标签： Asia

As the first pale light of dawn spreads over the dusty, arid streets of Chaghcharan, capital of Afghanistan’s hard-hit Ghor province, hundreds of jobless men already crowd the main square. They line the curbs, eyes scanning every passing vehicle, every potential passer-by, desperate for any day’s work that will put bread on their families’ tables. For most, this daily wait will end in disappointment. Forty-five-year-old Juma Khan is one of the lucky few: over the past six weeks, he has secured just three days of paid labour, earning between 150 and 200 Afghani – less than $3.20 – per day. His story lays bare the scale of the crisis unfolding across Afghanistan today. “My children went to bed hungry three nights straight,” Khan says, his voice heavy with despair. “My wife cried, my children cried. I had to beg a neighbour for money just to buy flour. I live in constant terror that my children will starve to death.”

Khan’s agony is far from unusual. UN data paints an unthinkable portrait of crisis across the country: three out of every four Afghans cannot cover their most basic needs for food, shelter and healthcare. Unemployment has reached epidemic levels, what remains of the national healthcare system is teetering on collapse, and the international aid that once kept millions of Afghans alive has been slashed to a tiny fraction of its former volume. The country is now facing record-breaking famine risk: an estimated 4.7 million people – more than one-tenth of the entire population – are just one step away from catastrophic starvation.

Ghor province sits at the epicentre of this disaster. In the daily job market in Chaghcharan, desperation hangs thick in the air. Rabani, another man waiting for work, says he received word days earlier that his children had gone without food for 48 hours. “I wanted to kill myself,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion. “But what good would that do my family? So I stay here, waiting for any work.” Seventy-eight-year-old Khwaja Ahmad can barely get a sentence out before he breaks down into sobs: “We are starving. My older children already died. I need work to feed the ones I have left, but I am too old – no one will hire me.”

When a local bakery opens its doors and begins handing out stale bread to the waiting crowd, the loaves are torn apart in seconds, dozens of men scrapping for every crumb. Moments later, a chaotic rush erupts: a motorcyclist passes through looking for a single labourer to haul bricks, and dozens of men throw themselves toward him, desperate to be chosen. In the two hours reporters spent observing the square that morning, only three men were hired.

A short drive from the square, across barren brown hills capped by the snow-capped peaks of the Siah Koh range, scattered mud homes tell the same devastating story. In one of these small dwellings, Abdul Rashid Azimi pulls his seven-year-old twin daughters Roqia and Rohila close, tears streaming down his face as he describes the unthinkable choice he has been forced to consider. “I am ready to sell one of my daughters,” he says. “I am poor, I am in debt, I have no other option. I come home after looking for work, hungry and parched and broken, and my children run to me asking for bread. What can I give them? There is no work anywhere. It breaks my heart, but this is the only way I can feed my other children.”

Azimi’s wife Kayhan says their family survives on nothing but bread and hot water – they cannot even afford tea. Two of their teenage sons polish shoes in the town centre to earn pennies, while a third collects rubbish to burn for cooking fuel.

Stories of child selling, once unthinkable in local communities, are now increasingly common. Saeed Ahmad already sold his five-year-old daughter Shaiqa two years ago, after the girl developed appendicitis and a liver cyst that required urgent surgery. “I had no money to pay for the operation,” Ahmad explains. “I sold her to a relative for 200,000 Afghani, roughly $3,200. I couldn’t take all the money at once – if I did, he would have taken her immediately. So I asked for just enough to cover her surgery, and arranged that he will take her in five years when he pays the rest. If I had any other option, I would never have done this. But if I didn’t, she would have died. This way, she gets to live, at least.” Shaiqa still lives with her father now, cuddling into his neck during the interview, but the clock is ticking down to her departure.

