odds and stopping cross-border spread. “When you reveal any Ebola-related symptoms early, you’re not only preventing the virus spreading to other countries but you’re also protecting yourself first,” he said.

    The WHO has warned that social stigma around Ebola remains a major barrier to outbreak control, discouraging people from reporting symptoms or seeking prompt care. In DRC, misinformation claiming the virus does not exist has even led to violent attacks on health workers. The agency says it is ramping up public outreach to reduce fear and correct misinformation across affected regions. Ebola spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated materials, and has an incubation period of 2 to 21 days, meaning exposed people can travel long distances before showing symptoms.

  • ‘Everyone hates the police’ – what France’s school protests reveal about a divided nation

    ‘Everyone hates the police’ – what France’s school protests reveal about a divided nation

    Across northern France’s city of Lille, street barricades stand next to smoldering garbage bins, while chants of anti-police sentiment echo through crowded protest marches. For the hundreds of thousands of French secondary school students who have flooded the streets since late last month, the unrest stems not from abstract political debate, but from years of unaddressed, daily decay in the nation’s lycées – the public secondary schools that serve 15- to 18-year-old students across the country.

    A 16-year-old anonymous protester from Lille summed up the everyday frustrations driving the movement: his school lacks sufficient seating for every student, forcing classes to hunt for chairs before each lecture, and a 50-minute lunch window leaves 2,000 students scrambling to get through an overstretched canteen. These local grievances quickly gained national traction after the movement ignited at Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, a disadvantaged working-class suburb of Paris.

    Within days, viral social media content amplified the crisis, with TikTok and Instagram posts showing rats scurrying through hallways, cracked and mold-damaged ceilings, broken non-functional toilets, and extreme temperature swings that leave classrooms sweltering in summer and frigid in winter. Beyond crumbling infrastructure, students have rallied against chronic understaffing, overcrowded lecture halls, excessively long school days, and a deeply unpopular university admissions system that has left generations of young people feeling disenfranchised.

    Teachers have joined the movement in solidarity, echoing students’ claims of systemic failure. Marine Monins, a secondary school educator who marched alongside her students in Lille, explained how understaffing and poor planning have warped daily school schedules: students often start at 8 a.m. and finish as late as 6 p.m., with hours-long empty gaps between scattered lessons. When classes do run, they routinely pack 35 students into a single room – nearly 50% more than the average secondary class size in neighboring England. “It’s now impossible to give every child the attention they deserve,” Monins noted.

    Facing growing pressure, the Macron administration made its first concession in early October, promising to deploy 3,000 additional temporary supply teachers in the coming days. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has also pledged to release a full response plan by the end of the month, with ministers hinting at a potential review of education funding in next year’s tight national budget. But the modest proposals have done little to cool protester anger, with young organizers dismissing the measures as too little, too late.

    “It goes beyond having decent toilets in schools,” said Alcidor, a lycée student protesting at Paris’ Place de la République, a historic hub for French activism. “It’s strong anger from the youth in France that doesn’t feel represented, that feels abandoned, that feels unheard and is scared of what’s coming in the future.” Official crowd estimates reflect the scale of the movement: the government put last Tuesday’s national march at 250,000 participants, while trade unions counted more than 500,000, the vast majority of them young people.

    In recent weeks, the protests have devolved into sporadic violence, leaving hundreds injured on both sides and sparking fierce debate over police tactics. France’s interior ministry reports that nearly 7,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began, more than 85% of whom are minors. More than 700 police officers have sustained injuries in confrontations, while human rights groups and trade unions record at least 200 injured students and dozens of injured teachers.

    The most serious incident to date occurred in the northern city of Lens, where a 15-year-old boy lost a hand during a confrontation between police and demonstrators. While a police union source claimed the teen picked up a fired sting-ball grenade that subsequently exploded, witnesses dispute this account. The incident prompted authorities to ban the use of stun and sting grenades at school-related protests, but critics say aggressive police tactics have already done permanent damage.
    Bastien Riez, a teacher and union representative at the injured teen’s school, warned: “For many, this is their first experience of democracy and protest, and they are met with police and a sham of social dialogue and democracy. I fear that many young people will stop believing in this so-called democracy altogether.”

    Many student organizers acknowledge that outside agitators have hijacked some peaceful demonstrations to incite violence. “These people are coming just to shoot fireworks at police officers and they run. This is not the message we want to send to the world,” explained 15-year-old Parisian protester Kaspar. Police leaders agree that external violence has complicated their work, adding that the protests have unfolded amid a rapidly radicalizing political climate ahead of next spring’s national elections and the 2027 presidential vote.

    “Police officers find themselves caught in the middle of this social tension, which is sometimes fuelled by irresponsible politicians,” said Michel Chaballier, deputy secretary-general of the National Police Commissioners’ Union (SCPN). “That’s a shame, because I think this country deserves better.”

    The unrest has already become a polarizing political battleground, with leaders of France’s far-right and far-left rushing to capitalize on the government’s perceived failure to resolve the crisis. Recent polling from Ipsos shows more than three-quarters of French under-30s report deep anxiety over the direction of their country, and political analysts warn the education crisis is accelerating the erosion of France’s political middle ground, pushing more voters toward the ideological extremes.

    As of 2025, hard-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen holds a narrow lead as the frontrunner for the 2027 presidency, tied neck-and-neck for second place are center-right former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and hard-left France Unbowed founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mélenchon has positioned himself as a vocal ally of the student movement, speaking at multiple rallies and comparing the current unrest to the historic 1968 May protests that shook Charles de Gaulle’s government. “This is the most potent movement since 1968,” he claims, a comparison echoed by 18-year-old Lille protester Massicella, who declared “I personally want to reproduce 1968!”

    Le Pen, by contrast, has condemned the vandalism that has accompanied the unrest – damage that runs into millions of euros – and has pushed her longstanding “casseur-payeur” principle, which requires protesters who damage property to cover repair costs, often holding parents liable for minors’ actions. She has stayed away from protest marches, focusing instead on her platform of cutting public debt, curbing immigration, and restoring traditional classroom discipline and national history curricula.

    For President Emmanuel Macron, the crisis offers no easy political out. Unlike the 2018 gilets jaunes protests, which were sparked by a single unpopular fuel tax that could be reversed, the lycée crisis is rooted in decades of underinvestment that cannot be fixed with quick policy tweaks. Wholesale education reform – new facilities, more teachers, smaller class sizes – would cost billions of euros and take years to implement, even as France struggles with a stretched national budget that sees annual debt servicing costs already exceed the entire core education budget. The 2027 draft budget only includes a 1.7% increase in education spending, a rise that fails to keep pace with current inflation.

    Still, students show no signs of stepping back from the movement, leaning into France’s long history of mass protest to demand change. “In France, we have this tradition and history of revolting,” Alcidor said. “That’s the way we gained our rights and the way we will always gain them. That’s our spirit.” As the movement continues into its second month, the hunger for systemic change among France’s young generation shows no sign of being sated – and its impact on the country’s political future is only just beginning to unfold.