Just two years ago, Saeed and his family, like millions of Afghans, received regular life-saving food aid – flour, cooking oil, lentils, and nutritional supplements for children. But steep, widespread cuts to international assistance over the past several years have stripped most Afghans of this support. The United States, once Afghanistan’s largest single donor, cut nearly all aid to the country last year, and other major donors including the United Kingdom have followed suit with deep cuts. UN data shows total aid received by Afghanistan so far this year is 70% lower than it was in 2025. A crippling multi-year drought, which has impacted more than half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, has only compounded the crisis, destroying crop yields and pushing millions of rural Afghans deeper into poverty.

“We have received no help from anyone – not from the government, not from non-governmental organisations,” says local villager Abdul Malik.

The Taliban government, which seized power in 2021 following the withdrawal of US and coalition foreign forces, blames the previous Western-backed administration for the current crisis. “During the 20 years of invasion, an artificial economy was built on an influx of US dollars,” Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, told the BBC. “When the invasion ended, we inherited poverty, unemployment, and all of these problems.” Fitrat added that the government has plans to address the crisis through major infrastructure and mining projects that will create jobs and reduce poverty over time.

But the Taliban’s own restrictive policies, particularly sweeping bans on women’s education, work, and public life, have been a major factor driving donor nations to cut assistance. When asked about this link, the government rejected responsibility, stating that “humanitarian assistance should not be politicised.”

For millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation, long-term economic projects are too little, too late. The crisis is already killing hundreds of the most vulnerable – especially young children. A few weeks before reporters visited, Mohammad Hashem lost his 14-month-old baby girl to hunger and lack of medical care. “My child died because she was hungry and we had no medicine,” he says. “When a baby is sick and starving, what do you expect will happen?”

Local elder says child mortality driven by malnutrition has risen dramatically in the past two years. There are no official death records kept in the province, but the local graveyard tells the story: reporters counted roughly twice as many small graves as adult ones, confirming the surge in child deaths.

At Chaghcharan’s main provincial hospital, the scale of the crisis is impossible to miss. The neonatal unit, where sick newborns receive care, is overflowing: every bed is full, and some cots hold two underweight babies at once. Most of the infants are severely undernourished, and many cannot breathe on their own without oxygen support.

When reporters visited, staff wheeled in a cot holding premature twin girls, born two months early to 22-year-old Shakila. One weighed just 2 kilograms, the other only 1kg. Both were placed immediately on oxygen, in critical condition. Their grandmother Gulbadan explained that Shakila had almost nothing to eat during her pregnancy, surviving on only bread and tea – that is why the babies were born so small and sick. A few hours after reporters left the hospital, the heavier of the two twins died before she could even be given a name. “The doctors tried everything, but she didn’t make it,” Gulbadan said the next day. “I wrapped her tiny body and brought her home. When her mother found out, she fainted. I just pray the other one survives.”

Neonatal nurse Fatima Husseini says that on some days, up to three babies die in the unit. “When I started working here, it broke my heart every time a child died,” she says. “Now, it has become normal. We see it so often.” Dr Muhammad Mosa Oldat, head of the unit, says the infant mortality rate here reaches as high as 10% – a figure he calls “completely unacceptable.” “Every day, more and more malnourished babies are brought in, but we do not have the resources to treat them properly,” he says.

In the paediatric intensive care unit, six-week-old Zameer is fighting for his life against meningitis and pneumonia – both easily treatable conditions, but the hospital has no MRI scanner to properly diagnose and manage his case. Even more shockingly, the public hospital does not provide most medications for patients: families have to buy all required drugs from private pharmacies outside, which most cannot afford. “Sometimes we can reuse leftover medicines from families that can afford them, for babies whose parents have no money,” Fatima says.

Even when stabilised by hospital staff, most poor families cannot afford to keep their children in hospital for ongoing care. Gulbadan’s surviving granddaughter was gaining weight and her breathing had stabilised after a few days, but her family took her home because they could not pay for continuing care. Baby Zameer was also taken home by his parents for the same reason. Now, their tiny bodies will have to fight for survival on their own, with no medical support to help them.

In the pre-dawn darkness of Sunday, a brutal assault by dozens of Israeli settlers upended the life of the Shalalda family in the al-Daraja region, just east of the West Bank city of Hebron, leaving four family members injured and deepening a long-running pattern of settler intimidation designed to push Palestinians off their ancestral land.

The attack began around 3 a.m., when Mohammed Shalalda, who was sleeping on the roof of his family’s decades-old home, woke to the sound of intruders. Before he could fully register what was happening, more than 15 settlers dragged him from his sleeping spot, beating him repeatedly with kicks and wooden clubs even as his blood soaked the ground.

“I started screaming to wake the residents and rescue me, but the settlers put a blanket over me and continued beating me violently. I was bleeding, and I didn’t know where the bleeding was coming from; my whole body was their prey,” Shalalda told independent outlet Middle East Eye in an interview after the assault.

During the beating, the settlers repeatedly demanded Shalalda tell them where the family’s sheep were kept. When he answered the family had no sheep present that night, they intensified the attack, spraying tear gas directly into his face from canisters they had brought to the scene.

Hearing his brother’s screams from inside the home, 36-year-old Amer Shalalda rushed outside to intervene. The settlers turned on him too, beating him severely before tying a rope around his neck. Seeing his brother being attacked, a badly injured Mohammed Shalalda shouted at the group, prompting one settler to pull a knife from his pocket and stab Shalalda in the leg — the same leg that was targeted in a previous settler attack.

As neighbors attempted to intervene, the number of attacking settlers grew, eventually splitting into five separate groups of at least 10 people each. Inside the home, 60-year-old Suad Shalalda and her 20-year-old daughter Arwa, who had been woken by the screams of Mohammed and Amer, initially hid inside, too afraid of being attacked to venture outside. Their safety did not last, however: the settlers soon stormed the home, ransacking every room.

Arwa Shalalda grabbed her phone to call for emergency help, but a settler snatched the device from her hand before she could make a call. When Suad Shalalda pushed the intruder away to protect her daughter, he shoved her forcefully into a wall, cutting her head open when her skull struck the plaster. Another settler struck Arwa in the head, leaving a deep gash, before the group sprayed gas directly into the women’s faces, targeting their eyes. Before leaving, the settlers smashed all mobile phones they found in the home to eliminate any evidence of the attack.

Eventually, a growing crowd of local residents gathered to chase the settlers off the property. The attackers fled before they could steal the family’s livestock, but not before leaving a trail of injury and destruction across the home.

The Shalalda family has lived and worked as livestock farmers in al-Daraja for more than 35 years, but they have faced repeated, near-fatal attacks from Israeli settlers seeking to claim the land for settlement expansion. Despite the violence, the family says they have no intention of leaving the only home they have ever known.

“There’s no leaving from here. We have nowhere else to live but this area where we built our homes, raise our sheep, and make our living from farming. This attack is not the first against us, and it won’t be the last,” Mohammed Shalalda said. Suad Shalalda added that leaving would only achieve the goal of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose policies have enabled and encouraged settler harassment of Palestinian communities across the West Bank. “They were like madmen, wreaking havoc in the house. I didn’t know what to do,” she told Middle East Eye.

Al-Daraja is an open rural agricultural area on the eastern edge of Sair, bordering desert grazing lands, and holds strategic value for its fertile farmland, designated grazing areas, and historic herding routes. In recent years, and especially since October 2023, the eastern districts of Sair — including al-Daraja, Wadi Sair, and Jorat al-Khail — have emerged as major flashpoints for rising settler violence, as groups push to expand existing settlement outposts and the nearby formal settlements of Asfar and Kodovim.

Settlers in the region have carried out a systematic campaign of intimidation to force Palestinian communities out: they block farmers and herders from accessing their land, remove residents at gunpoint from grazing areas and agricultural roads, set fire to olive, almond, and grape orchards, cut down mature trees with chainsaws, steal livestock, and harass Bedouin and pastoral communities to pressure small Palestinian population centers to relocate.

Data from a recent report by the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Department of Labour and Planning underscores the dramatic surge in this violence. The report recorded 799 separate attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians and their property in April 2025, representing a 135% increase compared to the same month in 2024. Between the start of 2025 and early May, 18 Palestinians have been killed by settlers, most from gunshot wounds. In April alone, there were 37 separate shooting attacks targeting Palestinians, settlers uprooted or destroyed 2,414 Palestinian-owned trees, and stole or slaughtered 488 head of livestock belonging to local farmers. Settlers also damaged 53 vehicles by arson and stone throwing, burned and destroyed five Palestinian homes, agricultural facilities, and service structures near Jerusalem and Nablus, and attempted to establish 20 new settlement outposts in April — the highest number of new outpost attempts recorded in a single month.

As of the end of 2024, approximately 778,000 Israeli settlers reside in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, alongside an estimated 3.4 million Palestinians, according to United Nations data. The surge in settler violence has been widely linked to the expansionist policies of Israel’s current far-right government, which has relaxed restrictions on settler activity and formalized dozens of previously unauthorized outposts.

A stark, bombshell assessment from a former senior Israeli intelligence leader who held a command role during the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran has pulled back the curtain on a major gap between official allied rhetoric and on-the-ground reality: Iran’s core nuclear infrastructure remains fundamentally intact, despite months of coordinated military strikes.

Tamir Hayman, currently serving as executive director of Israel’s leading think tank the Institute for National Security Studies, occupied a senior position in Israeli military intelligence through the first two months of the bilateral conflict. His unvarnished findings were laid out in a new policy paper published Sunday, with initial reporting on the analysis first published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Hayman’s analysis acknowledges that Israeli and US forces secured limited tactical gains from strikes that began in February 2025 and included a 12-day Israeli air campaign in June that targeted deep inside Iranian territory. But he confirms the war’s two central stated objectives—removing the current Islamic Republic government and eliminating Iran’s nuclear program—remain unfulfilled.

Specifically, the June 2025 Israeli offensive “failed to establish a permanent solution, and Iran demonstrated a rapid and dangerous recovery capability,” Hayman wrote. While the US carried out its first ever direct strikes on Iranian soil during the conflict, damaging three major nuclear sites, Hayman documents that Tehran has already made significant progress restoring its facilities. Key among these recovery efforts is work to rebuild the Fordow enrichment site and speed up construction of a deeply buried site near Natanz known as “Pickaxe Mountain,” which is reportedly engineered to withstand aerial bombardment.

Beyond nuclear infrastructure, Hayman adds that Iran has sustained a breakneck pace of ballistic missile production, turning out approximately 125 new missiles each month. At the outbreak of the 2025 war, the country already had an accumulated stockpile of 2,500 missiles. The former intelligence official also notes Iran has led a major rebuilding of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which suffered severe casualties in its 2023–2024 conflict with Israel. Tehran has doubled Hezbollah’s operating budget and kept arms supply routes through Syria open, even after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Hayman explains that Israel’s split strategic goals have been undermined by a structural shift in Iran’s leadership following the assassination of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father, Iran’s leadership transitioned to a highly decentralized command structure that has made it far harder for allied strikes to decapitate the regime. He also points out that Tehran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz—a critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows—gave it major global leverage, forcing the US and international community to shift their priorities to stabilizing energy markets.

The Israeli former official details that after the assassination of top Iranian leaders, the second phase of the allied campaign was meant to use an unprecedented new approach to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. “The ultimate ‘crown jewel’ – the destruction of the nuclear program – was not fully realised by the time the first lull took effect,” he wrote. Critically, Hayman adds that the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei holds harder-line ideological views than his father, and does not feel bound by the elder Khamenei’s religious edict banning the development of nuclear weapons. “Iran has endured two major wars within a single year, and its leadership’s likely conclusion is that only nuclear deterrence can prevent the next war,” he argued.

Hayman’s findings do not stand alone: just one week before the release of his policy paper, The New York Times published a report based on classified US intelligence assessments that reached nearly identical conclusions. The assessments, completed earlier this month, contradict repeated public claims from the US and its allies that Iran’s military capabilities have been decimated. According to the Times’ reporting, Iran has regained operational access to 30 out of 33 missile sites located along the Strait of Hormuz, allowing it to once again threaten international commercial shipping and US naval vessels transiting the waterway.

Anonymous sources familiar with the intelligence assessment told the outlet that Tehran can already move mobile missile launchers within these sites to concealed locations, and in some cases launch missiles directly from the facility launch pads. The US intelligence document estimates that 70% of Iran’s mobile missile launchers remain operational across the country, and the country retains approximately 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. US military analysts using satellite imagery and other surveillance tools also concluded that Iran has restored access to roughly 90% of its underground missile storage and launch facilities, most of which are now either fully or partially operational.

These findings directly contradict public statements from US President Donald Trump and other senior US administration officials, who have repeatedly claimed the offensive “decimated” Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. When asked to respond to The New York Times report, a White House spokesperson doubled down on the administration’s position, reiterating that Iran had been “crushed” and claiming anyone who believes Iran has rebuilt its military capabilities is either “delusional or a mouthpiece” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The US and Israel launched the current conflict on February 28 with a massive opening wave of strikes across Iran. In response, Tehran launched retaliatory strikes targeting Israeli and Gulf Arab states and carried through on its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies.

In a fresh escalation of actions against humanitarian missions targeting the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli naval commandos have launched a raid on multiple vessels belonging to the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, carrying out the interception in international waters off the coast of Cyprus. The incident comes just four days after the 54-vessel convoy departed Marmaris, Turkey, with the core goal of breaking Israel’s years-long air, land and sea blockade on Gaza that has pushed the enclave into a catastrophic humanitarian collapse.

In an official statement shared with Middle East Eye shortly after the incursion began, the Global Sumud Flotilla organizing committee confirmed that its entire fleet is currently surrounded and actively targeted by Israeli warships, located approximately 250 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast. The mission described the military encirclement as the opening of yet another unlawful act of aggression on the high seas. Footage released from the scene shows Israeli military vessels circling small civilian aid boats before moving in to seize control of the craft, with activists confirming on the social platform X that Israeli soldiers began boarding the first seized vessel in broad daylight.

Local Israeli media had already pre-announced the military’s interception plans, noting that the flotilla was projected to reach Gaza’s territorial waters within 48 hours of the raid. Israeli officials have confirmed that all 100 activists on board the seized vessels have been arrested, and the boats will be towed to Israel’s southern Ashdod port for processing. Ahead of the interception, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held high-level security consultations with top military and political leaders on Sunday to coordinate the operation, according to Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. Another leading Israeli outlet, Yedioth Ahronoth, cited an unnamed official source stating that Israeli forces would “control all participants” and transfer detained activists to a so-called “floating prison” while the vessels are impounded.

This latest interception is not an isolated incident: just one month prior in late April, Israeli naval forces carried out an almost identical raid on another Gaza-bound aid convoy off the coast of Greece, hundreds of nautical miles from the Gaza border. In that earlier attack, roughly 200 activists were detained, multiple vessels were deliberately and systematically disabled to render them immobile, and activists were left stranded in open water. Activists who participated in the April mission reported that Israeli military speedboats approached the convoy before the raid, soldiers pointed laser targeting devices and semi-automatic firearms at unarmed civilian crew members, ordered all on deck to crawl with hands and knees on the ground, and jammed all vessel communications systems to block calls for assistance.

The Monday raid has already triggered widespread international condemnation, with Turkey’s foreign ministry leading diplomatic pushback against the action. In a formal statement, the Turkish government stressed that “Israel’s attacks and intimidation policies will in no way prevent the international community’s pursuit of justice and solidarity with the Palestinian people,” calling on Israel to immediately halt the ongoing operation and release all detained activists.

The interception comes amid an ongoing catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, triggered by Israel’s large-scale military incursion that began in October 2023. To date, official Palestinian health data records at least 72,769 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardment and ground operations, with thousands more still missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings. Israel’s total blockade of the enclave has cut off access to food, clean water, electricity and life-saving humanitarian aid, leading the United Nations and global humanitarian agencies to declare full-scale famine in multiple northern Gaza districts. The vast majority of Gaza’s hospitals, residential homes and schools have been completely destroyed in sustained air and ground attacks. Even after a temporary ceasefire was agreed in October 2023, Israeli air strikes have killed more than 800 additional Palestinians in Gaza, and Israel has continued to violate ceasefire terms by maintaining strict restrictions on aid entry, leaving the territory’s humanitarian emergency completely unresolved.

Organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla reiterated in their statement that Israel’s repeated interceptions of unarmed aid convoys in international waters demonstrate a deliberate and systematic disregard for core tenets of international maritime law, the fundamental right to freedom of navigation on the high seas, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a binding international agreement that Israel is a party to.

Nearly six years after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate, a French investigating judge will move forward with a formal probe into the killing, multiple sources confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Saturday. The long-awaited investigation follows a years-long legal battle launched by global human rights and press freedom organizations that have accused Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of direct involvement in the murder.

Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post and reporter for Middle East Eye who was known for his critical reporting on the Saudi regime, was killed by Saudi agents shortly after he entered the consulate on October 2, 2018. His body was dismembered, and no remains have ever been recovered. In 2021, a declassified U.S. intelligence report publicly concluded that bin Salman had personally ordered the assassination, a finding the crown prince has repeatedly denied, though he has acknowledged the killing occurred on his watch. During a 2025 White House meeting with former U.S. President Donald Trump, he described the incident as “a huge mistake.”

The legal push in France began in July 2022, when two organizations — Switzerland-based NGO Trial International and Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an advocacy group Khashoggi founded just months before his death — filed an official criminal complaint accusing bin Salman of complicity in torture, enforced disappearance, and premeditated murder, claiming he directly “ordered the assassination by asphyxiation.” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) later joined the complaint. For years, France’s public prosecutor’s office blocked the investigation, arguing the NGOs’ claims were legally inadmissible. That changed last week, when the Paris Court of Appeal ruled the complaints meet the threshold for investigation, noting that “the possibility that the case could be classified as a crime against humanity could not be ruled out” before a formal probe is completed.

The case has now been assigned to an investigating judge with specialized expertise in prosecuting crimes against humanity. The judge’s core mandate will be to examine whether the assassination was part of a coordinated, state-level campaign by the Saudi government targeting political dissidents, which would qualify as a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population under international criminal law.

While Dawn was unable to gain formal status as a civil party to the proceedings, the organization welcomed the court’s ruling as a critical milestone for accountability. “The crime committed against Jamal Khashoggi is an abominable crime decided and planned at the highest levels of the Saudi state, which had a journalist executed who was a dissenting and independent voice,” said Emmanuel Daoud, legal counsel for RSF. Henri Thulliez, a lawyer representing Trial International, emphasized that France is legally obligated to pursue allegations of torture and enforced disappearance when suspects are present on its territory, adding that “there should no longer be any obstacle to opening a judicial inquiry into the atrocious crime against Jamal Khashoggi.”

The 2018 killing sparked global condemnation from world leaders, press freedom advocates, and human rights groups, who widely criticized Saudi Arabia’s internal domestic trial over the incident as a sham. The closed-door 2018 trial sentenced five defendants to death and explicitly cleared bin Salman of any involvement, a outcome that rights groups dismissed as an “antithesis of justice” and “a mockery.” For years after the killing, bin Salman faced informal diplomatic isolation among Western leaders, though that has gradually eased in recent years amid shifting geopolitical priorities.

This development marks the first formal judicial investigation by a Western country into the case, opening a new chapter in the multi-year push for accountability for Khashoggi’s killing.